school reform

NSW Education Standards Authority: is this new authority genuine reform or political spin?

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A key recommendation of the recently released Review of the NSW Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES) is a call for “a more risk based approach to the Authority’s regulatory work”.

The BOSTES, renamed in the review as the NSW Education Standards Authority, is the authority that governs school education standards in New South Wales, including standards for curriculum, teaching and assessment, as well as school and teacher registration. So in this context ‘risk’ is an alarming concept. For us it conjured images of failing students with damaged futures in the hands of ill-prepared and incompetent teachers.

It was this mention of risk that made us particularly interested in the review, and what it might mean for us as teacher educators. We make the point here that while the review was written to guide developments in NSW, neighbouring jurisdictions in Queensland, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and South Australia also will be paying attention. Teacher candidates and teacher graduates are very mobile these days. Changes in NSW will have a ripple effect.

We discovered the review does not suggest NSW students or schools are failing. Indeed the opening comment of the Overview synopsis states “The review found there is confidence in education standards…”

So where is the risk? We decided to search for what the panel might conceive as risks. We used backward mapping from the review’s recommendations, to try to infer the risks involved. But first we looked at who was involved and who was consulted in the writing of this review.

The voice of teacher educators is largely missing

The three-member review panel held 105 consultations with organisations and individuals, but only 10 could loosely be thought of as involving teacher educators because of their connection with the Education faculties of universities. However, initial teacher education is not the only exercise of Education faculties, so indeed the connection between these 10 and actual teacher education programs and their design and implementation isn’t at all clear.

The 4,722 survey respondents comprised “principals, teachers, parents and students”. So teacher educators were not represented there either.

The review made 13 recommendations; several of these directly or indirectly affect our work as teacher educators.

The call for clarity and streamlining

The first recommendation is that education standards in NSW need to be reorganised. The argument is this is necessary to provide “greater clarity of regulatory roles and responsibilities and streamlined processes and systems” (p.5). The inference is that such clarity doesn’t exist and that processes are not clear. The regulatory processes are reported as “administratively burdensome”.

As we saw it, this is the first ‘risk’ we uncovered. We’ll call it Risk #1. It is that valuable time will be wasted and complex layers of processes and regulatory requirements will constipate vital reform.

As far as teacher education goes national authorities impose many of the processes so these cannot be part of the state’s streamlining process. Perhaps the streamlining could be of the additional requirements that NSW itself requires.

However there is no suggestion in the review that the extra layers imposed by NSW for initial teacher education accreditation should be removed. The new authority will still require initial teacher education accreditation and teacher registration to have unique NSW state based requirements. These will continue to be piled upon the rigorous national processes and requirements of AITSL (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership), ACECQA (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority) and TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency).

It’s hard to imagine how a call for streamlining and unburdening might work without some attempt at removing the layers of additional state-based processes and requirements.

So this appears to be an empty recommendation. Let’s move on to another inferred risk.

Teacher quality

The review focuses on teacher quality, and declares that teacher accreditation should remain the responsibility of teacher accreditation authorities. Setting the registration/accreditation of individual teachers aside, if there was respect for the national authorities, then the story should have just ended there. But the review highlights a need for “risk based auditing” of “Teacher Accreditation Authorities for ongoing quality assurance” (p. 33).

In other words, the review panel seems to be dissatisfied, or at least lacks trust, in the effectiveness of the national teacher accreditation authorities’ to exercise their role. This is a clanger. The NSW BOSTES leaders have been at the table for the development of the nationally consistent teacher accreditation policies and processes since they were birthed.

The report indeed acknowledges this by detailing the “engagement with the Education Council and inter-government forums” (p. 33) and declaring the NSW BOSTES as a partner in developments at national levels.

But whatever the inference is here, there are some well-crafted soothing words for the benefit of the national accrediting authorities in the following statement:

“It is the Review Panel’s view that, unless there is a material difference in policy and New South Wales is setting specific and higher standards, the Authority (BOSTES) should not reproduce existing resources” (p. 33).

So what is the risk being conjured up? Is it that fine and well-designed teacher education programs might not emerge from the nationally consistent and rigorous accreditation processes? This is an unlikely risk for NSW, especially given the ongoing input NSW BOSTES has had in creating those national frameworks.

