[On a multicoloured screen, the NCCD logo features a circle made of four stylised human bodies. Text:  "Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability." 
A white map of Australia contains the title 'Establishing processes and understandings at a new school'. A marker appears in southern Victoria.
On a stone wall, a large sign in rusted metal letters reads "Oscar Romero". A dark-haired woman sits in an office. Text: "Fran Drysdale, Principal, Oscar Romero Catholic Primary School." Saplings grow near a modern building. In classrooms, a teacher works with two students, another teacher works with one student.] 

FRAN DRYSDALE: So my name's Fran Drysdale, I'm the principal of Oscar Romero Catholic Primary School. Oscar Romero is a brand new school that's opened up in Craigieburn, which is a northern suburb in Melbourne. As new school, we've just completed the NCCD process for the very first time. As a priority, knowing that NCCD was something we needed to do, it was really establishing some strategies and practices that we knew that needed to happen anyway.

[At a meeting, staff consult laptops. In a classroom, a teacher works with a boy.]

FRAN DRYSDALE: We have two meetings where we get together every week. We have a planning that the teachers have with a facilitator, which happens to be the deputy principal. I think the talking about things, giving teachers the opportunity to seek clarification, ask questions, experiment, that I think was very beneficial for everybody. 

We knew that we received information from schools and from other parents I guess, and our teachers and we were really clear about this was useful information, but we need to get our own information. So we spent the first term in particular, we did a lot of work around getting to know our students and gathered our own information. Included in that was assessment. So we came up with an assessment schedule. We particularly talked about what information would be useful for us very early in the piece. Gave the teachers the time to get that information from the students. And then once we did get that information, because we only had 130 students we were able to have some whole school discussions about what our data told us, but also, discussions with a different levels that team worked together around what the data was telling them, particularly around literacy, numeracy. That gave us a really good starting point. We talked about what could we do with that information? What was it telling us, what do we need to do.

So for us it was really thinking about - there’s so much going on with a brand new school, how do we do this so that it is in embedded, it's not seen as something additional but something we do because it's good practice, because it gives us information about our students and it's something that's going to be ongoing. Without, I guess killing our teachers. We talked at a leadership level, a fair bit about what have we got already that's happening and what can we do. We're doing this as a gradual process and then we can build upon

[In a classroom, a teacher hands out picture books to students. At the meeting, staff members take notes while another talks.]

FRAN DRYSDALE: I think one of the things we would do is at the very beginning of the year, really talk about the NCCD process. Straight away talk about where that fits in terms of our whole school improvement plan. Talk about what records, because we will have actually quite a few additional staff next year. So we need to talk about recording processes anyway, how we record our planning and what the expectations are around collecting student data, our assessment schedule. What are the categories, what do they mean, how do we know what kids I guess fit into which categories, where do we get the information from and really put it into the context of what we do. Talk about our planning and so trying to make this part of an ongoing practice when we're talking about ongoing practice, it isn't seen as something additional, but it's something we do anyway. And keeping it on the agenda as the regular process. Always talking about what that means and always talking about how we can do things better, how we can improve. 

[The NCCD logo appears onscreen. Text: "Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability." 
Text: "Supported by the Australian Government. 
© 2019 Education Services Australia Ltd, unless otherwise indicated. Creative Commons BY 4.0, unless otherwise indicated." 
The logos for Creative Commons BY 4.0, Education Services Australia and Australian Government.]