Dr Tony Peloso, 23 November, 2023 | Victoria Ikutegbe, Assistant Director for the Northern Territory’s Department of Education
Victoria Ikutegbe is an assistant director for the Northern Territory’s Department of Education. In her role, she leads a team of analysts devoted to improving student engagement at school. Engagement with education is a subject close to Victoria’s heart, and something that informed her journey through the PSMP every step of the way.
“I always had a thread of what I wanted to do,” she says. “My core interest is in what we can do differently to improve student engagement – this area of work that has had so many resources poured into it with little success. And so all of my assignments followed that same thread from start to finish.”
During the program, Victoria was keen to try out as many tools as possible to see which would be most useful to take back to her team. “The tools allowed me to think about public value within the context of my work, but do so in various different ways,” she says. “They allowed me to think methodically through various sub-structures that all work together to create public value.”
Her study culminated in an ambitious workplace project that examined the systemic barriers to improving school engagement, despite the investment from government departments and agencies.
“Part of the issue is that strategies just aren’t targeted enough, or the coordinated efforts just aren’t coordinated enough,” she says. “We’ve got multiple agencies working towards the same goal, but doing so in isolation rather than collaboratively. It’s the lack of coordination that hampers the efforts.”
Now that she has completed the program, Victoria will be sharing her final report with people from both her own department and other key agencies “to get the conversation started”.
“We’re already having some of those conversations, but perhaps seeing it in such a cogent form in one report might get us to come to the table with a bit more thinking around practical solutions.”
Victoria’s advice to anyone considering undertaking the PSMP is to embrace the process.
“Just go for it and approach it with an open mind,” she says. “Throughout my journey, there were aspects that made me wonder how relevant it was for me and what I do. But sticking with it and seeing it through to its logical end, ultimately I did see the overarching value in not only the individual units, but the contents of all of them put together.
“And I definitely saw the relevance for everyday public life. It brings to light a lot of things that go unnoticed, and gets us to think a bit differently and in greater depth than we probably otherwise would.”
Hear what Victoria has to say about what she learned in the PSMP.