Therefore, sadly, it is more likely that we have identified Risk #2: that BOSTES will not be able to maintain control of the nationally consistent accreditation requirements. It needs to do this to sufficiently satisfy the local electorates that NSW offers bespoke education.

Another key recommendation under the heading of teacher quality is that “the authority’s oversight of initial teacher education provision… is strengthened” (p. 35). Yet again this smacks of distrust of the nationally consistent processes and policies, but also of distrust of the quality and motives of teacher education providers.

Compounding this is the review’s call for “the power to place conditions on the approval of ITE programs and the suspension and revocation of program approvals” (p. 35). We can only wonder about all of that.

Final school practicum

Specific attention is given to the final school practicum in an initial teacher education program (Recommendation 6, p. 36). This is when student teachers do their last supervised teaching in classrooms before they graduate. We believe it is seen as the greatest of all risks. We identified it as Risk #3: that incompetent graduate teachers might attain teacher accreditation due to ineffective assessment of their capabilities in the final practicum.

So, the review panel wants the new NSW Education Standards Authority to have power over whether an initial teacher education program can continue to be offered, and it will depend on whether pre-service teachers graduating from that program meet particular standards set for the final practicum. This is a truly big stick, and only possible as a recommendation from a Review panel (and suite of stakeholder consultations) that did not feature a strong representation from teacher education specialists.

If teacher educators had been given a fair voice in this review they would have explained the wicked problems of equitable final practicum assessment. The enduring fact is that classrooms are not all the same, teacher supervisors are not all the same and schools are not all the same. Pre-service teachers will teach in different levels of schooling in different regions, and with extremely divergent ranges and mixes of socioeconomic, cultural and community factors.

The story of one provider of initial teacher education, just over the border from New South Wales, explains the scope of what we are talking about. Griffith University in Queensland is our university so we confidently use it as an example to provide insight into the scale of the exercise. In 2015, Griffith placed 2639 students into school practicum at 458 schools, including some in other parts of Australia, amounting to 60,531 days of practicum which is the equivalent of 166 years. Yes 166 years for just one university. While these were not all final practicum experiences, the scale of the exercise is a powerful message about the potential for this strategy to go awry.

In Queensland, all three education sectors, together with the ten higher education institutions and the Queensland College of Teachers, have collaborated to ensure a consistent approach to final professional experience performance and evaluation. The Queensland Professional Experience Reporting Framework is a result of that collaboration. Perhaps taking a look at this might be useful.

One final practicum is not a good measure

With this in mind, many teacher educators believe performance in one final practicum is not an appropriate bar to measure the effectiveness of an entire initial teacher education program. That is, unless and until:

  • There is a greater sharing of the responsibilities for mentoring and development of pre-service teachers at the coalface, in the classroom.
  • There are reliable approaches to moderation of practicum evaluation.
  • There are specialist teachers in school that understand their role as site based teacher educators and who work in partnership with the university teacher educators.

The greatest risk

We believe the review should have seen past what might look good for politicians and or what could be used to generate simplistic “good” media coverage. A focus far more important should have been how the teacher educator sector might participate in ways of working more effectively and professionally together and how they might improve their connections with classroom teachers and schools.

The greatest risk is fussing over who has control, and who can find the best “spin” to give reforms, is distracting us from our most important collective job; that is teaching students how to succeed as learners and to be productive and positive members of society.

In all, the BOSTES Review is disappointing. It adds bricks to the already existing walls between initial teacher education and the rest of the education sector. Its recommendations are framed in ways that reinforce negative regard and disrespect for initial teacher education and those of us who work in the sector.

As we see it an unhealthy focus on risk aversion (not risk taking at all) constructs a punitive environment that separates the people in education who should be working together to raise standards. To do that effectively the voices of teacher educators should be heard.

It is about time the authorities in charge of school standards in NSW stop referring to “stakeholders” and start talking about “partners”.

 

Here is the full Review of the NSW Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES)

Nan-Bahr_250pxProfessor Nan Bahr is Dean (Learning and Teaching) for the Arts, Education and Law Group at the Griffith Univerity. She is responsible for the quality of design and implementation of programs across the Arts, Education and Law Group, both undergraduate and postgraduate and development programs, including higher degree research and coursework. The role works with the Pro Vice Chancellor with decision making responsibilities regarding students issues and applications.

