Pivot Professional Learning

Pivot Professional Learning is an education technology company established in 2014, operating from Melbourne, Australia. The company was founded by Caitlin Macleod, Cleo Westhorpe, and Belinda Harries, who combined their diverse expertise to address a perceived gap in teaching quality assessment. Harries brought experience in government education policy, Westhorpe contributed her perspective as a teacher and school department head, and Macleod added a background in data analytics and governance. Their collaboration stemmed from a shared passion for education and a desire to move beyond superficial debates about teaching quality.

The firm provides evidence-based tools and data analytics to K-12 schools, primarily focusing on improving teacher effectiveness through student feedback. Its core offering is a secure, online student survey platform. This instrument gathers confidential feedback for teachers, providing them with a detailed report that outlines professional strengths and areas for development, benchmarked against the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching. The data is anonymized for students and kept confidential for individual teachers to support their professional growth, while aggregated school-level data is shared with principals and system leaders for strategic planning. Pivot's business model centers on this service, which has expanded to include tools for monitoring student wellbeing. Serving over 1,500 schools across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, the company has facilitated feedback from over 300,000 students for more than 32,000 educators.

In March 2023, Pivot secured $1.4 million in a funding round led by the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle and technology firm DiUS, with participation from LaunchVic's Alice Anderson Fund. This capital was earmarked for re-platforming its technology and launching a new suite of wellbeing tools. The company offers tailored professional services, including data insight calls and instructional coaching, to help schools interpret the survey data and implement actionable strategies that align with their improvement goals. This approach ensures that student feedback is not just collected but is actively used to inform teaching practice and support student readiness to learn. Keywords: teacher effectiveness, student feedback, professional development, K-12 education, data analytics, school improvement, student wellbeing, edtech, teaching standards, teacher evaluation, classroom data, pedagogical support, student voice, educational leadership, school survey tool, professional learning, evidence-based teaching, student engagement, data-informed instruction, Australian education