Ballarat Clarendon College

Ballarat Clarendon College – different by design

Ballarat Clarendon College is different by design. Clarendon’s knowledge-rich and sequenced curriculum, its commitment to explicit teaching, approach to the structure of lessons, classroom management and data analysis makes it different from other schools – deliberately so.

At Clarendon, we believe that learning should not be a lottery. Students should never feel ‘lucky’ to have one teacher but ‘unlucky’ to be taught by another. If a teacher is supporting and progressing their students through a nuanced approach to a topic, a particular sequence of tasks, a more effective explanation or a striking analogy that illuminates a complex concept, then all teachers should know about and use those same methods. Everyone wants to get better.

We believe that all students deserve the best curriculum we can offer – one that draws from the research evidence that points to the effectiveness of a knowledge-rich curriculum, explicitly taught.

And this is what drives Clarendon’s approach to common planning, to developing a high-quality curriculum that contributes to better learning opportunities for students and for staff.

The approach that we take is not the same as other schools that pursue different pathways towards excellence, but it is what we do.

Clarendon’s commitment to professional learning – using research-based best practice to get better – ensures that our teachers, working closely with and learn from their colleagues, strive, thrive and achieve.

We are about learning. That might sound obvious for a school. Yet, to us, everything is an opportunity for learning – every interaction, every game, every performance, every calculation or paragraph. We are as much about teacher learning as we are about student learning.

And who would not be up for that? Who would not want to get better all the time?

Clarendon is not like other schools. Deliberately so. We are daring and we are intentionally and purposefully different.

If Clarendon sounds like the type of school that you’d like to be a part of, we’re keen to meet with you.