Maurie Mulheron offers a timely analysis of the impact privatisation has had on Australia’s public education system…
Debunking the myth of privatisation’s benefits to education
It was the economist Milton Friedman decades ago who described public education as “an island of socialism in a free market” society.[1] As a high priest of neo-liberal economic theory, the highly influential Friedman and others called for all public services to be privatized including public education, which they argued needed to be turned into a free market characterized by competition and choice. Initially regarded as the viewpoint of extremists this ideology has, certainly since the 1980s, become a political and economic orthodoxy central to policy positions of many governments across the globe, including Australia.
Schools
Australian schooling was always characterized by deep inequalities but, as neo-liberal economics became dominant from the 1980s onwards, the divide between socially advantaged and disadvantaged students widened considerably as policy settings designed to favour private schooling were enacted. Enrolments in private or non-government schools in Australia, almost all of which are owned and run by religions, have now reached approximately 40 per cent of all students.
Private schools have the right to charge uncapped fees, have total autonomy as to which students they enrol, and are exempted from anti-discrimination laws. What this has created is a form of educational apartheid where over 80 per cent of low socio-economic status (SES) students are enrolled in public schools with only approximately 18 per cent enrolled in private schools. Similar enrolment ratios remain constant for Indigenous students, those living in remote locations, students from a refugee background, those with a language background other than English, and students with a disability.
School funding policies introduced to embed ‘competition and choice’ have meant that private schools in Australia receive significant annual federal government funding, including huge grants for capital works. In addition, at the state government level, private schools receive recurrent and capital funding. A landmark review in 2011 created a national Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) intended to measure the amount of additional public funding schools should receive based on student need.[2] Despite this, it is estimated that private schools were over-funded by approximately $1 billion for the period 2020–23 while public schools were under-funded by $19 billion.[3] Essentially, the public system which is doing the ‘heavy lifting’ is vastly under-resourced for the challenges its teachers face on a daily basis.
Successive Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports have confirmed that social segregation is a defining feature of Australian schooling. The ideology of treating schooling as a market-place has resulted in Australia having the highest degree of school choice of any OECD country but with huge concentrations of disadvantaged students, low equity in provision, and social segregation.
There are now massive gaps across Australia in academic achievement between high SES and low SES students of up to several years of schooling. For example, recent national testing data reveals that 29% of low SES Year 9 students (15 years of age) were below the writing standard and 16 percent were below the numeracy standard. For Year 9 Indigenous students, the proportion not achieving the national reading standard is 11 times higher than for high SES students.[4]
Choice has not enlarged the educational opportunities of the poor. Indeed, the tendency for choice to segregate children in the lower bands of socio-economic status has created worsening conditions for the populations who most depend on the effectiveness of public schools. Growth in public and private spending in the non-government sector has operated to remove more culturally advantaged children and young people from the public systems, leaving these systems less supported culturally by a balanced mix of students from different family backgrounds.[5]
While the history of how Australia found itself in this situation is as complex as it is torturous, the experience of prioritizing private advantage over social good contrasts with other countries as shown in a 2013 comparative study of Australia and Canada,
The relationship between school SES and student outcomes is generally stronger in Australia than in Canada. An important and visible difference between the Australian and Canadian educational systems is the degree to which they are marked by school choice, privatisation, and social segregation. In Australia, these features of educational marketization have provided unequal access to resources and “good” schools and have led to levels of social exclusion and segregation higher than in comparable, highly developed countries such as Canada.[6]
Of course, while funding policies have weakened the public education system in Australia, there are other forces at play. Governments in Australia, as elsewhere, no longer regard the provision of public services as primarily their responsibility with privatisation occurring throughout the public sector including in: postal and communication services, transport, roads, shipping ports, airports, health care, welfare, prisons, security services, employment services, housing, and energy. It could be argued that schooling is the last great public enterprise. But since the 1980s national systems of education have been left unprotected from an emerging global education industry that sees compulsory schooling as an under-capitalized market with a permanent and ever-increasing customer base, children.
Governments have created the conditions for the commercialization of education services. National testing regimes, such as the Australian National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) along with accompanying accountability and data infrastructures, have gifted enormous influence to education technology giants, sidelining teachers and too often wresting control of the curriculum from them. Further, as government education departments retreat from providing professional support and resources to teachers, the vacuum is filled by firms in the obvious areas of student assessment, but also in school administration, student well-being, teacher professional development, and curriculum delivery. “Commercialization is big business. Many commercial providers generate large profits for shareholders by selling goods and services to schools, districts, and systems.”[7]
However, the role of large corporations is much more opaque at the government level. Global consultancy firms, such as the “Big 4”: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG), Deloitte, and Ernst and Young, work inside of government departments such as the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education with direct influence over policy development and strategic planning. In the state of NSW, tens of millions of dollars have been paid to these firms, without consultation with the teaching profession and in the absence of public scrutiny.[8] In a report commissioned by the NSW Teachers Federation the researchers found that:
The reduced capacity of the state has opened up spaces and opportunities for edu-businesses to expand their role in schools and schooling systems, largely on a for-profit basis. Private corporations have also sought an enhanced role in all stages of the policy cycle in education (from agenda setting, research for policy, policy text production, policy implementation and evaluation, provision of related professional development, and resources) in what has been referred to as the ‘privatisation of the education policy community’.[9]
Since the report was published, the direct influence of the corporate consultancies and edu-businesses has increased dramatically. It should come as no surprise that the Big 4 consultancy firms are generous donors to Australia’s two major political parties.[10]
Vocational Education and Training: A case study
The most striking example of the catastrophic impact of the application of market forces to education is in the area of Australia’s post-compulsory Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector.
