The School for Student Leadership (Trading as The Alpine School) is an exciting and unique year-nine specialist school. The school has been operating for 24 years and more than 10,000 students have participated in that time both in Victorian and when an international operation was conducted in China from 2014-2019. It currently consists of four campuses

All campuses are in regional Victoria and include:

¿ Gnurad-Gundidj Campus, Noorat-Glenormiston.

Forty-five students live, learn, work, play, recreate and undertake adventures at the schools in a unique (in State Education) highly supported leadership education program. The school has modelled the educational program on an Experiential Education model, and at its core has a project/ inquiry learning and social-enterprise focus.

A highly developed curriculum, pedagogical, assessment and reporting approach relates to the Victorian Curriculum F-10 Capabilities.

An extensive outdoor, environmental and adventure education program is an embedded part of the school learning program. All students participate fully in this as it is an essential component of the character education aspect of leadership and experiential education.

While the school has a highly developed outdoor and adventure education curriculum that honours the DoE and Outdoor Education Policy and operational provisions, the teaching and learning program should be of particular interest.

The curriculum revolves around nine learning concepts that have evolved out of the school values and align with and reflect the F-10 Capabilities.



The school recognises that the concept of leadership is contested and has an agreed position that these concepts combine to measure this construct.

The main visible outcome of the program is the Community Learning Project. This is a student-led and driven project that students implement on return to their home communities upon returning home.

A CLP is referred to as triple ¿ ¿A¿ rated learning because it is:

· Authentic. It is genuinely developed and delivered by students

· Agentic. The project is owned by the students, and they have control over it.

· Actioned. The students have to DO something to deliver a project. Leadership is a ¿verb.¿

The action component is significant. The school values and notes that leadership is an action not a position or title.

Core moral purpose

- best practice middle years education, including appreciating the works of Pendergast (2017) Teaching Middle Years and Bandura (2005) Self Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents.
- a contemporary interpretation of the adolescent "rite of passage',
- "long service leave" for year nine students, as applied to many Australian industrial settings,
- reinterpretation of contemporary paediatric and adolescent psychological research as applied to education,




- understanding the implications of a student-centred approach to education including
- Maslow¿s (1943) Hierarchy of Needs
- Glasser¿s (2000) Choice Theory

- what it means to be a learner in the 21st Century and connection with Nature (Louv).
- An interpretation of Tuckman¿s forming-storming-norming-performing model.

Roles and responsibilities specific to the setting

- The Principal is the instructional leader in the school, the Ex-Officio member of council, direct line-manager to all staff but delegates this responsibility as required.
- The school Principal is currently primarily based at Snowy Campus and will be often mobile.
- The Campus Principals and the Leading Teachers with the Generalists will form the core of the teaching staff.
- Leading Teachers will be familiar with aspects of contemporary DET management practices.
- The Business Manager has a vital advisory role with both the Principal and the Campus Principals in making and supporting resourcing decisions.
- The Education Support Staff are intrinsically connected to the successful outcomes that the school aims for.
- The kitchen and catering model is critical to the success of the learning program and the staff follow a common approach to healthy food for growing adolescents.
- The school has a Community of Practice approach to ensure high quality outcomes for students, to ensure consistency of practice between teachers, classes, care and supervision, ICT, ICT management, catering and food provision, outdoor and adventure activities, campuses, and days, use

📌 Education support 1fte (East Gippsland Shire)
🏢 Government schools
📍 East Gippsland Shire