“I wasn’t happy just kicking along with what we were doing,” the school leader at Westbourne Grammar School in Melbourne’s south west says.
“I wanted to be really aspirational, and I wanted to really set the benchmark in the independent school sector in Australia about what’s possible in the digital space.”
A stand out digital, data and cyber security strategy
Camm is confident it’s now a case of mission complete, and is keen to share the ins and outs of the experience so other principals and ICT leaders can also create a forward-thinking digital, data and cyber security strategy that guards against privacy threats while simultaneously lifting the entire teaching and learning experience.
"My thinking at that stage (in 2021) was to do a current state assessment of the organisation, both from a teaching and learning perspective, but also the business operations side of things, and then to look at where we want to go and what we need to do to get there – to realise that aim of really shifting the needle and positioning ourselves at the forefront of digital over the next three years,” he tells EducationHQ.
The new strategy needed to deliver on many fronts, Camm says.
From boosting curriculum, classroom instruction and learning, to streamlining communication and administration systems across the school, there was a lot riding on getting the documents right.
“[We went about] looking at our systems, structures and processes across our business operations to make sure that we were reducing the overall complexity of those, and making sure that they were functional to support the core business of teaching and learning,” Camm explains.
Following rigorous consultation with the school community, and a ‘horizon scan’ review of what a strong digital strategy looks like in the business world, school leaders developed a series of strategic statements that pinned down exactly what they were trying to achieve.
“First and foremost in that was this idea of people coming first,” Camm says.
“And so that might sound a little bit strange in a digital data and cybersecurity strategy, but schools are firstly human-centred organisations, and so we believe that by empowering our people and giving them opportunities, giving them a seat at the table, we can encourage continuous innovation…”
Tech creators, not just consumers
The final strategy was split into five key themes of digital innovation: business operations, information systems, professional learning, learning innovation, as well as a somewhat rogue-sounding ‘creators and explorers’ concept.
“What that means is that we have a vision here at the school of shaping learners who inspire the world,” Camm elaborates.
“And in order to realise that vision in the digital space, we wanted to create opportunities and really position our young people with a sense of agency and put them into the position where they’re the creators of tomorrow’s technology, not just the consumers…”
Students don’t just engage in 3D printing exercises, for example – they build their own printers from scratch.
The same goes for AI applications and tools, the principal reports. It’s about having students understand technology ‘from the inside out’.
“They’re not just using artificial intelligence through our AI Academy, they’re actually creating their own artificially intelligent applications, examining machine learning and large data sets, and understanding the ethics and the morals and the bias built into these things by actually doing it,” Camm says.
The approach, by the principal’s account at least, has paid off.
“Our engagement levels are through the roof, both from a staff and student perspective.
“Our parent satisfaction continues to increase, and the type of things that are happening at the school and the conversations have really become elevated as a result.”
One lunchtime, a few enthused students mentioned to the principal that it would be incredible to have a retro arcade game machine on-site to play.
“I said, ‘yeah, it would be cool’. I said, ‘Why don’t we build one? … you go away and do some research, come back to me with a proposal, and we’ll continue the conversation.
“And so they did, and I gave them a budget, and then they ordered all the electronics components … they did all the wiring, the soldering, they did coding, they looked at loading the game…
“And now we have this amazing retro arcade game machine at the school that was a completely, 100 per cent, student-led project,” Camm says proudly.
Phase three of the school's data strategy will soon be underway, which will involve using AI to uncover hidden patterns in the school’s datasets.
Cybersecurity: building a digital fortress
On the cybersecurity side of the equation, Westbourne has built something of a digital fortress to ensure its data is as well protected as possible.
And with ASIC now reporting a critical cyber incident in Australia every six minutes, Camm suggests this is among the most critical work of schools.
“We have a really robust cyber security platform in place where we have some internal controls, and we also outsource to external experts to monitor our network 24/7 to look at detecting any potential threats or compromises to our network, and then responding if the worst actually then happens in terms of any data breach or privacy concerns,” he says.
It’s critical that school leaders continually assess their security position and look at ways the privacy and security of their networks can be strengthened, Camm warns.
“Two weeks ago we engaged an external service to do some penetration testing of some of our core systems here at the school, and you know what? That resulted in some vulnerabilities that were picked up on that we hadn’t been aware of.
“…it’s a continual process and cycle of improving your security posture and making sure that you don’t rest on your laurels.
“You cannot eliminate the risk of some sort of security or privacy issue occurring, but what you can do is you can put things in place to make sure that that risk is minimised.”
Asking big questions on data
Meanwhile, the school’s new data strategy has been put through “three phases of maturity”.
Camm says phase one involved drilling down into where data was being stored, assesing its quality, the processes for collecting, storying and deleting of it, as well as taking on broader data governance considerations, such as who has accesses and why.
“Once we did that core work, which we called phase one of our maturity model, we then looked at a data integrity and cleansing program that we’ve put into place to make sure that the data that we had was accurate, appropriate, and so on,” he says.
“And then we looked at how we use that data in terms of its visualisation and the analysis of that data.
“So, for every function across the school, we now have live Power BI dashboards, which capture the key metrics and project status for every different function.”
The idea here is that middle leaders and managers can make ‘better, faster and more informed’ decisions, with clear benefits for school board members, too, Camm says.
“It augments and supports the visibility of executive and board reporting through prescriptive and predictive analytics, giving us insight into things that perhaps we hadn’t considered before, and using that to make interventions at different parts of the school to improve either the teaching and learning of our young people or the performance of different aspects of business.”
Phase three of the model will soon be underway, which will involve using AI to uncover hidden patterns in the school’s datasets.
“I think sitting underneath that is this idea that in an increasingly AI world, data will be a school’s most critical asset,” Camm says.
“So, questions like who oversees your data? Where is it stored? Who has access and why?
"What data do you collect, and why? What data do you store? How long do you store it for, and why? How do you use your data? And then, how is it manipulated, visualised, shared and interpreted, and to what end?”
School leaders, listen up
To those school leaders looking to spearhead similar change in their digital strategy, Camm has some clear advice.
“Scan your internal school environment, (then) scan the external environment, and then come back to your purpose.
“What goals do you have? What strategy can you decide on that best fulfills your purpose in a really changing and dynamic business and technological environment?
“Then have a quick assessment of your current landscape in terms of what is your school’s capability currently, and what capabilities or resources do you need to be able to deliver on whatever strategy you choose.”
Bringing people along with you is key to the successes of the whole project, he flags.
“My advice is always to engage in a collaborative and consultative process, draw on the expertise that you have around you, but then draw a line in the sand – be really deliberate and clear with your communications and your intent because clarity and brevity, I think, leads to impact.”
