Sacred Heart, St Joseph’s Geelong flexible timetable inspires schools globally

Geelong schools are inspiring flexible timetables across the country and abroad, with students praising the independence they’re afforded. But other local secondary colleges haven’t been swayed.

Sacred Heart College deputy principal Tanya Malley and principal Anna Negro. Picture: Alan Barber

A Geelong school is inspiring flexible college timetables across the country and abroad, but other local institutions haven’t been swayed.

One year on from adopting a four-day teaching week, Sacred Heart College has been invited to multiple events and been visited by national and international schools interested in the model.

Principal Anna Negro said the Newtown school had hosted leaders from Westlake Girls High School in Auckland and met with St Columba’s College in Essendon.

She said the leadership team had also spoken about the change at the Coalition of Girls in Melbourne and Catholic Secondary Principals Australia.

But other schools in Geelong are less enthusiastic.

A Geelong Grammar spokesman said while the school was regularly reviewing how to structure the curriculum to best suit learners’ needs, it was not considering a four-day model.

Kardinia International College, Geelong College and Christian College did not comment on whether they would consider a timetable change.

Ms Negro said the program has worked for them, but what worked would be different for every school community.

“They need to explore what that looks like for their school, for instance Scotch College have gone to a similar model and we’ve had interest from St Columba’s College,” she said.

“Hopefully we’re working towards systemic school change.”

Ms Negro said the timetable idea first began to take shape in 2019 when the school’s education team attended an event about contemporary teaching with Harvard Professor David Perkins.

In response, and alongside brother school St Joseph’s College, the school founded the Time In Modern Education (TIME) project, involving clinical psychologists, universities, the Future Schools Alliance and interstate schools.

Theunusual timetable is designed to encourage students to lead their own learning, easing the transition from high school into the real world, with Wednesdays dedicated to consolidation and revision rather than teaching information.

“Their world looks very different now compared with 10, 20 years ago,” she said.

“It does mirror what happens at university and our aim is to prepare the girls for life beyond Sacred Heart.”

“Today 68 per cent of youngsters swap courses or drop out but I’d like to think in the future our girls will be able to adjust better.

“And if we look at the world of work we have people who still continue to work off-site, you need skills to be able to manage that time.”

The timetable shake-up was trialled in November 2023, and then rolled out this year with a “four-day teaching week”, a revision day, flexible start and finish times and some remote study.

The structure of revision days varies across year levels, with year 12s able to apply to study from home.

Yeah 12 student Bridget Baxter said the timetable had helped her develop her independent learning, a base to build off of for university.

“I can study from home on a Wednesday without distractions,” she said.

Deputy principal Tanya Malley said the timetable was still five days a week, but enabled students to build skills around self-management.

“So year seven to year 11 they have the opportunity to build those skills with staff guiding them, and they still have purposeful learning,” she said.

Originally published as Sacred Heart, St Joseph’s Geelong flexible timetable inspires schools globally