Prior to joining Griffith University in 2015, Nan was Assistant Dean (Teaching and Learning) and Professor of Education for the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. This position followed from her role as Director Teacher Education with the University of Queensland. Nan has a background as a Secondary School teacher for Sciences, and the Arts, particularly Music. Nan holds a PhD in Educational Psychology and Music Education from the University of Queensland and has postgraduate and undergraduate degrees majoring in Biology, Music, Special Needs Education, and Educational Psychology. 

Professor Bahr has a national and international profile for educational research with over 100 publications including four books (one a best seller). Key research has been in the fields of music education, educational psychology, teacher education, adolescence, resilience, and teaching innovation in higher education. As a University Teacher, she has been awarded the University of Queensland Award for Excellence in Teaching, has been a finalist (twice) for the Australian Awards for University Teaching, and has been awarded for extended service with the Australian Defence Force.

Prof Donna Pendergast colour

 

 

Professor Donna Pendergast is Dean of the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University.  She has an international profile in the field of middle years education.  She is actively involved in policy discussions regarding quality teaching and is the Chair of the Queensland Council of Deans of Education.   

Are think tanks having too much influence on Australian schooling policies?

Education policy, educational reform, school reform, , , ,

The past decade has seen think tanks operate in sophisticated ways to influence the development of Australian schooling policies.

Think tanks such as the Grattan Institute, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and the Whitlam Institute have contributed significantly to policy debates, particularly on ‘bright light’ national reforms such as curriculum, testing and funding. Through generating research papers, opinion pieces, hosting lectures and advising policy makers, thinks tanks have influenced debates, demonstrating an exquisite grasp of political timing and an ability to achieve media impact.

The Grattan Institute has exerted particular skill in this regard, generating widespread media coverage and political impact when its school education program releases new reports. Grattan is also engaged in a wide range of other policy areas, including health, energy, transport and the economy. The Centre for Independent Studies has also developed an influential Education Program, issuing reports in areas including school funding, governance and literacy. It has also gained ‘insider access’ to government processes, with members recently appointed to major government organisations. This includes Steven Schwartz, Senior Fellow at the CIS, who was recently appointed Chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which is responsible for developing the Australian Curriculum, the My School website, and national literacy and numeracy tests.

The proliferation of Australian think tanks raises important questions about how these groups impact public policy, and whether their rising influence threatens or strengthens the foundations of democracy in our nation. To conceptualise the rise of think tanks, it is useful to reflect on international trends, particularly in America, where think tanks are more embedded and have gained unprecedented influence over education policy.

The past decade, for example, has seen powerful American think tanks, headed by political elites and backed by significant philanthropic funding, fundamentally re-shape key aspects of schooling. This has raised serious questions about whether elite economic and political actors are ‘working through’ think tanks to undermine democratic processes and the ideals of representative democracy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, has channeled vast sums of money into funding think tanks promoting the Common Core Standards (CCSS) initiative, a national set of numeracy and literacy standards adopted by nearly all US states. With the backing of Gates, think thanks such as the Hunt Institute, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, have strategically influenced the reform by producing pro-CCSS materials, building political support, and shaping public debates.

The influence of the Gates Foundation in funding pro-CCSS research and advocacy has been so profound that leading education policy scholars Lorraine McDonnell and Stephen Weatherford suggest the landmark national reform would most likely not have succeeded without money from Gates.

What we have, therefore, is the most significant schooling reform in recent US history being driven not by ‘the American people’, but largely by a powerful philanthropic group that has mobilised a coalition of think tanks and other organisations to influence debates and advocate for the reform. There is a serious risk, therefore, that the CCSS express less the deliberations of a national ‘political public’ and more the vested interests of elites.

The proliferation of Australian think tanks raises important questions about how these groups impact public policy, and whether their rising influence threatens or strengthens the foundations of democracy in our nation.

While the American context might seem like an extreme version of think tank influence, we would be naive to believe Australian think tanks do not have similar vested interests and relationships with donors.

Australian think tanks, for example, are distinctly shady about where donor money comes from, with many outright refusing to publicly disclose information about donors. This includes think tanks on both sides of the political divide, such as the IPA, CIS, Australia Institute, Sydney Institute and McKell Institute.

While there is an argument to be made that donors have the right to remain private, the flipside is that a lack of transparency about where money comes from means potential links between donors and the agendas pursued by think tanks remains murky. This murkiness makes it difficult to distinguish many think tanks from lobby groups, potentially pushing agendas for wealthy donors whose identities are concealed.

