The AADES Council met for its AGM and annual planning days at Finigan School of Distance Education, Queanbeyan NSW on 13-14 March.
The 2 days were very productive and we are excited about the opportunities that will be provided to members of our broader community to connect and be involved with our organisation during 2025.
Our 2025 AADES Council consists of the following representatives.
New South Wales
New Zealand
Northern Territory
Queensland
South Australia
Tasmania
Victoria
Western Australia
Our Executive Officer is Anne Coster, New Zealand.
I would like to begin by thanking our member schools for their ongoing financial support for AADES. We have continued to keep our school-based membership subscriptions as reasonable as possible. Your contributions to AADES are an investment in our community. Distance education and virtual schools are often a small and misunderstood component of our jurisdictional systems. There is strength in our unity and common purpose.
Much of our work is voluntary. In te last 12 months your fees have supported the hosting of our website and social media channels, the hosting of our instance of Microsoft Teams for webinar hosting and communication and seed funding for our conference.
The organisation continues to be in a strong financial position. This year we will explore ways to reinvest our funds to build the scope and value of AADES to its members.
In 2024 we completed a variety of iitiatives.
Our first Community of Practice (CoP) on the topic of Differentiation came to its conclusion at the end of 2024. Its success is credit to the hard work and dedication of Mal McIver and Jeane Schocroft.
AADES supported the travel and accommodation costs to allow the members of our communities of practice to meet and collaborate in person before moving their work online.
The CoP was an opportunity for like minded educators to connect and share their practice. Distance education supports diverse cohorts of students. A common challenge is how to design and frame learning experiences to ensure all students are equipped to access their learning.
The culmination of the CoP’s shared practice and research is a publication Capturing Hearts and Minds: Differentiation, available on our website. This resource is of value to all distance education teachers as it provides informed guidance on differentiating learning in the online context.
Even though the CoP has concluded the cross-border learning relationships are set to continue.
Our next CoP has commenced work, focusing on Trauma Informed Practice. Mal, Jeane and Deb Murray are leading this team. We are looking forward to their publication later this year.
Our biennial conference was held 17-18 June 2024 in Fremantle, Western Australia. The conference was ably hosted by the School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE). The theme for the conference was ‘Innovation, Inclusion and Inspiration’. The conference was attended by 307 delegates from across Australasia. There were 10 keynote speakers covering a diverse range of topics and 25 concurrent workshops.
84% of attendees rated their satisfaction with the conference as very good to excellent. 74.44% of attendees agreed that the topics were relevant to their areas of their work.
T e overwhelming feedback was that attendees highly valued the opportunity to connect with their inter-jurisdiction colleagues and discover that distance education educators are addressing similar challenges. The conference seeded conversations that have continued well beyond the two days.
Thank you again to Justine Daly, Zoe Schaffert and the staff of SIDE for their extraordinary efforts hosting the conference. There was a strong sense of identity and common purpose.
Our goal with conferences is always break even. However, the 2024 conference returned a profit of $25,506.69. AADES intends to reinvest these funds into initiatives and opportunities for our members to connect in 2025.
Planning has commenced for our next conference to be held at the Sofitel Wentworth Plaza, Sydney 3-4 September 2026.
AADES hosted 11 webinars throughout 2024. Our topics included
Webinar recordings have been made available through our website for those members unable to attend at the scheduled time. Differentiation – Community of
Our website and social media platforms continue to be our key communication channel for members. There are currently 433 people registered to our AADES news mailing list.
Thank you to Jeane Schocroft who stepped in to cover multiple roles during the year including Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer.
We are very sad to see Zoe Schaffert recently leave the Council as she takes on leadership opportunities beyond distance education. Thank you again Zoe for your energy and contributions to the team and best wishes for your future pursuits. A warm welcome to Esther Kerr who is joining us as a Western Australian representative from Kimberley School of the Air.
Thank you also to Fiona Clein, one of our Queensland representatives who has also moved on from the Council. Welcome to Pamela Pritchard who has joined the Council from Charters Towers School of Distance Education.
Thank you to our Council members for their continued strong comradery and commitment to AADES.
The wonderful Anne Coster from New Zealand left the Council last year after moving on from her role at Te Kura. We are very grateful to Anne for continuing to work with the Council as a support officer. Anne has been generous with her time to help us establish an AADES operational handbook, a calendar of events, as well as keeping us in check.
We have a big year ahead as we work to grow the reach and value of the organisation. One of our goals this year is to tap into the vast pool of talent within our schools. These are the people in each of our jurisdictions that continually seek the answers to providing the best possible learning experiences for our students, at a distance. We know there are many members out there looking for ways to further connect and share.
Our focus for 2025 will be to provide those opportunities, further enriching and building the AADES community.
Daniel Rattigan
March 2025