A familiar face has a new role at Mount Clear College.
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Jenny Bromley has been a teacher and leader at the school for about 30 years and has now been officially appointed as principal, having been acting in the role since the start of the year, and an assistant principal for decades previous.
The role became vacant at the end of last year when Lynita Taylor, who had been principal at MCC for 10 years, stepped down.
Ms Bromley has been at the forefront of the development of the school's strong international program that not only provides global opportunities and lessons for students and staff, but which she sees as a potential measure to help reduce teacher shortages at the school and more broadly.
Like many schools, Ms Bromley said there were "challenges with staffing and teacher shortages" but Mount Clear was probably not as severely impacted as other schools, though every school would have to look at what subjects they could offer depending on the staff they have.
"We are thinking about ways outside the box of how we are able to make sure we've got teachers in front of students," she said.
But it's not just teachers where the shortages lie - it's in education, support, staff, wellbeing staff, office and administration staff as well.
The school is working more now with agencies to cover staff shortages and looking to use every avenue possible to source teachers, including the school's many ties to overseas institutions.
"You've really got to think about how you run the school when there's this sort of challenge ... I haven't got the answers but I'm certainly looking at a whole range of things," Ms Bromley said.
The college is working closely with universities to host pre-service teachers, and exploring links with overseas teaching universities and schools to encourage teachers to come to Mount Clear.
"I've actually had conversations with a Vietnamese teaching university to look at how maybe we can look at that supply of teachers ... and set up discussions with the department (Victorian Department of Education)," she said.
One of the main issues at the moment is Victorian Institute of Teaching registration requirements, which Ms Bromley said were difficult even for people with really good English skills.
The department is also looking at recruiting teachers from Europe and other English-speaking countries, and Catholic Education Ballarat has run recruitment drives through Ireland and the UK over the past few years.
Mount Clear College has hosted scores of international students over the years, in particular from Finland, Vietnam, China and Japan, and is looking to continue to grow its international program.
Its hosting program is starting to grow again after being hit by the COVID pandemic.
"It's really important to us and our ability to grow our home stay area and look at attracting more students here to the Ballarat area, which is only good for the Ballarat community as well," she said.
In a few weeks a group of 27 Mount Clear College students and four staff will go to China for the first time since 2019, and last year about 60 students visited Japan.
"We've got very strong global connections which is something really important to the community. It's about giving our kids and staff the opportunity to travel internationally and host students from different countries around the world.
"We really want great teaching and learning here and to have those programs in place to really support students to develop the skills they need."
