From Fragmented Observation to a Daily Whole-School Habit: Cobbitty Public School’s Three-Year Journey
Cobbitty Public School, a growing government primary school in southwest Sydney near Camden, began using Life Skills GO with a single stage team trial in 2023. Three years on, the check-in is embedded across every class, capturing student voice, belonging, wellbeing and readiness to learn in real time so staff can better understand what sits beneath changes in attendance, behaviour, engagement and learning.
By automatically surfacing patterns to the right people at the right time, Life Skills GO helps the school’s executive and classroom teachers act before concerns escalate, without adding to an already busy day. It gives staff a way to triangulate student voice alongside attendance and behaviour data, and to test whether a change they have made in the classroom is actually working.
The Story in 60 Seconds
A short summary for anyone short on time. Everything below goes deeper.
The Challenge
Wellbeing was understood through observation, community feedback and incidents recorded after the fact, with no reliable way to confirm what was working.
What They Did
A single stage team trial in 2023 grew when one interested teacher asked to use the check-in again, and other staff followed with flexibility rather than a mandate.
What Changed
The check-in is now embedded across every class, and staff cross-check it with attendance and incident data, including in three-way interviews with families.
Try This First
Start small with an interested teacher, and give flexibility instead of a mandate.
Who Is Cobbitty Public School?
A government primary school in southwest Sydney, near Camden, serving around 380 students across sixteen classes from Kindergarten to Year 6.
Read more about the school
Cobbitty sits in a community that has changed shape quickly. A decade ago, many students lived on large rural properties with animals, arriving to school having spent the morning on a bobcat rather than in traffic. Much of that land has since been turned into housing development, bringing rental and assisted living properties into the area and changing the makeup of the school’s population, which has grown dramatically over recent years. Cobbitty is still considered a small school locally, which the staff value, even as the context around it becomes more like every other growing suburb.
Wellbeing sits at the centre of the school’s strategic plan alongside attendance, because staff have found strong links between wellbeing, attendance, learning and the behaviour incidents recorded across the school. Every student is known, valued and cared for. The executive team is usually at the front gate each morning, greeting students, siblings and parents by first name, and a visiting wellbeing dog comes into classrooms one day a week as part of the school’s culture. Staff are given the flexibility to make good decisions around wellbeing in their own classroom rather than treating every minute of the day as curriculum time.
A Trial That Grew Into a Habit
Cobbitty Public School began using Life Skills GO in 2023, starting with a single stage team through an advertised trial. It worked well for the teachers who used it, but at the time it was not at the forefront of the school’s priorities. The following year, a classroom teacher who remembered the check-in asked to use it again with her class, and the program grew from there as other staff noticed her students coming out of the classroom smiling and feeling heard.
Three years on, Life Skills GO is embedded across every class at Cobbitty, from students checking in on their own devices to classes that check in together on the interactive whiteboard. The relationship has moved from a single stage team pilot to a daily, whole-school habit.
Peter ShearerAssistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School“We’re very proud of the fact that we are, yes, a small school, but every kid is known, valued and cared for. They walk through the front gates with a smile on their face. Myself and the other executive are usually at the gates, and we know pretty much all of them by name and by first name, including siblings and parents.”
Before Life Skills GO: Wellbeing Understood Through Observation, Incidents and Feedback Alone
Before 2023, Cobbitty already treated wellbeing as a strategic priority, closely linked to attendance and learning. But the evidence behind that priority came almost entirely from what staff could see, remember and record after the fact.
Understanding Relied on What Had Already Happened
Staff relied on professional observation, community feedback, conversations with parents and incidents recorded in the school’s behaviour system to understand wellbeing across the school. This information was useful, but it largely showed what had already happened rather than what may have been driving it.
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Today, staff can cross-check Life Skills GO check-ins against daily attendance and incident records, giving them triangulated data that helps explain why a pattern is happening, not only that it happened.
Observation Is Subjective
A twenty-six-year classroom veteran can still be surprised by a behaviour that has never shown up before, with no clear way to know where it came from. Without student voice in the picture, quiet students and those who mask how they are feeling were the easiest to miss.
No Way to Confirm What Was Working
Staff had a good instinctive understanding of their students, built up over years in the classroom, but no reliable way to confirm whether a particular strategy or intervention was actually making a difference, or to see a trend building across a class, a stage or the whole school.
Peter ShearerAssistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School“I’ve been teaching for twenty-six years, and there are still days that I have where something happens with a particular kid, a good behaviour or a tricky behaviour, and you look at your colleague and you say, ‘I’ve never had that before. Where did that come from? What happened there?’ And you’re constantly asking yourself those sorts of questions.”
Building Buy-In: One Teacher, Then the Whole Staff Room
The most common question other schools ask Cobbitty is how such a small school got a whole staff using the platform without a formal mandate. The honest answer is that it did not start with a mandate at all. It started with one interested teacher, and it was not effortless or fast.
