A suggestion for the platform developers: it would be helpful to have the option to attach a document for longer text responses. I’m conscious this post is a little long, but I wanted to provide the context after only catching the last few minutes of today’s session due to my timezone conversion error, and I had promised the group I’d share an update here.
Our Entry Point
Our entry point is an opportunity to use an unexpected moment of staffing change to realign the design of learning with the philosophy that has always underpinned Peregrine, while reimagining how it can flourish sustainably as our school has grown.
Peregrine is an intentionally small independent school of around 110 students (ages 4 to 16) in the far south of Tasmania, Australia. Our philosophical roots sit in Democratic Education, with learning built around student agency, mixed-age communities, authentic relationships and personalised learning.
We introduced our high school program in 2018 to meet parent demand and our enrolments across the school tripled within two years. We took these enrolments on to staff a viable high school program (in Australia, our funding is provided per enrolment) and because of increased demand in our community with more families moving to the region than ever before. Our challenge was learning how to scale a philosophy that had flourished in a much smaller school, we had to adapt.
To support our rapid growth, we welcomed many new staff into a highly relational and unconventional educational model. At the same time, increasing regulatory expectations and the need to help families understand what rigour looks like in a school that operates so differently led us to introduce more teacher-led structures than we had originally intended. Those structures helped us grow sustainably, but over time they shifted the balance away from the level of agency and responsibility we ultimately want young people to experience.
Today, we are an established school of 25+ years with a strong reputation in our region, long waiting lists and a community that increasingly understands our philosophy. This gives us greater confidence to realign our learning model with our values and the timing for change is right.
Our original ICEE entry point was a small, opt-in learning studio where students and staff would co-design a new way of doing school. However, since our last HIP session, two of our newer teachers have decided to relocate from Tasmania to warmer parts of mainland Australia. While disappointing, this is a familiar reality for rural schools, where geography, climate and lifestyle often influence these decisions. In a school like ours, replacing staff is not simply about filling vacancies but finding educators who genuinely align with our philosophy and community.
Being a small school, it is a bit of blow to the team, so instead of rushing to recruit new staff, we are choosing to use this moment to rethink the whole-school learning model itself. The staffing changes have not altered our direction, they have accelerated it and our core teaching team appear to be energised by the opportunity.
My possible entry point is…
Rather than redesigning learning for one small cohort, our entry point has become redesigning learning across the whole school in manageable stages.
Our first stage is expanding a model we already use called Base Camps, longer, intensive learning experiences that integrate literacy, numeracy and cross-curricular learning through rich projects. Initially these will remain teacher-guided while we support teachers to become increasingly confident as facilitators of more genuine self-directed learning.
Over time, we want Base Camps to become genuinely student-directed. Students will identify meaningful problems, pursue questions that matter to them, connect with expertise beyond the school and create work that contributes value to their community. Teachers will provide responsive workshops and targeted small group mini lessons for core skill development in literacy and numeracy, with children electing when they participate, rather than our current class based timetabled model where everyone is timetabled into a literacy or numeracy based class, which contributes to a tight schedule that we don’t like.
A key design challenge is creating more time for teacher collaboration. We know high-agency learning can flourish because it reflects how Peregrine operated for many years when we were much smaller. The challenge is designing the conditions that allow high-agency learning to flourish sustainably for our staff and meaningfully at a larger scale, while navigating increased regulatory scrutiny and the growing pressure to meet state-wide initiatives tied to school funding.
As part of this model we are exploring a broader learning ecosystem where artists, tradespeople, entrepreneurs, Elders and other community experts facilitate short learning experiences alongside teachers. We are also considering redistributing the teacher wages (of the 2 leaving) to new non-teaching roles that coordinate projects and partnerships, freeing teachers to learn, collaborate, mentor students and to continually refine the learning model.
The ICEE lens that helps me see this entry point is…
Personalisable Learning and Human Interdependence resonate most strongly with us.
Student agency has always been central to our philosophy, but we want to move beyond students simply having choice within learning, which is where we have landed in our current model. We want learners to identify meaningful problems, contribute to something beyond themselves and increasingly see their learning as connected to the growth of other people and their community.
The Curriculum, Pedagogy and Environment interfaces are our immediate focus.
If this begins to work, the growth I might observe is…
I would hope to see students increasingly acting on their curiosity, identifying meaningful problems, seeking expertise from others more regularly, collaborating across broader ages and creating work that has genuine value beyond school.
Equally important, I hope to observe teachers becoming designers of learning rather than directors of it, and I acknowledge this could be a longer journey for some. I hope families develop confidence in recognising rigour through agency and authentic contribution, and our broader community becoming genuine partners in learning.
Success would be observed through multiple lenses: the questions students ask, the initiatives they take, the quality of their collaboration, the value they create, and the reflections of students, teachers, families and community partners.
One question I would like the CM community to help me think about is…
How have others successfully scaled highly personalised, student-directed learning while bringing teachers, students and families confidently along the journey? Specifically, what structures, routines or ways of communicating have helped communities recognise rigour through agency, contribution and authentic learning while creating the collaborative conditions teachers need to sustain this work?
Please reply with a short reflection using this simple format: