Schools are usually more comfortable identifying the next problem than pausing to reflect on the last success.

It seems innate in our school management processes. We move on to the next target before the previous one has been properly acknowledged. And while it’s briefly mentioned at a staff meeting, perhaps accompanied by a round of applause, the attention quickly turns to the next item on the agenda. The prevailing instruction is to keep the momentum going.

But momentum is not the same as perpetual exertion.

Finishing a 42-kilometre marathon and immediately beginning an Ironman would not demonstrate admirable commitment. It would demonstrate a failure to understand how effort is sustained. People need moments of recovery, recognition, and meaning between demanding periods of work.

The same is true of strategy. When a school sets a difficult goal, changes established practices, directs scarce resources towards it, and achieves the desired result, it should stop long enough to recognise what has occurred.

Not because the work is finished forever, but because the work – people’s effort - mattered.

Not every positive outcome is an earned win

Giving schools permission to celebrate does not mean encouraging them to claim every favourable result as evidence of strategic success.

Good news and earned wins are different things.

A student might receive the highest ATAR in the state. That is extraordinary news and deserves recognition. Yet if the remainder of the cohort has declined, the individual result may tell us more about the student’s ability and effort than it does about the school’s academic strategy.

The school should celebrate the student without automatically appropriating the result.

An earned win requires a stronger connection between intention, action, and outcome. The school identified a result it wanted to influence. It selected the practices or behaviours most likely to produce that result. Those practices were implemented consistently, and the agreed-upon outcome was achieved.

This does not mean schools must demonstrate perfect scientific causation. Education is too complex for that. Student outcomes are affected by family circumstances, prior learning, individual motivation, staff turnover, community conditions, and countless other variables.

However, a school should be able to describe a credible chain of influence:

We chose this outcome.

We changed these practices.

We monitored whether those practices occurred.

The intended result improved.

When that chain is absent, the result may still be welcome. It is simply better understood as good news than as a strategic win.

Decide what success means before seeing the result

One of the greatest risks in celebrating progress is the temptation to redefine success after the data arrives.

Let’s assume a school sets a target of 90 per cent, reaches 84 per cent, and then decides that the improvement was close enough. Another school achieves a small increase and presents it as a major strategic breakthrough, even though no one established what meaningful movement would look like before the work began.

This does not mean partial improvement should be ignored. It means improvement and goal achievement should not be treated as interchangeable.

A better approach is to establish three levels when the LAG measure is created:

·         Threshold is the minimum result that would represent meaningful success.

·         Target is the result the school intends to achieve.

·         Stretch is an exceptional outcome beyond the reasonable expectation.

For example, a school seeking to improve staff retention might establish a threshold of 86 per cent, a target of 90 per cent, and a stretch result of 93 per cent.

Reaching the threshold would be a legitimate achievement because the school had already determined that this degree of movement mattered. Reaching 84 per cent might still warrant acknowledgement of progress, but it should not be re-labelled as achieving the goal.

The people closest to the work should help develop these measures. They understand the baseline, the barriers, and the degree of movement that would be significant. Leadership should then test the level of ambition, oversee consistency across the school, and approve the final measure.

This creates a fairer basis for recognition because the rules are not rewritten once the result is known.

Celebrate the practices as well as the outcome

Schools should not necessarily wait until the final LAG is reached before recognising achievement.

Strategy relies on LEAD measures: the behaviours, routines, and actions the school expects will influence the result. These might include the percentage of student absences followed up on within 24 hours, the frequency of instructional coaching, the completion of scheduled parent contact, or the consistent use of an agreed-upon teaching practice.

Embedding these behaviours can be a significant achievement.

The Australian Education Research Organisation encourages schools to monitor implementation through outcomes such as adoption, feasibility, fidelity, reach, and sustainability. This recognises that successful implementation is not a single event. A practice may be introduced without being used consistently, used consistently without reaching enough people, or adopted widely without surviving changes in staff and circumstances.

A school can happily celebrate the adoption or ongoing practice of a desired activity, recognising its progress without assuming that the final outcome has already been achieved.

The language should match the achievement.

“We have embedded the new practice” is different from “we have solved the problem.”

Both may deserve recognition, but they represent different stages of the strategic journey.

Recognition should come before analysis

Schools often describe themselves as learning organisations. It follows that any meaningful success should eventually be examined.

What worked?

Which assumptions proved correct?

What conditions supported the result?

What should be preserved, replicated, or adapted?

These are worthwhile questions, but they should not swallow the act of celebration.

When leaders move immediately from praise to analysis, recognition can quickly feel like another performance review. Staff heard that the result was pleasing and were then asked to document the process, present it to colleagues, lead the next phase, and find a way to improve it again.

Success becomes an invitation to more work.

The first purpose of celebration should be human:

We noticed your contribution.

The work was difficult.

The result mattered.

Thank you.

The organisational learning can occur afterwards. Reflection and celebration belong together, but they do not have to occur in the same moment.

This matters because recognition is not always deeply embedded in educators' experience. OECD findings indicate that many teachers believe that improved or innovative teaching would receive little recognition. A culture that consistently overlooks contributions may unintentionally teach people that extra effort is expected but rarely noticed.

The celebration should fit the effort

Celebration does not require a bonus scheme, a public relations campaign, or an extravagant event.

In fact, monetary incentives can be difficult in schools. Outcomes are usually collective; budgets are constrained, and attempts to apportion individual rewards can create disagreement about who deserves credit. Motivation research associated with Self-Determination Theory also cautions against assuming that external rewards are the primary means of motivating people. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness are central to stronger forms of motivation and wellbeing.

The challenge is not to make the reward expensive. It is to make it meaningful and proportionate.

Schools might consider four forms of celebration.

Specific recognition could include a personal message from the principal, acknowledgement from the board, handwritten notes, or recognition at a staff gathering. The important feature is specificity. People should understand what they contributed and why it mattered.

Shared celebration might involve a lunch, morning tea, dinner, or dedicated gathering for those involved. Its value comes from deliberately interrupting normal activity rather than attempting to squeeze recognition between agenda items.

Restorative recognition returns something valuable to the people who carried the effort. Release time, a meeting-free afternoon, additional planning time, an early finish, or relief from a low-value administrative task may be more valued than a gift.

Developmental recognition offers trust and opportunity. This might include professional learning selected by the recipient, conference attendance, coaching, a school visit, or discretion to explore the next phase of the work.

The reward should not secretly become another obligation. Sending someone to a conference and then requiring them to produce a report, deliver several workshops, and lead a new initiative may transform recognition into an expanded workload.

Leadership must create the permission

The creators of a LAG should help define its threshold, target, and stretch levels, but they may not have the authority to promise rewards.

That remains a leadership responsibility.

Leaders must decide how achievement will be recognised, considering the size of the effort, the number of contributors, available resources, equity, and the precedent being established.

The form of recognition need not be fixed upon LAG approval. Leaders may not yet know who will contribute or what type of reward those people will value. But the cultural commitment should be clear: when the school earns a meaningful win, it will not simply absorb the result and move on.

This does not require fanfare.

It requires a pause.

A school that celebrates well is not declaring that all its problems have disappeared. It is recognising that people directed their effort towards something important and succeeded in changing it.

That is not complacency.

It is evidence that strategy can work—and that the people who make it work deserve to know that their contribution has been seen.