Pittwater House Educator Awarded Prestigious NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship

Pittwater House Director of Teaching and Learning Mrs Katie Jackson has been awarded a prestigious NSW Premier’s Teacher Scholarship, recognising her commitment to advancing quality teaching and improving outcomes for students.

Mrs Jackson is the recipient of the Premier’s NESA Quality Teaching Scholarship, a highly sought-after $15,000 scholarship that enables educators to undertake research and professional learning in Australia and overseas.

Her research project, From Knowing to Doing: Investigating Whole-School Conditions That Make Quality Teaching the Norm, Not the Exception, will explore how schools can create the conditions for consistently excellent teaching in every classroom.

As part of her research, Katie plans to visit high-performing schools in Australia and the United Kingdom, examining not only what excellent teaching looks like in the classroom, but the leadership decisions, curriculum systems, structures and professional learning that enable it to become embedded across an entire school.

Her research will explore how shared, high-quality curriculum resources, whole-school approaches to teaching and strong professional cultures can reduce teacher workload and enable teachers to focus more deeply on the craft of teaching and student learning.

“Ultimately, the scholarship is about understanding how schools reduce variability in teaching quality so that a student’s experience of excellent teaching is not dependent on which classroom they happen to walk into,” Katie said.

Mrs Jackson joined our Principal, Dr Middleton, at NSW Parliament House, where Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning Prue Car presented awards to this year’s recipients.

Pittwater House was one of only two independent schools recognised.

Dr Middleton said the award reflected Mrs Jackson’s commitment to excellence in teaching and learning, her passion for professional growth and her dedication to improving outcomes for students and colleagues alike.

The insights Mrs Jackson gains will help inform teaching and learning at Pittwater House, while her findings will also be shared with the wider NSW education community through NESA, professional learning networks and educational forums.

Pittwater House congratulates Mrs Jackson on this outstanding and richly deserved achievement and looks forward to following her research journey.