Read the full buy-in story
Cobbitty’s first exposure to Life Skills GO was a trial with a single stage team in 2023, taken up because the school wanted more evidence to talk confidently about the difference its wellbeing work was making. It worked well for those who used it, but it was not, at that point, at the forefront of the school’s priorities. There were other things the school was trying to organise and get sorted.
It was not effortless. Uptake stalled after the first trial until, the following year, a classroom teacher who had not been on class for a while came up and asked whether she could get access to the check-in program again for her class. That request restarted the program, and the same teacher became its driver.
As she used the data well and talked about it in the staff room, other teachers noticed her students coming out of the classroom smiling, looking happy and feeling heard, and word spread quickly. Leadership modelled its own use by working through the executive dashboard, using a pinpoint feature to keep an eye on particular students who had been struggling.
Start with one interested team
Cobbitty’s first trial ran with a single stage team, not the whole school.
Let it lapse if it is not the priority yet
The first trial was not at the forefront of the school’s priorities, and that was allowed to be true.
Follow a genuine champion
A classroom teacher asked for the check-in program back for her own class, and became its natural driver.
Let the staff room do the selling
Other teachers noticed her students coming out of the classroom smiling and feeling heard, and asked how to get access themselves.
Give flexibility, not a mandate
The school recommended two to three check-ins a week, then let teachers set their own pace and method.
Model it from the executive dashboard
Leadership used the pinpoint feature to keep an eye on particular students, showing staff how the data supports day-to-day decisions.
Peter ShearerAssistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School“I do know that it’s making a difference. And I do know that it’s helping out, and the data that we’ve collected so far has been very beneficial for us as a school, to be able to make some good accommodations for some of the kids that we’ve got. It’s one point collecting the data, it’s another thing being able to do something with it.”
Embedding It: Flexibility Within a Daily Habit
Three years of embeddedness at Cobbitty did not come from a rigid rule. It came from a recommendation, room for every classroom to find its own method, and enough consistency that the data could be trusted.
A Recommendation, Not a Rule
When Life Skills GO was introduced across the school, staff suggested two to three check-ins a week as a starting point. Teachers were given flexibility to adjust from there, and that flexibility remains in place today.
Whatever Method Fits the Room
Some classes check in on individual devices. Others use the interactive whiteboard at the front of the room. Some students answer privately, while other classes check in openly. Each classroom teacher finds what works for their students, and there is no expectation that every room does it the same way.
It Is Okay to Miss a Day
When an assembly, orienteering carnival or other school event gets in the way of the check-in, staff accept that the school can live without that day’s data. More often than not, teachers still check in regardless.
Questions Tailored Class by Class
The check-in questions started with six options, were cut back to four because that was too many, and now sit at around five. Individual teachers can add a new emotion or check-in question for their own class, often prompted by something a student has expressed.
Hands-On Training, No Pressure
At the start of the year, staff are given time to explore the platform and find things they had not seen before, without any expectation attached. Questions and curiosity, rather than mandate, have driven how deeply staff use the data.
Peter ShearerAssistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School“Most of the classes just check in in the morning. Some classes like to do it privately, where the kids put in their own responses. Other classes are happy to do it open, and the kids just sort of respond really well. It’s very natural. There’s not a lot of expectation on how often it needs to be done.”
Every Student Known: Three Years of Change
The shift at Cobbitty is best seen over time. What began as a single stage team trial in 2023 has become a daily, whole-school practice where student voice sits alongside attendance and behaviour data in the school’s regular meetings.
Before · 2023
- Wellbeing was understood through professional observation, community feedback and incidents recorded after the fact.
- We had no consistent way to see how a student was arriving at school or whether they were ready to learn.
- Quiet students and those who masked how they were feeling were easily missed.
- We could not reliably confirm whether a strategy or intervention was actually working.
- Attendance, behaviour and wellbeing were tracked in separate systems, without an easy way to bring them together.
- Three-way interviews and parent conversations relied on teacher observation and grades, without a wellbeing baseline.
- There was no shared, whole-school language for talking about emotions and readiness to learn.
- We had limited ability to spot a pattern building for one student across several days or weeks.
The Shift · A Daily Check-In
- A brief check-in most mornings, on individual devices or the interactive whiteboard, depending on the class.
- Around five emotion and readiness-to-learn questions, adjusted class by class as teachers and students need.
- The executive dashboard reviewed regularly, with a pinpoint feature used to keep an eye on particular students.
- Check-in data cross-checked against daily attendance and incident records for a triangulated view.
- Insights used in stage meetings, executive meetings and three-way interviews with families.
- Flexibility protected throughout, so the habit survives assemblies, excursions and busy weeks.
