In a few short working days, I will commence maternity leave after twenty-seven months as principal of Wirrigirri Primary School.

It is a transition I have looked forward to for a very long time, but one that has also prompted an unexpected period of reflection. While much of my attention has naturally been focused on preparing to become a new mum, stepping away from a school after just twenty-seven months has created space to think differently about the journey so far.

Perhaps it is the timing.

Over the past few weeks, Wirrigirri has completed its first School Review and begun developing its inaugural four-year Strategic Plan. The school and I are both entering new chapters. While they are very different chapters, they have prompted me to consider the same question.

What has twenty-seven months actually been enough time to achieve?

Twenty-seven months ago, Wirrigirri Primary School existed only as an idea. There were no students, no teachers and no community to lead. In fact, there wasn’t even a school building to work from. The first nine months were not spent leading a school, but designing one. Every conversation centred on questions that many established schools rarely have the opportunity to revisit.

• What do we believe about learning?
• What experiences should every child have?
• How should teachers work together?
• What role should families play?
• What deserves our time and attention?

Without inherited structures, traditions or routines, every decision had to be made deliberately. When the gates opened in January 2025, those ideas met reality. Children arrived with different needs, strengths and personalities than we could ever have anticipated. Families brought diverse expectations and aspirations. Staff interpreted ideas through their own professional experiences. Some of our assumptions proved remarkably robust. Others evolved.

If you had asked me twenty-seven months ago what I would be reflecting on before commencing maternity leave, I suspect my answer would have been very different. I would probably have spoken about the logistics of opening a new school. The construction milestones. The enrolments. The staffing. The countless operational decisions that consume your thinking when you are preparing for a school that does not yet exist.

Instead, I find myself returning to conversations. Conversations about learning. About what kind of school we wanted to create. About the experiences we wanted every child to have. About what deserved our attention and, equally importantly, what did not.

It turns out schools are shaped less by the decisions everyone notices than by the hundreds of intentional design decisions that nobody remembers making. Individually, they rarely feel significant. Collectively, they become the identity of the organisation. Every design decision we made reflected an underlying belief about what schools are for.

The decision to establish a universal meals program from the outset was never simply about providing lunch. It reflected a belief that public education extends beyond curriculum delivery. Schools have a responsibility to create the conditions in which every child feels they belong, every family feels welcome and barriers to learning are intentionally reduced.

Similarly, our pedagogical model did not emerge from a desire to create another framework. It emerged from a belief that learning should be purposeful, connected and authentic. We wanted students to engage deeply with ideas, investigate meaningful questions and use their learning in ways that extended beyond the classroom. The model was simply the expression of that belief.

The same thinking shaped the development of the Wirrigirri Capabilities. Rather than viewing capabilities as an “extra”, we wanted them to sit alongside knowledge and skills as an explicit outcome of schooling. If we expect young people to think critically, collaborate effectively, communicate with confidence and contribute positively to society, then we have a responsibility to intentionally design learning experiences that develop those capabilities.

Looking back, I realise none of these decisions were really about meals, learning models or capabilities. They were decisions about the kind of public school we wanted Wirrigirri to become. I think this is what I underestimated most. I assumed the defining moments of opening a school would be the visible milestones. The first day. The first assembly. The first event. Instead, the defining moments were often quiet conversations around tables, wrestling with questions of purpose before making decisions about practice. Twenty-seven months later, I suspect those conversations have shaped our school far more than any individual initiative ever could.

Perhaps schools are not built through their biggest decisions, but through countless smaller decisions made consistently enough to become indistinguishable from culture. This has probably been my greatest learning over the past twenty-seven months.

When people talk about school culture, they often describe it as “the way we do things around here”. Increasingly, I have come to think that culture is less something leaders create and more something organisations cultivate through deliberate choices made over time. Culture emerges from the conversations we prioritise, the behaviours we reinforce, the compromises we refuse to make and the expectations we collectively hold for ourselves and one another, and for the children in our care.

Over time, those decisions become habits, those habits become assumptions. Eventually, they simply become “the way we do things”.

The same has been true of my thinking about collective efficacy. Educational literature often describes collective efficacy as the shared belief that educators can positively influence student outcomes. While I have no doubt that belief matters, I have come to appreciate that it develops through experience.

It grows when people solve problems together, when ideas are challenged respectfully, when expertise is shared rather than protected, and when improvement becomes the responsibility of all rather than the expectation of a few individuals.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the past twenty-seven months has been watching those shifts occur. Our conversations have changed, the confidence with which staff challenge one another’s thinking has changed, the ownership people feel for the school’s direction has changed.

Increasingly, decisions are informed not by who suggested the idea, but by whether the idea aligns with what we believe about learning and our purpose as a school. To me, that feels like one of the most significant milestones of our first twenty-seven months.

The recent School Review reinforced that confidence, not because it affirmed our work, but because it provided a valuable opportunity to reflect on our current reality and consider where we want to go next. As we now begin developing our inaugural Strategic Plan, it feels less like the end of an establishment phase and more like the beginning of the next chapter.

If I am honest, stepping away at this point brings mixed emotions.

There is enormous excitement about becoming a mum, alongside the inevitable uncertainty that comes with leaving work that has occupied so much of my thinking over the past twenty-seven months.

Yet perhaps that complexity has also provided clarity.

Twenty-seven months has not been enough time to finish building Wirrigirri. Nor should it have been.

One of the great privileges of opening a new public school is the opportunity to reimagine, from first principles, what excellent public education can look like for a community. That work is never complete. Every new student, every new teacher, every new family and every new challenge reshapes the organisation.

The role of leadership is not to preserve a school exactly as it is. It is to create the conditions in which it continues learning, adapting and improving.

As I prepare to begin maternity leave, I find comfort in knowing that the school is in excellent hands and that the next chapter of Wirrigirri will not be defined by any one individual. It will be shaped by a community that has developed shared beliefs, shared language and a shared commitment to continually becoming a great place for children to learn, be and grow.

Perhaps that is what twenty-seven months has really been enough time to achieve.

~ Bec