Winners of the PM’s Prize for Science Teaching

The 2023 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching have been awarded to two committed science teachers who regularly go above and beyond for their students.

Mrs Judith Stutchbury, a classroom teacher at Kalkie State School, Bundaberg won the Primary Teaching Prize, and Ms Donna Buckley a cybersecurity teacher and Assistant Director of Mathematics at John Curtin College of the Arts in Fremantle, Western Australia took the High School Teaching Prize.

The two women are separated by thousands of miles physically but share the ability to make science relatable and exciting by embedding the subject in their local context.

Judith Stutchbury educates students to feel their actions will make a difference to the environment. Kalkie State School is only eight kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef’s Mon Repos Beach, which has the greatest number of loggerhead sea turtles nesting in the South Pacific region.

Stutchbury is a Reef Guardian teacher and an invited member of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s Local Marine Advisory Committee in the Burnett region of Queensland. She facilitates experiences for her students to learn about the Reef and its connected ecosystems.

Stutchbury is also the author of the educational book, Hatch Saves the Reef, which is inclusive of diverse backgrounds and encourages students to learn about marine turtles and the impact of climate change.

Hatch Saves the Reef is adapted from Mrs Stutchbury’s screenplay, Hatch, which follows a young sea turtle faced with obstacles such as artificial light pollution, coral bleaching and plastic pollution.

Stutchbury facilitates science events like the Southern Great Barrier Reef Regional Schools’ ‘Reef Together’ Convention, held to celebrate the International Year of the Reef in 2018. 

The ‘Reef Together’ event brought 20 regional teachers and 200 students together to be inspired by the science of the Great Barrier Reef and hear from experts. The event was supported by primatologist and anthropologist Dr Jane Goodall DBE and her Roots&Shoots Australia program.

The convention also inspired Knauf Australia, the world’s leading manufacturer and supplier of plasterboard-related products, to revisit their sustainability practices and make change to their artificial lighting output and plastic use.

Stutchbury is working on the International Reef and Ocean Sister School program, in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ocean Guardian School program in America, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s Reef Guardian School program and Education Queensland International. The program empowers sharing of science between schools and students worldwide.

Ms Donna Buckley is a cybersecurity teacher and Assistant Director of Mathematics at John Curtin College of the Arts in Fremantle, Western Australia and inspires students to apply mathematics to real-world problems and introduces them to future career opportunities in science.

Buckley has created Maths Talent Quest in Western Australia, which encourages students to think creatively about mathematical problems. The Maths Talent Quest is held annually at her school.

Other initiatives introduced by Ms Buckley include a project on the topic of Sustainable Travel for Year 8 students, to analyse transport methods and compare them to air pollution data collected by the City of Perth. She also created a project for Year 9 students to explore science using Indigenous art.

Buckley obtained a Certificate IV in Cyber Security in 2019 and established an accredited cybersecurity course to educate the next generation of Western Australians about safety in an online environment.

She is also a strong advocate for women in technology, Buckley is a coordinator of the Perth node of the Girls’ Programming Network (which connects to other nodes across Australia) and is a member of the Australian Women Security Network and Women in Technology Western Australia.

Buckley champions professional development and has made a significant impact on the way teachers in Western Australia approach science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

As the founder of #MathsBookClubWA, Ms Buckley inspires around 75 teachers across Western Australia to learn from the best literature and resources written by mathematicians around the world.

She was also invited by the Western Australia Office of Digital Government to be part of an advisory team to review cybersecurity in the Western Australian curriculum in 2022.
Ms Buckley has been on the Board of the Mathematical Association of Western Australia (MAWA) for 15 years. She works closely with the review of the Australian Curriculum and is the author of the MAWA Mathematics Essential Textbooks Units 1 to 4.

She is a member of the Educational Computing Association of Western Australia, the Mathematical Association of Western Australia and the Australian Information Security Association.