News and Events

Donald Trump, Disruption, and the Anatomy of Leadership

Paul Browning

Who wants to read another piece about Donald Trump? Honestly, I can’t believe I’m writing about him either—but here we are. Like him or not, love him or loathe him, he’s hard to ignore. And if I’m being honest, I’m fascinated by him. I still find myself on the fence: Is he the bold visionary America needs, or is he something else entirely? (No judgement here—especially if I ever want to travel to the United States again... or its unofficial 51st state.)

Update May 2025

Paul Browning

It’s been a busy and exciting month for the Vivedus team, with significant progress across school partnerships, platform development, and thought leadership in education.

Rethinking Creativity: More Than Just “Thinking Outside the Box”

Gabrielle Kempton

Over the past few years, I’ve had countless conversations with educators, school leaders, and even students about creativity. It's a word we all use—but when I ask people to define it, I’m often met with a thoughtful pause... followed by a wide range of answers.

Smell like sheep

Paul Browning

If I had the choice to pick a leader, who would I choose to follow? All around the world, people are searching for new leaders. The Vatican prepares for a Conclave, the Church of England is selecting a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and here in Australia, we are voting for the next Prime Minister. These are significant positions of power.

Update for April 2025

Paul Browning

This past month has been an exciting time for Vivedus as our team travelled across the country, spoke at key conferences, and met with schools from Australia and New Zealand.

Culture is King

Paul Browning

This article is a follow on from “Have you read?” recommendations in last month’s Vivedus newsletter. It is also a follow on from the Optimising Conditions for Learning workshops Vivedus has been running for school leaders across the country.

Update for March 2025

Paul Browning

March was a busy month for the Vivedus team, filled with travel, new partnerships, and exciting developments in our platform.

NAPLAN, World Economic Forum and Creativity

Paul Browning

With the attention on NAPLAN last month we might be forgiven for thinking that it is a measure of the primary purpose of school; after all, the results of NAPLAN, ATAR and PISA are the only measures obsessed about. But what is the purpose of education if it isn’t about preparing young people for future employment and a life of thriving?

Are We Willing to Disrupt the Status Quo? Rethinking School Success for a Complex World

Gabrielle Kempton

What does it truly mean to be an educated person in an age of artificial intelligence, rapid technological advancement, and global uncertainty? If information is at our fingertips, how do we define success beyond the ability to recall facts? Our education system must grapple with these questions to ensure we are preparing students not just for exams, but for life.

Update for October 2025

Paul Browning

Since our last update, the team at Vivedus has been making significant progress — refining systems, deepening our impact, and expanding our reach both nationally and internationally.

Pathways Education Solutions and Vivedus launch joint venture to expand the Vivedus Learning Activation Model into Asian markets

Paul Browning

Vivedus has partnered with Pathways Education Solutions to introduce the Vivedus Planner to schools across Southeast Asia. Schools across the globe all face the same challenges. Vivedus offers an all-in-one teaching and learning system that: * reduces teacher workload while elevating teaching quality; * automatically aligns every aspect of the teaching and learning continuum, from curriculum to pedagogy, assessment and student outcomes; and, * elevates student engagement and takes them beyond the content.

Update for August 2025

Paul Browning

It’s been a big month at Vivedus, with exciting school visits, a major platform upgrade, and our Managing Director featured in the media. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

A smarter way to plan lessons: ViV-iT in the Vivedus Planner

Paul Browning

Planning lessons is one of the most time-consuming parts of teaching. That’s why we’re excited to share the latest upgrade to the Vivedus Planner: the integration of ViV-iT, your personal pedagogical coach, now embedded directly into the lesson planner.

Update July 2025

Paul Browning

As we step into the second half of the year, July has proven to be a month of exciting milestones and recognition for the Vivedus team.

Gabrielle makes the 'Most Influential Educators' list 2025

Paul Browning

Vivedus is thrilled to celebrate Gabrielle Kempton’s recognition in The Educator's fifth annual Most Influential Educators 2025 list.

Update for June 2025

Paul Browning

As Term 2 draws to a close, the Vivedus team has been on the road connecting with passionate educators and leaders across the country—and beyond.

Update May 2025

Paul Browning

It’s been a busy and exciting month for the Vivedus team, with significant progress across school partnerships, platform development, and thought leadership in education.

Update for April 2025

Paul Browning

This past month has been an exciting time for Vivedus as our team travelled across the country, spoke at key conferences, and met with schools from Australia and New Zealand.

Beyond the sandwich: Rethinking how we grow middle leaders

Paul Browning

When I wrote about the “meat in the sandwich” role of Heads of Department two weeks’ ago, I didn’t expect it to resonate quite so strongly. Hundreds of teachers, middle leaders, and senior leaders responded, not just with likes, but with raw honesty.

The ‘meat in the sandwich’ role of a Head of Department

Paul Browning

Heads of Department get a raw deal. Many are loved and admired by their teams for offering support and shielding them from some of the more “interesting” initiatives handed down from above. Yet, at the same time, they can be seen by senior leaders as a roadblock to progress, a bottleneck between vision and implementation. Heads of Department are, in many ways, the meat in the sandwich.

From guesswork to data: Giving leaders real insight into teaching quality

Paul Browning

We live in a data-rich world. Every few seconds new information is captured, often freely given away by people on their phones and sold to the highest bidder. Data is the currency of business. Every corporation knows that with the right data they can improve their bottom line.

