St Martin de Porres Case Study

St Martin de Porres opened in 1986 and is a co-education Catholic School within the South West region of Adelaide. In recent years, the school leadership team has been proactive in focusing on positive education and developing new and unique challenges for their student body.

In 2018, when St Martin de Porres added Year 6 to their school, the leadership team saw an opportunity for change. Positive education was implemented at this time as a whole-school approach. While the school had been using a camps provider for many years, experiences, activities and locations were not varied or attuned to the school’s needs, student outcomes were not central to delivery and much of the organisation fell to the school.

While the school was strategic in shaping and developing their students, the leadership team strongly felt their outdoor education programming should reflect the student-centred approach applied in the classroom and positive education be embedded holistically. Rather than ticking a box, each camp experience should have purpose.

Although the school felt making significant changes might unsettle staff and parents, St Martin de Porres was committed to providing their Year 6 students with positive, challenging and unique experiences, developing their resilience and leadership skills in a supportive and relational environment.

The Outdoor Education Group’s offered St Martin de Porres a personalised end to end solution providing a program specific to the school’s and the cohorts’ needs at the time. Program design aimed to inspire the development of leadership and resilience in their students throughout a variety of learning environments with adaptive and responsive challenge levels. Matching the school’s strategic approach to student development, the Year 6 experience was to take place at the beginning of each school year to prepare them for their final year of primary school.

The school highly valued The Outdoor Education Group’s approach to strengthening students’ interpersonal skills, positive emotions and guiding them beyond their comfort zones; this addressed the school’s desire to embed positive education across all student endeavours.

The students attending St Martin de Porres are now receiving an experience matching the school’s vision for student development and positive education.

The Outdoor Education Group removed the burden of organising annual camp experiences from the school’s staff with end to end management of venues, catering, risk management, student, parent and teacher resources.

The Outdoor Education Group’s mechanisms, such as the school portal, providing parents with program details and packing lists, and the simple process of submitting medical forms, made the transition to a new provider uncomplicated for families.

Teaching staff at St Martin de Porres have felt thoroughly supported throughout each experience; they appreciate the Outdoor Educators’ accessibility and assistance outside of activity times. The school reports they had not experienced this level of support before, and their teaching staff are more relaxed while on camp.

Initially, St Martins de Porres was provided with an annual experience for their Year 6 students. With the success of this program, the school extended their suite to include Year 5, strategically linking the two experiences to build on leadership capacities. The school hope to include Year 4 in their leadership building sequence in future.