From Reactive Observation to Real-Time, Whole-School Support: Coonamble Public School’s Journey with Life Skills GO
Coonamble Public School, a remote community school around two hours from Dubbo in central-western New South Wales, has moved from a trial of Life Skills GO, an Australian-built intelligent whole-school platform for early identification, engagement, learning and school improvement, to a daily, whole-school practice led by its wellbeing team. Every classroom checks in each morning as part of a Berry Street morning circle, capturing student voice and readiness to learn alongside attendance and behaviour information already collected by the school.
Automatically surfacing which students may not be ready to learn each morning allows the wellbeing team to identify emerging needs and support students before concerns escalate, without adding to classroom teachers’ workload. It has also helped staff notice students who do not present as a behavioural concern but may be masking distress, giving the school a fuller, more connected picture of every child.
The Story in 60 Seconds
A short summary for anyone short on time. Everything below goes deeper.
The Challenge
Wellbeing was measured through attendance, behaviour records and an annual survey, and an earlier trial of Life Skills GO was not yet delivering its full value.
What They Did
The wellbeing team pulled back to one simple daily check-in, put people behind it and ran a report every morning.
What Changed
Every classroom now checks in each morning, so the wellbeing team can see which students may not be ready to learn before the day gets going.
Try This First
Go slow to go fast: start with one check-in and listen when staff say it is too much.
Who Is Coonamble Public School?
A government primary school around two hours from Dubbo, the nearest city, in the small central-western New South Wales town of Coonamble. The school serves around 240 to 250 students, including preschool, from a district population of roughly 3,000 people.
Read more about the school
Coonamble sits within a district where around 90 per cent of students identify as Aboriginal, and the community is described by staff as low socioeconomic but tightly connected. The school has responded by investing heavily in wellbeing infrastructure: an Assistant Principal Wellbeing, a dedicated teacher and School Learning Support Officer in the Malian room, a school-funded psychologist, a counsellor in training and a youth mentor, alongside an Aboriginal Education Officer.
Wellbeing sits at the centre of daily practice because, as Emily Ryan puts it, if children are not in class or at school, the question is where they are and what they are doing, and how the school can best support them. That belief shapes everything from staffing to the physical layout of the grounds.
Space as a resource
The school has used its physical space to extend its wellbeing work well beyond the classroom. A memory garden for grieving students sits alongside a sensory garden, a chook yard where the school breeds its own chickens, a native garden funded by a Teachers Federation grant, a greenhouse and fish farm, a kitchen garden program introduced to help support attendance and healthy eating, an orchard, and a yarning circle and cultural space with an outdoor kitchen, where students will eventually be able to gather their own bush tucker. Emily describes it as a circle that connects back around into learning.
The school has also recently begun its first year as a Berry Street Education Model Real Schools site, and Emily describes Berry Street, Real Schools and Life Skills GO together as close to the ideal combination for a school like Coonamble.
Emily RyanAssistant Principal, Wellbeing“I suppose a big thing that does drive me is the difference that I make in these students’ lives and the processes that we have in place to help support students. So knowing that they’ve got a safe place for six hours a day is such a big thing for our children.”
Before Real-Time Practice: Wellbeing Measured by Attendance, Behaviour and an Annual Survey
Before its current daily routine, the school measured wellbeing the way many schools do: through attendance, behaviour records, teacher observation and an occasional anonymous survey. For a community that puts significant resources into supporting students, that was not enough to understand what was really happening for children day to day.
Traditional Measures, After the Fact
Attendance, behaviour records, teacher observation and a once-a-year anonymous survey told the school what had already happened. They rarely explained why, or what was happening for a student before behaviour or disengagement showed up.
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Today, a daily check-in and a report run each morning give the wellbeing team a live read on which students may not be ready to learn, so staff can respond in the classroom before the day gets away from them.
The Few Who Get the Attention
A handful of students with the biggest, most visible behaviours can consume most of a school’s energy and attention on any given day. Quieter students who were coping, or masking, at the surface were easy to miss underneath that.
An Earlier Trial That Was Not Yet Working
The school had already been trialling Life Skills GO for around twelve to eighteen months, but the previous Assistant Principal Wellbeing and the wellbeing team knew they were not getting the full value from it. The purpose was clear, the practice needed to catch up.
Emily RyanAssistant Principal, Wellbeing“We had actually been on a trial for Life Skills GO for twelve to eighteen months, and we were kind of using it, but we were like, we could do this better.”
Building Buy-In: A Team Effort, Not an Authoritative Rollout
The most common question other schools ask Coonamble is how it got a whole staff checking in every morning without it feeling like one more thing added to an already full day. The honest answer includes a false start: the school moved too fast at first, and had to pull back before it found a pace that worked.
Read the full buy-in story
Feedback from staff was direct. The wellbeing team had wanted teachers to check in constantly from the outset, and staff found it a little overwhelming to start with. Rather than push through, the wellbeing team pulled the expectation right back to a single, simple daily check-in, and put people, not just the platform, behind it.
A genuine shift in buy-in came from hearing directly from another school’s leadership team. A staff meeting featured a deputy principal from a similarly placed school, using Second Step, PB4L and Life Skills GO in combination, describing her own experience from an executive perspective. Coonamble’s staff recognised their own context in that story, and Emily describes that meeting as the point where she felt a real shift in the room.
Hands-on, one-to-one support from the Life Skills GO team also mattered. When staff needed help with lessons, a short-notice request for a one-on-one session was met quickly, and teachers worked through the platform live on their own laptops while it was demonstrated on the board. Because the session was interactive and in real time, staff began to explore the platform further themselves, and that was when check-ins started to be adjusted to each class’s own needs.
Start with one simple check-in
Do not ask staff to check in constantly from day one. Start small and let trust build.
Listen when staff say it is too much
When feedback showed staff felt overwhelmed, the wellbeing team pulled the expectation back rather than pushing through.
Bring in a peer school’s story
Hearing directly from a leader at a similarly placed school, using the same combination of programs, helped staff see themselves in the practice.
Show Value: Run the Report Every Morning
After the daily check-in and Berry Street morning circle, the wellbeing team runs a report and sends a message to every relevant staff member naming the students who may not be ready to learn that day.
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The team then divides and conquers, moving into classrooms to help students get ready to learn, whether that is food, a quiet word, or a little extra care.
This habit is what turned the check-in from an administrative step into a working part of the school day that classroom teachers now ask for.
Make training hands-on and real time
A one-to-one session, delivered quickly on request, with staff working live in the platform on their own laptops, built confidence faster than any written guide could.
Let classes adjust the check-in to their own needs
Once staff trusted the practice, classes were free to adapt how and when they checked in to suit their own students.
Emily RyanAssistant Principal, Wellbeing“I believe, in feedback from staff, we started too much too quickly. We wanted them to check in all the time, and they were just a little bit overwhelmed by it all to start off with. So we really had to pull it back, and when we pulled it right back and we were putting the people power behind it as well, we had more impact.”
Embedding It: Start Small, Build the Habit Over Terms
What Coonamble runs today did not begin as a whole-school routine. It grew term by term, in step with what the wellbeing team and classroom teachers could realistically sustain in a small, remote school.
Term One: Check In and Run the Data
The first term focused on just two things: getting every classroom checking in, and running the report from that check-in. Nothing more was added until that habit was solid.
Every Morning, the Same Routine
The Malian room, the school’s wellbeing hub, closes from nine until 10:30 each morning so the whole wellbeing team can be out in classrooms. Every class checks in and completes a Berry Street morning circle. From that check-in, the team runs a report and sends a message naming which students may not be ready to learn that day.
The team then divides and conquers, moving through classrooms to help students who need it, whether that is food, a quiet word, or something to settle a difficult morning.
Term Two and Three: Teach the Lessons
From the middle of the year, the school moved from teaching its own PB4L lessons to teaching Life Skills GO lessons in that same timetable slot, giving staff direct experience of the program alongside the check-in.
Second Step, a separate social and emotional learning program the school had also been running, was stopped once staff and students showed stronger buy-in with the Life Skills GO material, including its values cards, which are now also used to support restorative conversations.
Looking Ahead: Curriculum Alignment
From next year, the school will implement the new PDHPE syllabus, and is planning to pull the department’s sample units alongside Life Skills GO units to work out how they can be embedded together.
Protect the Consistency
Even when a class has to be split due to staff absences, the teachers covering it still take the students through their check-in first, so it becomes part of every morning rather than something that gets skipped when the day is difficult.
Emily RyanAssistant Principal, Wellbeing“It was really great because then we were able to have a one-on-one lesson and go through it on the board. They had their laptops there at the same time they were engaging in the platform. That was also really good buy-in because it’s interactive, it’s real time, and that’s when we really adjusted the check-in to their own class needs.”
Every Student Known: A Year of Real Change
The shift at Coonamble is best seen across a single school year. What began as a stalled trial has become a daily, whole-school habit that the wellbeing team, classroom teachers and students now recognise as simply how the morning starts.
