Stephen has brought the wisdom, insights and practical experience of 25 years as Head of five schools in four countries, together with his experience serving on school boards and accreditation teams to establish a specialist service - Optimal School Governance - to help school boards enhance their effectiveness.Stephen works with school boards in a range of ways including workshops on 'best practice' in school governance, orientation sessions for new board members, board and trustee evaluations, appraisals of senior staff Including the Head of School), developing strategic visions and plans, help with restructuring and advice on a range of key issues, including board-head relationships.Optimal School Governance is deliberately flexible and specialises in addressing the specific needs of schools - single-sex and co-educational, day and boarding, religious and secular, all age ranges, and international schools.Stephen uses his expertise to support schools in a wide range of situations. His work spans the spectrum from regular board training and enhancing the effectiveness of boards that are already highly capable, right through to assisting boards that find themselves in deep crisis.Stephen offers support to school boards in the following areas:• Governance vs Management;• Setting aside Assumptions;• Dysfunctional Boards;• Healthy Boards - optimal governance;• Staying Focussed in a Crisis;• The Board-Head Relationship;• Board composition and succession;• Board meetings and dynamics;• Board policies;• Board engagement with the faculty, staff, alumni, parents and the community• Ethos - the mission, strategic vision, school policies, sustainability• Fiduciary duties - legal compliance, finance, program oversight and risk management• Strategic intent - resources, school demographics, change leadership and innovation• Evaluating the Board• Evaluating trustees' performanceDetails of Stephen's work can be seen at https://optimalschool.com.

Djarragun College is now Australia’s largest majority-Indigenous independent school and Australia’s largest Indigenous boarding school. It is also Australia's most culturally diverse Indigenous school, with 48 Indigenous nations represented in the student body. Since becoming board chair, I have been heavily involved in writing the board charter and other governance policies, supporting our BGA applications, liaising with NSSAB, participating in strategic planning, and ensuring the effective operations of the board. I meet at least weekly with the College's Executive Principal. Details of Djarragun College, how I came to be appointed as Board Chair, and the work I perform can be seen at https://www.stephencodrington.com/djarragun-college.html

Stephen worked within the School of Education at the College’s main campus in Parramatta (Sydney, Australia), where he lectured undergraduate and postgraduate courses in areas such as Critical Thinking, Geography, Education, Epistemology, Religion, Research Methods, School Leadership and Effective Governance. He also conducted professional development, school reviews, strategic planning, consultancy and research through the Centre for the Future of Schooling, a research centre within Alphacrucis College. He headed a project team that was working to build links to help raise the quality of teacher training to support Christian education in sub-Saharan Africa. He was also involved in a project of research into contemporary Geography geared to the needs of senior secondary school students, especially those studying International Baccalaureate Diploma Geography.

Stephen was the sole tutor for two undergraduate Geography courses at ACU: "GEOG101 Human Geography of Globalisation" and GEOG204 Environmental Sustainability". This work involved leading tutorials with four groups in each course with a total of almost 200 students, and assessing their achievement of the course outcomes.

As Head of School (the CEO of the organization), Stephen steered a period of significant growth during which Awty became the largest international school in the United States and the largest independent school in Houston (with 1500 students and 270 employees). Two major building programs were completed ahead of time and under budget. Faculty retention rates strengthened, reflecting improving staff morale, and the demand for student places rose sharply, reflecting a substantial growth in the school's reputation. A draft Strategic Vision was prepared after extensive community-wide consultation. A new framework for senior staff appraisal was developed and implemented. Transparency was improved, a BYOD scheme for students was introduced, the +Works program was introduced to strengthen the sense of community, and the old community service program was replaced by a Service Learning model. Personnel restructuring was implemented, including the new role of Sustainability Coordinator. 100% staff and faculty participation was achieved for the first time ever in the annual fund, the school achieved its best ever IB Diploma results, and Stephen personally negotiated and established a sister school relationship with a key school in Shanghai, China.

Li Po Chun United World College is a senior high school with 256 students from about 80 different countries. All students live on campus and study the IB Diploma Program. During the period of Stephen's headship, outstanding academic results were achieved that enabled students to enter the world's top colleges and universities. Links with student selection committees round the world were strengthened and scholarship opportunities were expanded, especially for students from the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, Cambodia and the Philippines. Stephen established an educational goodwill initiative with North Korea that involved six visits by groups of students to the DPRK, he inaugurated an NGO-like service learning organisation called GCAT (the Global Concerns Action Team) and guided students through a program to overturn a severe case of official discrimination against a community of lepers in south-west China. He also coordinated a program that resulted in the construction of three medical clinics in poor, remote, rural villages in China, including in some cases, using his students’ own labour. On campus, Stephen oversaw a major building project to construct an auditorium and performing arts centre. He also supervised the establishment and first years of operation of the Sino-Japan Youth Conference, a student-led international event that brought together about 70 young people each year from China and Japan on the campus in Hong Kong to discuss, debate and negotiate significant issues and tensions between the two nations.

While at Prince Alfred College, one of Australia's most famous boys' schools (established in 1869), Stephen oversaw three substantial building programs, upgraded classrooms (including introducing air conditioning), and oversaw a growth of enrolments of about 15%. Stephen developed and implemented a new Strategic Plan following extensive consultation, he developed a highly effective incentive awards program that stimulated student effort and achievement in the classroom, he established the Einstein Program to meet the needs of Gifted and Talented students, guided the formation of the Noel Baker Centre for School Mathematics, developed a gallery to promote the substantial achievements of alumni as role models to current students, and he developed and introduced the nationally-acclaimed, ground-breaking Eudemology program. This last innovation was one of several that led to the school being named one of “Australia’s Top 10 Schools” by 'The Australian' newspaper during three years of the five years that he was there, something that has not been repeated before or since.

Stephen developed a strategic plan to give direction to the school's expansion over a ten-year period, and he developed and introduced an innovative program to develop student leadership. Importantly, he helped steer the board through an intensive restructuring process to overcome some complex issues that threatened its viability, including researching best practice models of governance in a wide variety of schools and helping negotiate an entirely new set of by-laws.

During the eight years of Stephen's headship, he expanded what was simply a high school of 500 students into a K-12 school of over 1200 students. This expansion involved oversight of six large building programs. He demonstrated creativity, patience and negotiating skills by establishing a joint-venture branch of the school in Harbin (north-east China), a task that involved sorting through a myriad of legal, governmental and regulatory hurdles, as well as demonstrating a deep level of cultural sensitivity. Stephen also introduced the IB Diploma – a bravely pioneering step way back in 1990.