As Mike Seccombe argued in a highly critical analysis  of the IPA, the group is tight-lipped about its donors, but we know past donors have included ‘Caltex, Esso, Philip Morris and British American Tobacco’. Rupert Murdoch also served on the IPA Council from 1986 to 2000, and his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, was a founding member of the IPA in 1943. The IPA’s donors and connections have raised questions about its preference for certain agendas and not others, including arguments to privatise the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and arguments against ‘nanny state policies’ such as plain cigarette packaging.

The Grattan Institute, on the other hand, does publicly disclose its donors, with the exception of anonymous donations. Current ‘Friends of Grattan’  include Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull, and Labor MP Tim Watts. This policy of disclosure might partly explain why Grattan reports gain such esteem and traction in the media. Transparency helps keeps a check on the politics of influence. Grattan’s success can also be attributed to its ‘centrist’ positioning at a time when the Australian public is increasingly disillusioned with the adversarial politics of the two major parties. Grattan’s centrist politics also means it is well placed to feed the growing appetite amongst public servants to have policies shaped by actors, expertise and ideas external to the traditional confines of the bureaucracy.

We would also be misguided to think powerful philanthropic groups are not gaining influence in Australian policy in ways that are beginning to resemble the American context. The Gates Foundation, for example, already funds Australian research in a range of institutions (mainly in health), and is steadily extending its influence in Australian education policy, funding various policy actors and recent initiatives linked to schooling reforms. It will be interesting to monitor the extent to which the Gates Foundation expands its work in Australian education over the coming years.

The growing influence of think tanks has the potential to deeply transform the foundations of Australian education, particularly in policy development. In the future, it is likely Australia will see more strategic attempts by think tanks to influence public debates and shape reforms.

There is an argument to be made that growing think tank influence represents a greater plurality of voices and the emergence of a stronger civil society. The problem is, in nations like America, rather than greater plurality, we are witnessing a growing convergence of policy ideas and practices proffered by intertwined networks of think tanks, driven by political and economic elites.

It is clear Australia has the potential to move in a similar direction. There is good reason, therefore, to be wary about the trajectory of think tank influence in Australia and to critically question the complex role these organisations play in the democratic process.

 

SavageDr Glenn C. Savage is a Senior Lecturer in Education Policy in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on education policy, politics and governance at national and global levels, with a specific interest in federalism, intergovernmental relations, and policies relating to curriculum, equity, school funding and standards-based reform. Dr Savage has published widely on these areas, including articles in: Journal of Education Policy; British Journal of Sociology of Education; Critical Studies in Education; Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education; Australian Educational Researcher; Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy; and Journal of Pedagogy. Dr Savage is currently working on three research projects. First is a project commissioned by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, titled ‘Evaluation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers’. Second is an ‘Early Career Researcher Grant’ funded by the University of Melbourne, for a project titled ‘The national agenda: Exploring the re-scaling of curriculum governance’. Third is a seed-grant project funded by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, titled ‘Imagining Public’ Education: Media, Policy and the Reconstruction of Australian Schooling’.   

This article was first published on the Democracy Renewal  website run by the Melbourne School of Government, and co-published with the Mandarin. 

Glenn’s paper Think Tanks, education and elite policy actors is one of several that will appear in a special issue of the Australian Education Researcher to be published in March 2016. Glenn’s paper and others in the special edition are currently available here.

Education in Australia needs to change direction NOW, before it’s too late

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We believe the next five years are vital to the future of education in Australia. As we see it, our choices are stark; we can base what we do on successful models from Australia and around the world or we can embrace practices whose deleterious results have already been demonstrated elsewhere. The choices we make can set our nation on a path towards competitiveness and innovation or irrelevancy in the global economy.

What difference will the change of Prime Minister and Education Minister make?

The recent change of Prime Minister and Education Minister might see some changes in direction. New education minister, Stephen Birmingham, has flagged an interest in vocational education and stated he is “not wedded” to university fee deregulation. It is likely he will redirect higher education reform to strong incentives for improving student persistence and graduation from university.

As we see it, vocational education reform is more than a federal/state issue, it is about skillsets needed to be successful in the innovation age economy. And University reform based on graduation requirements has promise, however is wrought with potential flaws as we can see from the experience of other countries.

Australia will need a lot more than fiddling at the edges of education policy if we are to have a successful future as a nation.