After · Three Years On
- Life Skills GO is embedded across every class at Cobbitty, from Kindergarten to Year 6.
- Staff can see how students are arriving at school and their readiness to learn before the lesson begins.
- The school records over nine thousand check-ins each term, with students checking in at least once a week on average.
- On average, around 70 per cent of students check in as ready to learn each day, and staff use that figure as a goal to keep working on.
- Staff can cross-check emotion, attendance and behaviour data to better understand what may be happening for a student on a given day.
- Families are shown check-in data in three-way interviews alongside attendance and behaviour information.
- Stage teams can test whether a change to the morning routine, such as adding fitness, corresponds with a shift in how students are checking in.
- Teachers often notice and respond to a concern in the data before the executive team has had a chance to look at it.
Peter ShearerAssistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School“The more you look, the more you find. I think it just sort of supports our big decisions that we make across the school as part of the executive, and it provides those big decisions with concrete evidence to be able to back that up, because we can’t just make the assumption that these things are happening.”
What They Can See Now That They Couldn’t Before
The change at Cobbitty shows up at every level of the school: in how an individual child is supported, how a teacher reads a room, how the Learning and Support Team plans and how leadership works with families. Here is what Life Skills GO has made visible.
Now:
- A safe way for a student to say they are not feeling their best, without having to say it out loud
- Room to adjust a check-in in the moment, such as a student changing “three stars ready to learn” to “three and a half” before submitting it
- Space given without a teacher needing to intervene, once a student has been able to name how they are feeling
- A record that shows a student is seen and heard, even on a day they are not ready to engage fully
“If I didn’t have him accessing that information or doing that check-in, I would’ve made the assumption that he was being a little bit cheeky or not concentrating on what he was doing. My tone would’ve been completely different, and the way I handled the situation would’ve been completely different too. Basically the platform did all the work for me.”
Peter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public SchoolNow:
- A quick, natural morning routine that sits inside the existing roll-marking habit rather than adding to it
- A daily readiness-to-learn signal that helps teachers decide whether to press on or adjust the start of the lesson
- Confidence that they are responding to a genuine change, rather than reacting to a single off moment
- Support materials that teach the ready-to-learn scale and emotions themselves, not just the mechanics of the check-in
“It just was very natural, it was very calm, it was very quiet, and it just worked very, very smoothly. I was really impressed by how that teacher had set that up in their classroom. We’re very lucky that teachers care, and they want to do well, and they’ve got this platform to be able to do those things.”
Peter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public SchoolNow:
- Cross-checking Life Skills GO check-ins against attendance and incident data to build a triangulated picture
- Stage teams identifying that students were checking in as bored or tired, and linking that to school-based incidents
- A morning fitness routine introduced for one stage after the data pointed to disengagement, with a quick change in the data that followed
- A way to see whether a student’s difficulties on a given day connect to a pattern, such as a change in household routine
“Through cross-checking the Life Skills GO data and our data within School Bites, cross-checking the check-ins, cross-checking daily attendance, and cross-checking the incidents within our system, you have that triangulated data.”
Peter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public SchoolNow:
- Three-way interviews where teachers show students and parents their own triangulated data
- Parents and students agreeing together on simple goals, such as an earlier bedtime, after seeing a pattern in the data
- Leadership reviewing the executive dashboard regularly, with a pinpoint feature for particular students of concern
- Big school-wide decisions backed by evidence rather than assumption, and later checked against the data again
“Teachers were talking about the data and showing the kids the data and, most importantly, showing the parents the data, that triangulated information, and the parents responded really positively to that approach. Lots of parents were nodding in agreement with the teachers, so it was nice to have that consistency.”
Peter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public SchoolGiving Every Student a Voice
Across sixteen classes and a wide range of needs, the check-in at Cobbitty flexes to fit the room. What has surprised staff most is not the mechanics of the platform, but how openly students have taken to using it.
Open and Unashamed
Students at Cobbitty check in openly and without shame about feeling a range of different emotions throughout the morning. It is treated as natural for a student’s readiness to learn to sit anywhere along the scale on a given day, rather than as something to hide.
The Boy Who Changed His Answer
During a music and dance lesson, one student sat apart from the group at his desk rather than joining in. He later got up to check in himself after another student called his name, choosing “angry and upset” and marking his readiness to learn as three stars, before pausing to change it to three and a half. He then returned to his seat, and picked himself back up without any conversation with a teacher.
The Classroom That Ran Itself
Walking into a classroom to mark the roll, one visitor found the check-in already happening without any teacher direction: students settling at their desks, checking in on the board and reminding each other to check in if they had not yet. It was calm, quiet and entirely normal for that room.
A Shared Language Around Feelings
Students are increasingly able to name and talk about how they are feeling, sometimes explaining a choice they made by pointing to an emotion. Staff see this as a genuine skill, while also teaching students that naming a feeling does not excuse a negative behaviour on its own.
