Education Minister Grace Grace has today congratulated Happy Valley State School for being named a Queensland 2022 Showcase Awards for Excellence in Schools winner, taking out the top prize in North Queensland for the Excellence in Rural and Remote Education category.
Now in its 23rd year, Minister Grace said the Showcase Awards are widely regarded as the most prestigious educational awards in Queensland, showcasing excellence in education, innovation, and leadership.
“One of the privileges of my job as Education Minister is to meet the outstanding teachers and educators delivering innovative and world class opportunities for our young Queenslanders,” Ms Grace said.
“The Showcase Awards allow us to recognise and celebrate the great work that our schools are doing day-to-day to ensure that Queensland continues to innovate and develop new education practices.
“The quality of submissions for this year’s awards was once again exceptional and extremely competitive, making the task of selecting award winners all the more difficult for the regional judging teams.
“To be named as one of the 27 regional winners, or as one of the 24 to receive a commendation, is a significant accolade for these schools. It’s an important recognition of their contribution to the state’s education system.
“I congratulate each and every one of them, and wish them all the best in the next rounds which will determine our state finalists, and ultimately our state winners.”
Happy Valley State School Principal Kath Donnelly said her team was delighted to be named regional winner for its ‘Leading from the classroom: a model of distributive leadership’ program.
“Teacher retention is a big issue for rural and remote schools like Happy Valley, so we developed this program to encourage our teachers to stay in our community,” Mrs Donnelly said.
“We support our teachers through capability development to give them the confidence and the skills to go into leadership roles in the future.
“We’re finding our teachers are seeing huge benefits and staying longer as a result of this program, which is a great result for our students and our whole school community.”
This year there were 86 submissions for the Showcase Awards state-wide, representing 120 schools. Regional award winners and commendation recipients will share in $66,000 worth of development grants to further support their initiatives.
The 27 regional award winners will be whittled down to a smaller number of state finalists next month, before the overall winners across the 10 categories are announced at a conference in Brisbane in October 2022. Winners will receive up to $10,000.