Before
- Wellbeing was measured mainly through attendance, behaviour records, teacher observation and an occasional anonymous survey.
- We had trialled Life Skills GO for twelve to eighteen months, but were not getting the full value from it.
- We had no consistent, whole-school way to see how a student was arriving at school each morning.
- Quiet students who did not present as a behavioural concern were easy to miss.
- A large share of our attention and energy went to the smaller number of students with the most visible behaviours.
- We could not easily tell an ordinary off day from a genuine, sustained change in a child.
- We ran separate social and emotional learning programs without a clear, shared, whole-school language.
- Staff had asked for more support and more consistent resourcing in the classroom of a morning.
- Difficult conversations with students relied largely on staff observation and memory.
- We had limited ability to identify emerging needs before the school day was well underway.
The Shift · A Daily Morning Routine
- Every classroom checks in and completes a Berry Street morning circle
- The Malian wellbeing room closes from nine until 10:30 each morning so the whole wellbeing team can be in classrooms
- A report is run from the check-in and a message sent naming students who may not be ready to learn
- The wellbeing team divides and conquers, moving through classrooms to help settle students who need it
- Classroom teachers now adjust the check-in to suit their own class’s needs
- Life Skills GO lessons and value cards are taught directly in the timetable, supporting restorative conversations
After
- Wellbeing is checked in on every day, in every classroom, as part of the morning routine.
- Staff can see, each morning, which students may not be ready to learn before the day’s teaching begins.
- Quiet, well-presenting students who may be masking distress can now be identified through changes in their check-in pattern.
- Teachers proactively flag a change in a student’s check-in to the wellbeing team, sometimes before the report has even been run.
- Term one PB4L behaviour data showed a positive picture, and staff report the change has had a positive effect across the whole school.
- Staff say they feel more supported of a morning, with a wellbeing team visibly present in classrooms.
- Second Step has been stopped in favour of Life Skills GO lessons and values, reducing the number of separate programs staff are asked to run.
- The school is planning to embed Life Skills GO units alongside the new PDHPE syllabus from next year.
- The wellbeing teacher has been freed up for structured time to run programs, such as friendship groups, targeted using check-in data.
- The school is looking at adding a check-in after every session, to see how a student’s readiness shifts across the day.
- Staff and the wellbeing team can measure whether an individual student’s support is having an impact over time, rather than relying on memory alone.
Emily RyanAssistant Principal, Wellbeing“It’s not an authoritative thing to just deliver it, it’s a team. Slow it down to have the impact that you need and buy in from your staff and students.”
What They Can See Now That They Couldn’t Before
The change at Coonamble shows up differently depending on who you ask: a student, a classroom teacher, the wellbeing team, or the leader now responsible for the whole practice. Here is what has become visible at each level.
Now:
- A daily moment where every student is asked how they are, as part of the normal morning routine
- A safe way to signal an unmet need without having to put it into words, such as consistently checking in with a particular emotion
- Quiet, well-presenting students who may be masking distress can be identified through a change in their pattern
- Students who know their check-in is seen and can lead to a real conversation, not just a data point
“We had this student that was checking in angry every day just because he wanted to see our Malian room teacher.”
Emily Ryan, Assistant Principal, WellbeingNow:
- A morning circle and check-in built into the daily routine, rather than an extra task to remember
- A wellbeing team physically present in classrooms each morning to help students get ready to learn
- A message each morning naming which students in their class may not be ready to learn
- Confidence to flag a change in a student’s check-in themselves, ahead of the formal report
Now:
- A daily report that surfaces students who may not be ready to learn, whether or not they have a behaviour history
- A structured morning, with the Malian room closed and the whole team out in classrooms
- A clearer view of students who are coping quietly but may have things going on outside school
- Data used to plan targeted, small-group programs such as friendship groups for students who are not socially mixing
Now:
- A daily leadership routine of reviewing check-in data and directing the wellbeing team into the classrooms that need it most
- Term-by-term visibility of whether behaviour data, such as PB4L data, is trending in the right direction
- A rationale for reallocating staff time, such as freeing the wellbeing teacher for structured, data-informed programs
- A practical case for aligning the new PDHPE syllabus with Life Skills GO units next year
Giving Every Student a Voice
Coonamble serves a community with a wide range of need, and its wellbeing team is clear that the loudest behaviour in the room is not always where the most support is needed. These are some of the moments that have stayed with the team.
