Dalyellup College recently welcomed a new principal to the school, who has hit the ground running and is looking forward to supporting students and staff in achieving higher educational outcomes.
With 20 years experience within education, Kolin van der Wal is well placed to lead and said things were going well since joining the college.
“I’ve worked in schools from Pinjarra to Pemberton to Esperance – we moved to Perth as a family for awhile but the interest was always to come back to the country,” he said.
“I always enjoyed the aspect of sharing my knowledge and teaching my knowledge to others.
“I discovered that early on, I came from a large family so teaching my younger siblings I really found passion in that and that’s what steered me into teaching.
“When this job came up I thought what an ideal opportunity – it is a great school, the kids are fantastic and so are the staff, they’re very passionate about making a big difference.”
Mr van der Wal said he believed his experience would help to bring clear strategic thinking to the college and solid evidence based improvement
“I certainly see that we have a lot of things we can do to improve the quality of education and we’ve already started that journey,” he said.
“We’ve partnered as a school with the Fogarty Advanced program from next year and that will be a significant driver in terms of improvements that we can make here at the school.”