Services to Schools

What we offer

Austega brings its experience in risk management, project management, technology and education together to provide schools with the following services:

• Risk assessment and management - from strategic advice to implementation facilitation
• Strategic management of technological and structural change
• Tailored research and training in the above areas

Also see our 2020 school project and our free educational resources.

Risk assessment and management

Schools are under increasingly difficult pressures - legal and political, insufficient funding, technological change, even more demanding parental expectations - any of which could undermine a school's critical brand value and viability almost overnight. Yet many schools continue to operate without the risk management policies and oversight that most other businesses now consider essential.

• Ask Austega to use its risk management and reporting experience to help you explore and master this critical field.
• Ask for our free risk & crisis management guidelines for school leaders and check the other useful resources we have identified.
• Consider our growing list of risks and risk incidents to confirm you have them all under control.
• Consider some commonsense principles for risk management.

Strategic management for schools

Schools are complex environments trying to balance educational priorities, parental expectations, teacher professional development and demands, and student personal development while under changing economic constraints. Developments in technology will also affect or even overwhelm almost every factor in its balance - see our latest presentation. Austega brings:

• economic and financial modeling skills,
• risk assessment and management experience
• experience with establishing high-level management performance indicators, and
• research in the latest trends in technology for schools

to help your school anticipate and proactively manage these stresses. For instance, this may include establishing board or school council-level indicators that capture the educational quality and risk exposure of the school. Contact us by email or phone on (Australia) 02 9972 0650 and we will tell you how we can help.

Tailored research and training

The 2020 School - If you are interested in the impact of technology on schools, you might want to check out or contribute to Austega's "2020 school". Our aim is to promote the most effective use of technology in school education taking into account impact on educational objectives, structures and learning methodologies, and also the financial constraints and industrial relations issues.

Call Austega if you would like us to undertake a once-off or ongoing knowledge search of an educational technology issue to assist you in your school planning.

Austega can also provide electronic (web, intranet and disk) and/or face-to-face professional development ("Train the Trainer" certified) and training material in a range of content areas. Call Austega if we can help you reach your training goals, including on an ongoing support basis.

What's new?

• 23 Sep - Victoria looks at school effectiveness
• 23 Sep - Computers' impact on careers
• 2 Sep - Game-based learning article
• 19 Mar - NSW kicks off e-Learning system
• 8 Nov - EdNA resources on Bullying
• 19 Oct - UWS Continuity & Change Education Conference 27-28 Nov
• 23 Aug - 21C Teaching: A Dozen Promising Practices
• 22 Aug - US Industry Report Learning in the 21st Century
• 9 Aug - Quality in eLearning - European SchoolsNet establishes repository
• 7 Aug - Aust to establish Institute for Quality Teaching & School Leadership
• 25 Jul - Papers from "How to Teach Better" conference
• 5 Jul - Searchable database of international education research available
• US report on trends in school choice & satisfaction - 23 May
• Aust research: 40% of intellectually gifted underachieve - 1 May
• US school trial finds eTextbooks more engaging - 22 Apr
• Dallas school district starts own police force - 28 Mar
• ACT acts to close digital divide - 11 Mar
• US govt emergency planning site for schools - 9 Mar

Educational Resources

Check out our resource collection:

• Annotated directory of electronic educational technology news services
• Annotated listing of useful education technology websites
• Annotated collection of risk incidents that can stop a school in its tracks
• A directory of gifted education resources, especially designed to assist teachers and parents of gifted children

Articles & other items:

• Technological change and risk management for schools (Word)
• Medium term impact of technology on school education (Word file)
• Effective teacher praise
• "Flow" & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Dumbing down? Try this 1895 8th grade exam...

Contemplation point -

"...the most strenuous efforts of the most committed educationalists in the years since my boyhood have been quite unable to make a school into anything but a school, which is to say a jail with educational opportunities."

Dr Jonathan Hullah, FRCP, narrator in Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man, Viking New York 1995.