The 2025 school year kicked off for our wonderful staff last week with two enriching days of professional learning. Every three years, we hold a dedicated professional learning conference for all our Teaching and Professional Staff. This year, we broke with tradition and hosted our entire Ivanhoe Girls’ Staff Conference on campus, taking full advantage of our beautiful grounds and facilities across both the Junior and Senior School, including the recently remodeled classrooms in the C-block!

As part of this year’s conference, we were thrilled to welcome Professor Sandra Milligan, Executive Director of the Melbourne Assessment Centre at the University of Melbourne, as our teaching and learning keynote speaker. During her presentation, Sandra explored two key questions with us:

• What do 21st century learners need to thrive in schools, further education and future employment?
• How can we cultivate and measure young people's strengths and general capabilities?

Traditional measures of learning and school success typically focus on what students know about a subject, or what they can do in timed, high-stakes exams. But to thrive in the modern world, students need to be able to demonstrate more than that.

Students must be collaborative, build and sustain connections, act ethically, think critically, be entrepreneurial and be reflective. While measures like the ATAR remain important, simply ranking students by a single number sadly fails to capture their full range of rich and varied strengths, and the depth of their learning experience.

Professor Sandra Milligan’s pioneering work on the New Metrics project challenges this, advocating for adding assessments that extend beyond subject-specific knowledge. Her team collaborates with schools and the tertiary sector to reimagine learning design and develop next-generation assessments that foster essential 21st century competencies such as learner agency, collaboration and communication. This approach helps to future-proof students, ensuring they graduate feeling confident, capable and prepared for lifelong learning. Sandra describes this as a "new grammar of schooling" - a strengths-based, rigorous framework that empowers every student to succeed.

Enhancing the session, Jessamy Gee, Director of Think in Colour, visually captured Sandra’s keynote speech in real time - transforming the key themes into a dynamic visual representation.This holistic and inclusive educational approach strongly resonates with us as a school. Over the past two years, Ivanhoe Girls’ has participated in the University of Melbourne’s New Metrics research-practice partnership, collaborating with schools across Australia and New Zealand in the ‘Matching not Ranking’ and ‘Matching for Success’ research programs. This innovative work seeks to reframe the current ranking system to better reflect students’ holistic skills and competencies, complementing existing assessments such as school reports, NAPLAN, and the ATAR.

Since 2024, we also began a partnership with Professor Sandra Milligan and the New Metrics team to develop an innovative learning program for Years 7 to 10. Together, we are co-designing key elements, including learning and assessment designs and credentials. As previously communicated, this program will provide students with extended opportunities to explore their passions in depth and engage in longer ‘off-timetable’ learning blocks. With a focus on immersive, interdisciplinary projects and industry-connected experiences, it will extend beyond traditional subject-based learning to enhance student agency while complementing - rather than replacing - our commitment to VCE and tertiary preparation.

And as we embark on the next stages of design and development of our new Years 7 to 10 Signature Learning Program this year, we look forward to further collaboration with Professor Sandra Milligan and the University of Melbourne’s New Metrics team!

Dr Natalie Bunn
Director of Innovation and Learning