TransformUs

About TransformUs

Classroom environments are significantly different to those teachers and students left a few years ago. High teacher attrition rates, absence rates, and stress and burnout all contribute to a significant burden on the education system. We’ve also seen declining academic outcomes, high student absenteeism rates, low engagement, high levels of poor mental health, and low levels of physical activity.

What if it was possible to address all these issues with one solution, revolutionising the classroom and overall school environment? This is what TransformUs helps schools to achieve.

The TransformUs program supports primary and secondary students of all abilities to be more active and more engaged in their learning. TransformUs is low-cost and comprehensively backed by scientific evidence since 2008 showing the program is effective to improve student engagement, health and wellbeing.

TransformUs provides schools and teachers with online professional learning and hundreds of lesson plan resources designed to improve student learning in maths, science, English, geography and history.

All TransformUs resources are linked to the Australian Curriculum and aligned to Australian Government targets and health priorities.

TransformUs works.

IPAN researchers tested the impact of TransformUs over two-and-a-half years on around 600 primary school children’s engagement, physical activity, sedentary time, and health.

• 85% of teachers reported their students experienced greater concentration after an active break.
• 82% of teachers reported their students time-on-task improved after an active break.

Compared to non-TransformUs schools delivering traditional lessons, children in the TransformUs schools:

• Spent up to 63 minutes less time sedentary and were 5 minutes more active on school days
• Had lower body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and blood pressure; and higher vitamin D levels.

So far, TransformUs has:

• Reached more than 50,000 students in Australia.
• Expanded from primary schools to secondary schools.
• Been adapted to include resources for students with additional needs.
• Been embedded in Initial Teacher Education degrees across five Australian universities.

Partners have been critical to TransformUs’ success.

In 2025, the program won the overall Deakin Faculty of Health Partnerships in Practice Award, as well as the award for Informing Policy and Practice.

Watch here to discover how we work with our partners.

 

 

Students, teachers and principals love TransformUs.

“TransformUs has given teachers the ‘ah ha’ moment… and they love it! They look at the website and go, ‘this fits exactly with what I am needing to teach and it is what and how our children need to learn.’”

Anita Elliott – Principal

“TransformUs has really allowed me to think that movement is an ally in teaching, rather than an enemy…it really gave me a love of learning and enjoying what my kids are doing.”

Rhianna McNee – Graduate Teacher

“TransformUs is about recognising how we can do the things we already plan to do, in a slightly different way, so we get the benefits of being physically active without needing to incorporate something else.”

Ken Chatterton – Principal

“The kind of learning I enjoy the most is a type of learning that I can move around and be active, not just sit there doing work, boring!”

Grade 3/4 student

TransformUs has received more than 16 years of research funding, including more than $4 million from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC); VicHealth; Diabetes Australia and the Victorian Department of Education.

 

Learn more about TransformUs