By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
EVERY single day of the school year students and staff at Kambrya College will be going about their daily business with a camera crew documenting their every move a part of a series to appear on ABC.
The program will focus heavily on year 12 and year seven students and highlight improvements in modern state education in Australia.
Kambrya College principal Michael Muscat said he hopes the series will portray state education in a positive light.
“I think that some fantastic work is being done in our state schools and I really hope that it creates a higher level of public confidence in our state education system,” he said.
A crew of four from CJZ Productions are currently recording day-to-day life at the school and have installed cameras in both vice principals offices.
CJZ unit assistant Georgina Savage controls the permanent cameras, listens to conversations, frames shots and records it all.
“Teachers and students are interviewed on the fly around the school grounds and everyone’s been so friendly,” she said.
“We often get the Big Brother card, but I’d never compare the two, this will end up being very engaging and observational compared to reality television – Kambrya is our vessel in which we are explaining education in Australia.”
Mr Muscat said CJZ Productions had researched hundreds of schools around Australia before settling on Kambrya.
“According to what they say they were looking for an average suburban high school that was doing some above average work,” he said.
The Berwick school was chosen for its drastic improvement in student achievement over the past six years.
Mr Muscat said the school’s success has been quite remarkable.
“In 2008 we were rock bottom, one of the lowest performing schools in Victoria and now we’re consistently in the top 20 highest performing schools,” he said.
The school used the University of Melbourne’s Network of Schools as a template for its success.
“They’ve done a lot of research into the teaching strategies that are most effective instead of wasting your time on the teaching strategies that have low impact,” Mr Muscat said.
“We’re finding that it’s having really good traction in our school,” he said.
The documentary had a positive response from the school community although Mr Muscat said a small number of teachers and students will not be included.
“They will be looking at the whole school and all our projects and individual students as well.
“We are happy to take the film crew on with most things however some are too sensitive, but we know where the line is for those matters,” he said.
Mr Muscat said the documentary is covering the University of Melbourne’s program “only because it works”.
“When I became principal in 2008 things were looking pretty grim on a whole range of matters and it’s been a very consistent and focused effort but the turnaround is quite dramatic,” he said.
Mr Muscat said he looking forward to watching the documentary and that the experience has kept him on his toes.
“We’ve been totally open with the crew and when you’re being totally open you can’t sweep things under the carpet and, of course, there’s going to be some things in the everyday school life when students occasionally do some interesting things but we treat it as a learning process,” he said.
The landmark documentary will be broadcast in March on the ABC.
“It should be a great thing for the south east of Melbourne and a positive story on something that’s going well,” Mr Muscat said.