The Boy Who Checked In Angry Every Day
One student checked in as angry, day after day, simply because he wanted to see the Malian room teacher. Once the team understood what he was really asking for, they built time into the morning to check on him and settle him in class. He rarely needs to access the Malian room now outside his planned time, and his maturity has grown along with it.
The Student Who Was Never a Concern, Until She Was
One student was, in Emily’s words, an absolute pleasure to teach: she followed the rules, turned up smiling, and never put a foot out of place. When she began checking in as sad, the team was surprised, because she did not look sad. Unpacking it revealed serious difficulty at home. She told staff, “I’ve come to school to learn,” and had been putting on a brave face.
A Regular Yarn, Not a Crisis Response
That student now has a check-in with a staff member roughly every couple of weeks. The team pulls up her check-in and has a yarn. She now feels heard and understood, checks in as sad far less often, and instead simply says she needs to come and have a chat.
Teachers Noticing First
Classroom teachers now notice a change in a student’s check-in themselves, and will ring the wellbeing team before the formal report has even been run, saying they do not think something is right.
The Other Side of the Story
Not every check-in points to a concern. Some students check in excited simply because they want to tell someone about their weekend, and once they have had the chance to share it, they are ready to learn.
A Circle That Wraps Back Around to Learning
The school’s memory garden, sensory garden, chook yard, native garden, greenhouse, fish farm, kitchen garden and yarning circle all connect back, in Emily’s words, into a circle that supports learning. It reflects a belief that a student’s wellbeing and their readiness to learn are the same problem, seen from different angles.
“We ended up unpacking that there was huge DV at home. This young girl was just putting on a brave face. She said, I’ve come to school to learn. So now she has intervention probably every couple of weeks, and we just pull her check-in, have a yarn, and she feels she’s being heard and understood now, which is great.”Emily Ryan, Assistant Principal, Wellbeing, Coonamble Public School
What We Learned: Key Takeaways
A year of resetting the practice, distilled into what Emily would tell a school just starting out.
Go Slow to Go Fast
It is tempting to launch everything at once. Starting with a single daily check-in, done consistently, builds more lasting impact than trying to do everything from day one.
Listen When Staff Say It Is Too Much
When feedback showed staff felt overwhelmed by checking in constantly, the wellbeing team pulled the expectation back rather than pushing through. That adjustment built more trust than persisting would have.
Put People Behind the Practice
A platform alone does not build the habit. Having the wellbeing team physically present in classrooms every morning is what made the check-in matter to staff and students.
It Is a Team, Not an Authoritative Rollout
Implementation works best as a shared effort across the wellbeing team and classroom staff, not something delivered top-down to a school.
Watch for the Quiet Students, Not Just the Loud Ones
Energy naturally goes to the students with the most visible behaviours. Build in a deliberate habit of checking on the students who are not causing concern, because they may still have something going on.
It Is Not Just a Data Tool
The value was never the check-in on its own, or the report it produces. The deeper value is a wellbeing team that knows which classroom to walk into each morning, and a student who knows someone will ask how they are. The data is the byproduct of a school that notices its students.
“Go slow to go fast. You definitely need a team. It’s not an authoritative thing to just deliver it, it’s a team. Slow it down to have the impact that you need and buy in from your staff and students.”
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.
More about the demo, and reports
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 Morning You Already Run
At Coonamble, the value of Life Skills GO was never the check-in on its own. The value came from what the wellbeing team did with it every single morning, inside a routine the school already ran.
The daily check-in and Berry Street morning circle happen inside the existing morning routine, in every classroom. From that, the wellbeing team runs a report and sends a message to relevant staff naming which students may not be ready to learn, before moving into classrooms themselves to help.
Classroom teachers do not need to build reports or interpret a data system. The information arrives as a clear message about which students need support that morning, so staff can act on it inside the school day they already have, rather than on top of it.
Take These Ideas Further
Go deeper on the themes in Coonamble’s story. Emily Ryan shared this story as part of a Life Skills GO deep dive webinar. Below are related sessions and free guides your team can use with your own staff.
Related Webinars
Emily Ryan features in this Life Skills GO deep dive webinar on moving from a stalled trial to a daily, whole-school wellbeing practice in a remote community school.
Deep Dive Webinar: Coonamble Public School’s Journey with Life Skills GO
FeaturingNikki Bonus (Life Skills GO) & Emily Ryan (Coonamble 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
FeaturingDr Mark Williams (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience) with Nikki Bonus, 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 Dr Mark Williams OAM, Professor Geoff Masters AO, Nikki Bonus and Karen Robertson.
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.
Book a meeting with our education wellbeing specialist