From Australia to Appian Way

When 94 school leaders from more than a dozen countries gathered at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) last summer for Achieving Excellence: Leadership Development for Principals (AEL), the room felt less like a traditional course and more like a global summit for K–12 leadership.

Over the course of a week, principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders, and system‑level officials wrestled with challenges from student engagement and mental health to widening literacy gaps, as well as the funding shortages that define today’s education environment. The work was deep, focused, and collaborative, including Professor Monica Higgins’ Mount Everest case study, during which participants examined how leaders make high-stakes decisions under pressure, interpret imperfect information, and align teams around a shared goal.

Among the 94 participants representing 16 U.S. states and more than 12 countries was a 20‑person delegation from Western Australia, part of a decade‑long partnership that has reshaped how principals there see their role: not just as school leaders, but as system‑level change agents.

A Phone Call that Inspired a Fellowship

“At the end of 2015, we received a phone call from the Department of Education of Western Australia,” recalls Catherine Gardner, director of The Principals’ Center at HGSE. “They were interested in starting a fellowship program for principals at what back then was called the Independent Public Schools Initiative. They’re public schools within the public system, but with a little more freedom to chart their own pathways, similar to charter schools in the U.S.”

In Western Australia’s context, policies around curriculum, hiring, and budgetary decisions are set centrally, rather than by local school boards. Yet within this “connected autonomy” structure, principals still have meaningful influence over the culture, instructional focus, and improvement strategies within their schools and, increasingly, across the system.

The idea that emerged from that initial call between Harvard and Western Australia was straightforward: Each year, Western Australia would send 20 K–12 principals to Harvard to participate in The Principals’ Center’s flagship leadership programs. After the intensive summer program, each principal would return home to lead a year-long project aimed at a specific problem of practice, under the supervision of a senior system leader. They would also participate in the 12-week Developing Myself program module, helping them deepen their personal leadership development.

From Leading Schools to Shaping Systems 

In the first four years of the program, 80 principals from across Western Australia completed professional education programs in Cambridge, many of them making significant impact not only in their own schools but across the region through system-wide policy and practice.

One of those early participants was Melesha Sands, now the deputy director general of people and student achievement for the Department of Education West Australia. As a principal in the first cohort, she arrived at Harvard focused on her own school. Today, she helps steer education for nearly 355,000 young people across Western Australia, and last summer, she returned to Harvard to mentor the next generation of fellows.

“I was fortunate enough to be one of those very first principals who had the opportunity to come and study,” Sands says. “The impact has been profound, and the contribution hasn’t been just to our schools, it has contributed to our systems thinking, policy, and practice. That’s why we made this commitment.”

A Two-Year Learning Pathway

After an interruption due to COVID-related travel restrictions, the program, known as the Western Australia Public School Principal Fellowship Program, resumed in 2025. Since then, the learning experience has evolved to include four components that unfold over the course of two years.

First, participants attend Achieving Excellence: Leadership Development for Principals (AEL) at Harvard. The cohort learns alongside international peers, engaging in case studies and working sessions that push them to think simultaneously as instructional leaders and systems thinkers.

Next, after returning to Western Australia, they enroll in Developing Myself, a module within HGSE’s online Certificate in Advanced Education Leadership (CAEL). Upon completion, each principal then works under the guidance of a senior Education Department leader to design and implement a project targeting a system-level challenge such as creating more aligned pedagogical frameworks across schools or building sustainable supports for staff well-being as classrooms welcome more neurodivergent learners. Finally, many principals continue as mentors for future cohorts, bringing system-wide continuous and effective change.

“It’s about improving education for young people that we serve,” says Sands. “The expectation is that their learning at Harvard doesn’t stay within the walls of one school, it contributes to change across the system.”

Inside Achieving Excellence for Leadership: A Global Learning Community

The Western Australia fellows are part of a broader AEL learning community that is particularly experienced and diverse. Last year’s participants averaged 16 years in the classroom, five years as assistant principals, and seven years as principals — with some bringing nearly three decades of leadership experience.

Their roles span the full spectrum of school leadership: 57% are principals, 22% assistant principals, 9% teachers or teacher leaders, 7% school administrators or instructional coaches, and 5% district‑level administrators. They arrive at HGSE with pressing, real‑world problems:

• Rekindling student motivation in the wake of extended digital instruction
• Navigating resistance to instructional change and aligning pedagogical frameworks
• Addressing chronic absenteeism and deepening family engagement
• Integrating AI thoughtfully into school operations and decision‑making
• Sustaining staff well‑being amid rising complexity and need

These are the kinds of challenges Western Australia fellows now tackle not only for their individual schools, but also on behalf of the larger system.

The Power of Community and International Perspective

Like Sands, Steve Watson also knows the program from both sides. He first came to AEL as a school principal and returned in 2025 in his current role as deputy director general for Western Australia Schools to support and mentor the Western Australia cohort.

According to Watson, in addition to the skills and strategies learned in the program, the bonds formed among the team cohort and with international participants added an important element.

“It’s inspiring, it motivates you, and it builds a connection, a bond that’s hard to describe, with my colleagues from Western Australia but also with another 60 principals who have been through the same experiences,” he says. “I was learning alongside principals with all different levels of expertise and backgrounds, and that for me was just fantastic. Hearing the stories of people from other countries was an eye-opener. That international perspective has just been enormously powerful, and I realized that what I thought was really quite focused and narrow — just my lane back in Perth — is actually connected to a whole global community of principals grappling with many of the same challenges and working toward many of the same outcomes.”

For Western Australia’s principals, that global perspective is now built into their career pathways, and has impacted more than 800 schools, making a significant change to the public education system. Each cohort has traveled halfway around the world, joined a diverse international team at HGSE, and returned home equipped not only with new tools, but with a powerful support network and a broader sense of what’s possible when school leaders view themselves as system leaders.