STEP Academy · capability for the leader
A year working on your wellbeing system, not just in it.
A cross-school cohort of eight to twelve wellbeing leaders, running across the year. Every term produces something you bring back to your school: a wellbeing system map and gap analysis, a redesigned referral pathway, a tier map and leadership rhythm, and a costed plan for next year.
Sold on what gets built, not what gets learned.
The approvable sentence
“By the end of Term 2 I’ll have a redesigned referral pathway on your desk.”
This is what you can commit to.
Not “I’ll be part of a network.” Four concrete things, delivered term by term, each one workshopped with leaders from other schools before it reaches your principal.
Most professional learning asks a principal to fund a year of attendance. This asks them to fund four pieces of work your school needs anyway.
What you build across the year
One thing built each term.
Term 1 · see the system
Wellbeing system map and gap analysis
Where work enters, pools and stalls, with the gaps named and owned. You will know where your system leaks.
Term 2 · work through your staff
Staff touchpoint review
Where wellbeing intersects a classroom teacher’s week, what is asked of them and what they get back. Wellbeing that takes load off staff rather than adding to it.
Term 3 · make the work visible
Tier map and leadership rhythm
Where your wellbeing capacity actually goes, and the rhythm that keeps leadership able to see it.
Term 4 · plan next year
Next-year wellbeing plan
A costed plan built with the cohort before it reaches your principal, so the decision they are asked to make is clear.
How the year runs
Two sessions a term, not four.
Wellbeing leaders are the most interrupted people in a school. A fortnightly commitment gets abandoned by Week 6. Eight substantial sessions with a deliverable attached to each term get finished.
- A cohort of eight to twelve leaders from different schools
- Two 90-minute online sessions each term, eight across the year
- Peer triads carry the work between sessions
- A smaller group of committed leaders can still run. The peer rhythm is what matters, not the headcount
Systems, not students. The program works on patterns and structures. Individual student concerns always redirect to your school’s own duty-of-care processes.
Term 3 · in person
One full day together, between Terms 2 and 3.
Half the day is peer consultancy: each leader brings a live problem to the group. Half is the year’s biggest shared theme, chosen by the cohort.
This is the day a group of leaders becomes a network.
Where the cohort spans distance, it runs as regional pods rather than one venue, so travel stays reasonable.
Why a cohort, not one to one
Peer learning is the thing wellbeing leaders most consistently say they lack, and it is the one thing a one-to-one partnership structurally cannot provide. Ten leaders from ten schools also means ten sets of solutions to the same problem.
Who it is for
- A single wellbeing leader: coordinator, Director of Wellbeing, AP or Mental Health Practitioner, who needs perspective, peers and structure
- Any school, whether or not it already operates STEP
- A leader who benefits from being in a room with peers from other schools
When to choose something else
- Three or more people from your school? A Team & Leadership Partnership is the right product. This cohort is built around cross-school perspective
- Need confidential or school-specific work? Choose one-to-one Practice Advisory Support
Investment
$4,500 per leader, per year.
One place funds a full year of structured leadership development, and lands four usable pieces of work in your school along the way.
Practice Day in person, one venue or regional pods$4,500
For rural and interstate leaders. The Practice Day runs online$3,900
Per leader, per year, ex GST. One place per school, so the room stays cross-school. The online cohort is priced lower because an online Practice Day is genuinely thinner: the leadership lab and the peer consultancy protocol both need a room.
Built on STEP’s Practice work with wellbeing teams and school leaders across settings, and grounded in real pressure: staffing, funding, mandatory reporting, escalation, workload saturation, and the challenge of turning wellbeing intent into workable systems.
A 15-minute call confirms fit and reserves a place. Cohorts form once six leaders have committed, and STEP confirms dates with the group before anyone is invoiced.
Thinking about sending someone?
If you are a principal reading this because your wellbeing leader sent it to you, the short version:
- One place, one leader, one year
- Four pieces of work your school needs anyway, delivered term by term
- No prerequisite, no commitment to anything else STEP offers
- The Term 4 deliverable is a proposal written for your desk, workshopped before it reaches you
Email lachlan@stepwellbeing.com.au and we will find a time that suits you.