Our International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program (IB PYP) philosophy and framework of curriculum and pedagogy grows student learning capacities and soft skills, strongly equipping our children for their secondary education, and for ongoing lifelong learning. The PYP has been shown to result in stronger academic and wellbeing outcomes from students by a strong body of evidence. Our students have collectively been noted to be more strongly engaged with their learning and better equipped with soft skills such as collaboration, curiosity and creativity to support their ongoing learning. The learning progress and growth of our students is excellent, which has been borne out through a range of assessment and progression tools, as well as through student wellbeing surveys.

Our school has a strong focus on ‘fitting each child’s needs’ by providing a well rounded education which supports academic growth, student wellbeing, the opportunities to pursue a range of co-curricular opportunities, and the development of positive values and character traits, with a focus on serving others. Our teachers are well supported by a number of Lutheran School Officers (teacher aides) who assist our focus on individualised learning and support of students – our careful monitoring of student growth demonstrates that our students are well supported in progressing academically, socially and emotionally from this approach.

Golden Grove Lutheran is an intentionally medium-sized school by choice – ‘not too big, not too small’ – enabling us to balance our unique focus on each child as a valued learner with a broad range of opportunities to enable students to experience all aspects of themselves. The vast range of co-curricular and enrichment activities that our students enjoy include:

• basketball and lacrosse weekend sport programs,
• a broad range of sporting activities and pathways (including soccer, Australian Rules, swimming, athletics, cross country, netball, basketball, touch football and table tennis),
• Wakakirri and Festival of Music to support our music and performing arts programmes in addition to individualised music instrumental tuition, choirs and worship band.
• Children’s University, debating, public speaking, poetry recital and chess.
• a number of academic competitions including UNSW EAA, Bebras and Computational and Algebraic Thinking Competitions, as well as the Premier’s Reading Challenge and Spelling bees.

We strongly value our wellbeing team and dedicated wellbeing hub, with a full time school counsellor as well as a school chaplain. The support that our expanded wellbeing team has offered to students and families through a Positive Education Framework is invaluable, and quite distinctive to our school. Our foresight in this are places us on a strong footing to further implement a range of positive education programs and initiatives into our school going forward to further support students and families.

We have an innovative outlook, developing students as future-focused learners ready to engage with the world of tomorrow. Our innovative focus on ‘Golden Time’ elective learning, the integration of service learning into our curriculum, the diverse range of avenues for genuine student voice and agency in our school, we well as our approach to STEM learning, sets us apart.

We invest strongly in having quality teachers, so that we have the best teachers possible in each classroom as well as in in teacher professional learning to ensure that our quality teachers continue to grow and be professionally supported in their career. Our students benefit immeasurably from having the highest quality teachers we can across each class.

Our community is a strong one, with excellent parental involvement through our Parents and Friends and Class Carers networks, and a range of activities throughout the year including Trivia Nights, Barbecues and social events, as well as our Community Fete.

As a Lutheran school, our offering is based on strong Christian values which the students develop over their journey with us, and we enjoy a close relationship with Golden Grove Lutheran Church, jointly conducting a weekly playgroup, supporting the Asaroka community in Papua New Guinea, and the Australian Lutheran World Service to provide an education for refugees in Africa as well as enjoying a fishing club which sets monthly – but to name a few of the initiatives!

Lutheran schools have nurtured and educated Australian children since 1839. They are closely linked to the Lutheran Church of Australia and, as such, are based on the central message of the Gospel.

Lutheran schools offer excellent quality teaching and learning experiences for each child that reflect and support their individuality. They offer a caring community that encourages and develops respectful relationships, and teaches all students to live out the school’s ethos and values.

As part of the Lutheran school system, Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School is making a difference as it respects the past, embraces the present and looks boldly to the future.

As a Lutheran school community, each day has the potential to be one where we know we are loved by God and we seek to love others with kind words and actions. That’s an exciting place to be.

For us at Golden Grove Lutheran, it means we have a way of wanting to be that reflects God’s love for each of us, knowing God has made each of us special and unique.

It gives us an understanding of how our values become a lived experience. We respect and seek justice because God values each of us the same, we seek and show forgiveness, through restorative practices, we show compassion and look for acts of service because God’s love for us motivates us to want the best for others, cooperation, excellence, integrity, patience and hope are all ways we seek to be and act towards each other.

Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School has officially been recognised by ‘The Educator’ as one of the most innovative schools in the country in the 2022 Five Star Innovative School Awards. Typically, only 30 schools nationally are awarded this accolade each year, and we are excited that our teaching approaches, curriculum design and learning spaces have received this recognition. We are thrilled to offer award winning opportunities to our students!

Golden Grove Lutheran Primary has shown that we are shaping the educational landscape to enable our agile learners to engage with our emerging future and to be fully equipped for the world of tomorrow.

This is a wonderful recognition of the outstanding efforts of our staff team, our beautiful students and our amazing school community.
Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School is always looking for new ways to keep students inspired and its ever-growing team of talented staff supported. An example of this is the school’s partnership with School Aid which, together with Golden Grove’s staff, is conducting a longitudinal study on the positive wellbeing and mental wellness effects of students’ engagement in social justice and philanthropy.
This work was recognised by the Governor-General, who recognised Golden Grove with School Aid accreditation, making it the first school in South Australia to achieve the coveted qualification.

Another driving factor of Golden Grove’s success is its innovative model of peer leadership, which is centred on community service and charity work. Since its inception, the model has introduced a strong focus on student agency through ‘Golden Time,’ an elective learning programme for Year 3–6 students, which enables the design, selection and evaluation of learning in a similar manner in which secondary students choose electives.

Our approach also enables children to learn in an award-winning ‘village style’ cluster learning framework as students move from ‘discovery’ in the Foundation Year to ‘foundations and growth’ in Years 1 and 2, ‘collaboration and experimentation’ in Years 3 and 4, to ‘specialisation and launching’ in Years 5 and 6. Our teaching and pedagogical practices are highly effective due to our innovative cluster structure, which reduces the likelihood of using a lock-step approach to learning and better enables the flexible progression of students through the curriculum, particularly in relation to the literacy and numeracy developmental progressions.

Research has shown that within this philosophy, children become more confident, can operate better as part of a group, are more assertive, and become more independent learners and better problem-solvers.

As an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme school, Golden Grove divides ‘taking action’ into five essential elements: participation, advocacy, social justice, social entrepreneurship, and lifestyle choices. These ideas have been put together to support these elements of action, and to encourage learners to take meaningful action to make a difference in the world. Our students are mentored within our village learning cluster structure to engage in social justice and philanthropic projects as an integrated component of their learning each year. Our student representative council and student leaders also lead the taking of action. The school has young people involved in philanthropy, giving or volunteering programmes or projects. Some examples of recent student-initiated projects, which include formation of a student-led government to discuss and implement strategies to support the school’s betterment, and the student body developing and rolling out a regular initiative to support the ‘Backpacks for SA Kids’ campaign, which provides practical resources that contribute to the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people during periods of dislocation from home and routine care.

Our students have also designed and helped with the creation of the nature play areas and chill-out zones at the school to support the student wellbeing of their peers. Students have organised and held regular fundraisers for many years to support a range of charities, including the Australian Lutheran World Service to support refugees and the underprivileged in third-world countries, as well as also supporting other organisations to achieve the same. This culture of philanthropy, community service and learning about social justice has been supported through the peer and buddy program within the school community and embedded throughout the IB Primary Years Programme curriculum. Student self-reported wellbeing has been high for a number of years, much of which has been attributed to engagement in these programmes.

Cognisant of the critical role that STEM education plays in preparing young people for the future, Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School is always exploring new opportunities to upskill its students in this critical area. Fortunately, the school is uniquely placed in close proximity to the Adelaide Planetarium at the University of South Australia, the SA Space Industry Centre and SA Space Park.

It is clear that a number of STEM careers will be available in this field in future years, and that engagement with the space industry will add a further rich diversity to the primary school curriculum which we deliver.
Students from Golden Grove traditionally progress to Endeavour College at Mawson Lakes for their secondary education, which is co-located with the Adelaide Planetarium on the Uni SA Mawson Lakes Campus. This provides a natural impetus for the school’s engagement with the One Giant Leap Foundation and for students from Foundation to Year 6 to be engaged with the Asian Herbs in Space, Postcards in Space and Space Wattle scientific programmes.

Through our ongoing partnership with the One Giant Leap Foundation and the CSIRO STEM Professionals in Schools programme, we look forward to STEM education continuing to evolve as a key component of the contemporary and innovative education we provide. As an innovative school, we have great capacity to adapt in an agile way to align with emerging trends in the STEM area.