Poor Leadership = Psychosocial Harm

Paul Browning

In early 2023, new psychosocial hazard legislation came into effect across Australia under the Workplace, Health and Safety laws. While many organisations are still coming to grips with what this means for their risk agendas, one thing is becoming clear: the way we lead has never mattered more.

Bored Students, Burnt-Out Teachers: Breaking the Cycle of Disengagement in Schools

Paul Browning

Student disengagement has always been part of the classroom, but today the problem is accelerating. With the ubiquity of technology and the rapid rise of AI, young people are questioning why they should study algebra, the Second World War, or Hamlet when tools like ChatGPT can hand them the answers instantly.

Why do schools keep grabbing the next shiny thing?

Paul Browning

Spend enough time in education and you’ll see the pattern repeat: a new idea sweeps through the system, often with slick branding, lofty promises, and a charismatic figure at the helm, and schools rush to adopt it. Occasionally these ideas are genuinely transformative. More often, they fade just as quickly as they arrived. So why are schools so quick to latch onto the next shiny thing, especially when it’s offered by individuals with little classroom experience, few credentials, or questionable credibility? Let’s name the truth: many educators are desperate for change.

The future of School Reporting: Why the Vivedus Learner Profile matters now more than ever

Paul Browning

What if we could move beyond the narrow focus of grades and test scores to give students a fuller, fairer picture of who they are and what they can do? At Vivedus, we believe that day has come. That’s why we’ve partnered with the University of Melbourne to offer schools a powerful alternative to traditional reports: the Vivedus Learner Profile.

Back in the day: Better then or better now?

Paul Browning

A reflective piece from our Managing Director exploring how creative freedom, minimal regulation, and teacher autonomy once drove stronger student outcomes — and what today’s education system might learn from the past. Discover why it’s time to rethink compliance-heavy approaches in schools.

Evolve or Die: Why School Leadership Must Reimagine Education in the Age of AI

Paul Browning

Provocative headlines like the ABC’s “Evolve or Die” (2 July) are appearing with greater regularity. They reflect the disruptive wave artificial intelligence is unleashing across every industry.

Why teaching quality is so inconsistent — and what school leaders can do about it

Paul Browning

The single biggest influence on student learning is the quality of teaching. Every school leader knows this. John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2009), a synthesis of more than 800 meta-analyses, confirms that teacher effectiveness has the greatest impact on student achievement. Yet shaping what happens in every classroom, every day, can feel almost impossible without significant resources.

Independent Validation: Vivedus reduces Psychosocial Risks for Teachers

Vivedus Editorial

Teachers are under unprecedented pressure — from administrative overload to role ambiguity and reduced time for collaboration. Now, independent analysis confirms what our schools have long experienced: Vivedus directly alleviates key psychosocial risks that impact teacher wellbeing.

How school leaders can drive innovation without burning out their staff

Paul Browning

Too often, schools layer new initiatives on top of existing ones without removing anything. This only adds to teacher overload. If leaders want innovation to succeed, they must be intentional about clearing the path. Leading innovation requires more than good intentions. It requires understanding how people respond to change.

NCCD made simple: Why schools struggle with evidence collection (and how to fix it)

Paul Browning

When NCCD processes are simplified, everyone benefits. Teachers have their workloads reduced and stress levels go down. As a result, students receive better support and experience stronger relationships with their teachers: learning improves. School leaders have clarity and confidence in the data so they can simply and cost-effectively meet compliance needs and forward budget.

The Director of Teaching and Learning's dilemma: Ensuring alignment without micromanaging

Paul Browning

What Directors of Teaching and Learning desperately need are systems that automatically track, review, and identify patterns in curriculum delivery, teaching practices, assessment strategies, and student outcomes. Such systems would enable them to support teachers genuinely rather than appearing as micromanagers constantly requesting evidence instead of offering meaningful assistance.

Creativity: The Bridge between Problem-Solving, Critical Thinking, and Engagement

Gabrielle Kempton

Across education, there is consensus that problem-solving and critical thinking are essential skills for learners. They prepare young people to navigate complexity, respond to uncertainty, and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Yet what is often less visible, but deeply connected, is the role of creativity in strengthening both of these capabilities and in redefining how students engage with their learning.

From Chalkboards to AI: What the future of teaching looks like in 2025

Paul Browning

The conversation around AI in education is evolving. For years, the narrative has been dominated by fears — of technology replacing teachers or standardising learning. But as recent insights from PrimaryMarkets show, the real promise of AI lies not in substitution, but in empowerment.

From Silos to Synergy: Empowering Learners Through Interdisciplinary Creativity

Gabrielle Kempton

Discover how interdisciplinary learning and creativity pedagogy can transform schools into future-ready ecosystems. Gabrielle Kempton shares practical strategies to break down subject silos and empower learners for real-world impact.

Rethinking Creativity (Part 2): Activating Creative Intelligence in Learners

Gabrielle Kempton

In last month’s newsletter, I posed a question: How do you define creativity—and how are you helping others build it? It’s a conversation worth continuing, because creativity isn’t just a buzzword or a set of trendy strategies. At its core, it’s a form of intelligence—one that every learner possesses the potential to develop.