The bell rings at St Clare's College and the girls line up at the door of their first class of the day. Subscribe now for unlimited access . $ 0 / (min cost $ 0 ) Login or signup to continue reading Continue with Email Continue with Google Continue with Apple See subscription options Gina Argar greets her year 7 English class at the door.
The students walk in with their equipment and stand behind their desks. She says they will need to get out their reading books for their lesson and the girls take their seats. The girls Catholic high school began implementing consistent rules and routines across the whole school from term 1 this year.
Instead of every teacher having a different way of starting and ending classes and gaining the students' attention, they are all following the same script. Principal Dr Ann Cleary said classrooms have become more calm and orderly as a result of adopting a program called Classroom Mastery. "We're about 15 weeks in and we have seen quite a dramatic change, I would say, to the whole culture of the school," Dr Cleary said.
A Year 7 class at St Clare's College lines up for an English lesson. Picture by Karleen Minney The school is one of 10 in the Canberra Goulburn Catholic Archdiocese to be trialling the evidence-based classroom management program. Experts say it's an approach more schools should be adopting after it was revealed that Australian classrooms were among the most disruptive in the world.
New data from the Program for International Stud.