OUTSTANDING teachers and schools are being celebrated for their innovation and excellence, with finalists being announced for this year’s Victorian Education Excellence Awards.
Deputy Premier and Minister for Education Ben Carroll congratulated the 41 finalists across 14 award categories, which recognise inspirational teachers, principals, and education support staff making a difference to the lives of students in Victorian government schools.
Some of this year’s finalists include Chloe Wade, a teacher from Welshpool and District Primary School, who has improved student literacy and numeracy using data-driven and evidence-based practices. She also supports staff with disability inclusion, helping them to develop and refine individual learning plans for students with disability.
This is Chloe’s fifth year in teaching after graduating from Federation University, and the award nomination is for the Early Education Career – recognising new teachers and their outstanding efforts.
When Chloe first started teaching, the school had begun a new phonics program in 2021 called Sounds Right. The program involved training for staff and has shown significant progress in student literacy.
Chloe is a Prep/Grade One teacher and said it’s the teaching of all the sounds, and how to use those sounds to decode words. Chloe is also a mentor to two other teachers in grades two, three and four, five and six.
“I’ve helped these teachers implement the program, and we’ve seen great results,” she said.
“As you move through higher levels, the phonics program is obviously more challenging, for example, we’re teaching three sounds; for instance, a trigraph together to make one sound,” she said. “Since implementing this program, we’ve continued to develop it, and it helps massively with spelling. The students are learning the sounds and then learning to write them, so this skill transfers across into their writing as well.”
With the numeracy program, Chloe said Welshpool and District Primary School has implemented a whole-school maths program. “We have all the students together as a whole, and then we group them by their abilities. We then work across the school with all the different year levels.
“This was implemented as when we returned from COVID, we noticed many gaps in the students' learning, and since implementing it, we’ve seen phenomenal growth across all levels.”
Judging panels for the education awards will determine the winners of each category, who will be announced at a ceremony on Friday, October 24, a week before World Teachers’ Day.
The awards also support the continued professional development of staff, with professional learning grants of $20,000 available for each individual award winner, and $25,000 for each team award.
The winner of the Lindsay Thompson Award for Excellence in Education – which honours Victoria’s longest serving education minister and former Premier – receives a further professional learning grant of $20,000.
Deputy Premier and Minister for Education Ben Carroll said Victorian Education Excellence Awards finalists have gone above and beyond, and represent just a small fraction of Victoria’s outstanding teaching workforce that delivers world-class education.”
