Gareth’s personal philosophy enforces his belief that effective leadership is about empowering staff by developing a vision and school culture of high expectations of staff and students.
Gareth Palmer
Principal
Esperance Primary School
The key to Gareth’s leadership is the development of relationships where a system of mutual respect and trust has been created between all stakeholders.
Through his experiences as a leader in both primary and district high schools across Western Australia, Gareth believes that leadership should be about working collaboratively with colleagues, parents and students in the implementation of programs to improve not just student performance, but the whole child.
Notably, Gareth led a rigorous and robust review of the school’s 2016 to 2019 Business Plan and Delivery and Performance Agreement in 2018 with school board and staff. This process led to the review of whole school practices, implementing research-based literacy and numeracy approaches and ensuring that decision making was driven by data.
For his change management project, Gareth explored the topic The Fellowship: What Has Been the Return on Investment? The purpose of this project was to investigate the impact of the ‘Fellowship Program’ on leadership at individual, school, network and system level. A range of perspectives on the efficacy of the program and system level data was analysed, to identify what is working well and areas of focus for the future.