What makes us think education in Australia is at a crossroad?

A series of educational reports have been released recently that appear to raise concern about the health of our educational systems. In a climate where policymakers are pushing for educational reforms, we can see these reports being used as levers for change.

First, in July, the Grattan Institute released a report Targeted teaching: How to get the best from our schoolchildren which revealed the gap in student performance, particularly in year eight maths, across Australia. The report highlights teaching quality as the foremost issue we must address to meet broad student needs.

In August, NAPLAN scores were reported as flat. The report said, “in the seven years since the tests were introduced in primary and high schools, most measurements show no major improvement.”

Later in August, in NSW figures released indicated that teacher mental health leave and compensation claims were up 40%. The New South Wales Education Department said insurers received nearly 690 claims for “psychological injury” from school staff in the last financial year, compared to 490 the year before.

In addition, it appears there are limited opportunities for University graduates in the marketplace. Also the most disadvantaged are even worse off than in the past. The Australian Council for Educational Research highlighted the impact of disadvantage on completion rates for university, with “low SES, non-metropolitan and Indigenous students less likely to complete their programs than their peers.”

These converging narratives appear to be leading us to the policies of the US and UK.

Faced with similar educational indicators in the early 2000s, both nations pinned their hopes on competition and privatization schemes. These were grounded in the idea that competition among schools and between teachers actually improves student learning.

Private is good, public is bad

How was this idea allowed to take hold? American scholar Michael Apple notes,

“We live in a world where we have been told through highly funded and widely publicized media that what is public is bad and what is private is necessarily good.”

Many would contend Apple’s worldview is now alive in Australia as evidenced by recent moves to turn public services such as rail and electricity networks over to private companies.

The future with a US or UK focus

If the US experience is illustrative, following this same ‘private is good, public is bad’ formula in education will lead to an increase in testing regimens and test-focused curricula as schools increasingly compete.

Enormous corporations will run mediocre charter schools across the nation, which will be part of a widespread but failing school choice program. There will be a devaluing of the public sector for education and further socio economic-based segregation of schooling and society.

Our hope is that we also avoid the onerous inspectorate model of England.

An alternative, evidence-based, better future

There are many impressive innovations occurring in Australia and around the world that we could be using more widely. These reform-based models are offering meaningful education experiences for students, often with little fanfare.

For example:

  • The Big Picture School model is revolutionizing schooling for many young people who are “leaving school to learn.” The work-integrated-learning approach coupled with a new form of transdisciplinary pedagogy is gaining traction all around the country.
  • Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) models are emerging for students “in the middle,” who have unrealized potential and need structure, mentoring, study techniques and peer support.
  • Schools such as Broadmeadow Primary near Melbourne are using neuroscience to guide a whole-child approach to teaching and learning with fantastic results.
  • Project-based learning is increasing across the K-12 spectrum leading to exciting new frontiers for the future of schooling.
  • International Baccalaureate program emphasizes a world-calibrated curriculum, problem-solving and globally marked high-level written assessment tasks.
  • In the US, the Early College model is changing the scope and sequence of the entire curriculum for students who are placed at risk in traditional school settings. The Early College model could work here.

These innovations involve a series of integrated skills that fit the innovation approach to teaching and learning that other countries are advancing. The skills are not currently assessed by NAPLAN or the HSC. They include a high level of knowledge and skills in:

  • Applied literacy and numeracy
  • Presentation
  • Technology savvy
  • Collaboration
  • Global awareness
  • Work-integrated learning
  • Market-ready and university-ready skills combined.

We believe Australia is at a cusp of exciting change. We hope foresight can help push back the anti-public school rhetoric and anti-progressive policies that confront us. Yes some valid concerns have been raised but we have, right in front of us, some really positive examples of what works.

Hopefully we can use them to guide us to a future where Australia plays a relevant role on the world stage as knowledge leaders. Let’s not look back on a generational opportunity that we had and let slip away.

 

John-Fischetti (1) copyJohn Fischetti is Professor and Head of School/Dean of Education at the University of Newcastle. John’s research focuses on reframing teacher education, school reform and learner-focussed teaching. John can be reached at john.fischetti@newcastle.edu.au or on twitter @fischettij

 

 

Imig Photo copy

Scott Imig is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. Scott’s research is in instructional leadership, school reform and mentoring. Scott can be reached at scott.imig@newcastle.edu.au