A Question Someone Is Always Asking
For students moving between households on weekends, a pattern of checking in as tired or upset every Monday became a signal for staff to reach out, rather than a coincidence to overlook.
Celebrating the Good Days Too
A student with strong attendance who checks in as happy or content most days gives staff a reassuring picture, and a reason to recognise what a classroom teacher is doing well, not only a tool for spotting problems.
“It was really empowering for that individual to be able to come up and go, ‘You know what, I’m not feeling the best,’ without me even saying anything to him. It was like that eye contact of going, ‘I hear you. I see how you’ve checked in here, bud. I’m gonna give you a little bit of space.’ And that’s exactly what we did.”Peter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School
What We Learned: Key Takeaways
Three years of embedding Life Skills GO, distilled into what Peter would tell any school starting out.
Start Small, With People Who Are Interested
Pilot with one class or a couple of classes, ideally teachers who are interested in trying it. Give them flexibility, and it will sell itself to everyone else.
Explain the Purpose Early
Engage staff early about why the check-in matters and what is expected, and provide simple, hands-on training rather than handing over a platform with no context.
Let the Data Guide the Next Step
Collect some initial data, notice what it shows, adjust the approach slightly, then collect again. Confidence builds step by step, not all at once.
Foster Your Enthusiastic Teachers as Leaders
People who are passionate about the check-in naturally sell it to their colleagues. Make them the ones who show others what is possible.
Give Teachers Flexibility, Not a Mandate
Cobbitty’s teachers set their own pace and method for the check-in. That flexibility, not a strict rule, is what has made the habit last.
It Is Not Just a Data Tool
It is not just a bunch of numbers to look at. The value is in using what the check-in shows to have a real impact on how a student is supported, not in the volume of data collected for its own sake.
“Foster the teachers that are enthusiastic about it and make them your leaders. If you’ve got people that are passionate about things, that just basically oozes towards other people, and other people grab onto that naturally. If you see people doing some good things and good practices, why not take it on board too?”
Bring Student Voice, Wellbeing and School Data Together All in One Place
Book a personalised conversation with a Life Skills GO education specialist. We will guide you through a short, interactive demonstration and show how the platform supports early identification, student voice, engagement and belonging, partnerships with families and carers, proactive intervention, staff decision-making and continuous whole-school improvement.
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You will also have the opportunity to ask questions, explore how Life Skills GO could support your school’s priorities and determine whether it is the right fit for your community.
Life Skills GO supports schools and systems of every size, sector and context, including metropolitan, regional and remote schools, government, Catholic, independent and specialist settings, and support classes.
Put the Reports Into the Meetings You Already Hold
At Cobbitty, the value of Life Skills GO was never limited to the check-in itself. The real value came from what happened next, and the reporting was designed to fit into meetings the school already had, rather than creating additional work.
Life Skills GO information is reviewed through the executive dashboard and used in stage meetings, executive meetings and three-way interviews. Attendance, behaviour and check-in data are cross-checked against each other, giving staff a triangulated view they can bring to a conversation with a student, a colleague or a family.
Staff are not required to build reports or learn a separate reporting system. The data supports decisions the school was already making, whether that is a stage team trying a new morning routine or leadership working through the executive dashboard to decide where extra support may be required.
Take These Ideas Further
Go deeper on the themes in Cobbitty’s story. From webinar replays that feature schools like Cobbitty, to free expert guides you can use with your team tomorrow.
Related Webinars
Cobbitty Public School’s deep dive is one of a series of Life Skills GO school deep dive webinars run throughout the year.
School Deep Dive: Cobbitty Public School
FeaturingPeter Shearer, Assistant Principal, Cobbitty Public School
Watch the ReplayFree Guides & Expert Insights
Practical downloads for educators, leaders and families, including neuroscience-backed insight on emotions, learning and wellbeing.
Neuroscience of Emotions and Learning
FeaturingProfessor Mark Williams OAM, cognitive neuroscientist, with Nikki Bonus, on how emotions shape learning, grounded in brain research and Life Skills GO practice.
Get the Free ResourceWhy Students Disengage and What Helps Them Reconnect
FeaturingA practical guide from leading education, wellbeing and neuroscience experts, including Professor Mark Williams OAM, Professor Geoff Masters AO and Nikki Bonus.
Get the Free ResourceMore Guides & Resources
The full Life Skills GO resource library, including guides on whole-school wellbeing implementation, measurement and classroom practice.
Browse the Resource LibraryBook a personalised meeting with our education wellbeing specialist, to show you how Life Skills GO can help you achieve your school’s wellbeing goals. We will guide you through a short interactive demo and answer any questions to help you determine if Life Skills GO is right for your school.
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