Until relatively recently, the provision of vocational education and training was largely the responsibility of the public system known as Technical and Further Education (TAFE). It existed as a national system in every state and territory of Australia, administered at a state level, and with an enormous reach into local communities. Despite chronic underfunding compared to other sectors, TAFE was highly regarded, providing skills training for industries, trades, small business, and emerging professions. In addition, it provided more general and further education, particularly to those re-joining the workforce, or those mature age citizens seeking additional qualifications including entry to university. In contrast to the Australian university sector, enrolments by students from a disadvantaged background was much higher in TAFE.
The watershed moment was April 2012 when all state and territory governments met with the federal government at a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting and agreed to introduce a radical restructuring of vocational education and training. Within a short period, a new funding regime based on the market model was introduced. There were two key requirements which became the architecture for the privatisation of the sector and the destruction of the public provider, TAFE. Firstly, what was called entitlement funding was introduced. This was simply a voucher system. Secondly, a student loan scheme, an income contingent loan model, was introduced. Both these mechanisms were underpinned by a requirement that state governments had to open up all funding to the private sector and that the funding had to be allocated on a competitive basis.
It soon became clear what the national agreement meant. Voucher funding detached the funding from the actual TAFE college and attached it to the individual student. The connection between funding and the TAFE college was severed. In short, the public provider’s funding was now precarious, no longer guaranteed.
VET students were to pay the full cost of a qualification, without any government subsidy, to either private for-profit providers – which under the national agreement were allowed to charge fees up to AUD$99,000 – or to TAFE. This became the incentive for private for-profit training companies to increase tuition fees dramatically, and offer only those courses that would maximize profits. Students and their families soon found that the charging of fees was completely unregulated. Within the first two years of the scheme, 84% of income contingent loans from government to students went to private for-profit companies.
Student debt ballooned but many students also discovered that the private training organisations did not necessarily complete the course or even offer the actual training. Students in this situation were left with the debt but no qualification. Media stories began to appear of private training organisations aggressively targeting disadvantaged students with brokers waiting outside employment agencies to sign up students or setting up kiosks in suburban shopping malls offering incentives such as free iPads.
The impact of the 2012 national agreement on the teachers in TAFE was devastating. Without guaranteed funding, the employer attacked salaries and working conditions. In some states of Australia, the levels of casualisation grew to 80% of the workforce. Across Australia some TAFE colleges closed, courses were scrapped, and student numbers plummeted. In 2012, the number of permanent and temporary teaching positions in New South Wales, was 17,104. By 2022, ten years on from the national agreement this had dropped to 8,197, a net loss of 8,907 teachers from the public system in just one state.
Of course, VET teachers, through their national and state unions, and academics working in this area had warned government of the dire consequences if the market model was introduced.[11] They were ignored.
Conclusion
While education has always been an area of public policy that has been contested, where historically, tensions between church and the state have played out, where individual privilege keeps challenging the very idea of public good, and where social conservatives have consistently attempted to control the school curriculum, in recent years we have witnessed a much more aggressive, coherent, and global campaign against public education that is underpinned by the ideology of the market. It is this influence of neoliberal ideology that is having the most dramatic effect on public education around the world. It is up to teachers, professional allies, and the community to be alert to the dangers and to fight to retain control. Our children and young people deserve nothing less.
*This article was originally published as “Public education and privatization in Australia” in the December 2023 edition of Education Forum, the official magazine of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF). Republished with permission. See Public education and privatization in Australia – Education Forum (education-forum.ca)
About the author
Maurie was a teacher and principal with 34 years of experience teaching in public high schools in rural, regional and metropolitan New South Wales. From 2012-2020, he served as President of the NSW Teachers Federation, and concurrently as Deputy Federal President of the Australian Education Union from 2015-2020. During this time, Maurie was a key member of Education International’s Global Response Network which coordinated international opposition to the growing commercialisation and privatisation of education.
Endnotes
[1] Fiala, Thomas J. and Owens, Deborah (April 23, 2010) “Education Policy and Friedmanomics: Free Market Ideology and Its Impact on School Reform” Paper presented at the 68th Annual National Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, USA p22.
[5] Teese, R. (2011), From opportunity to outcomes. The changing role of public schooling in Australia and national funding arrangements, Centre for Research on Education Systems, University of Melbourne.
[6] Perry, Laura B and McConney, Andrew (2013) “School socioeconomic status and student outcomes in reading and mathematics: A comparison of Australia and Canada” Australian Journal of Education 57(2) p138.
[7] Hogan, Anna and Thompson, Greg (December 2017) “Commercialization in Education” in Noblit, G W (Ed.) Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, pp. 1-19.
[8] “NSW Education pays Deloitte $9.1m to write documents for NSW Treasury” (3 March 2021) Australian Financial Review.
[9] Lingard, Bob; Sellar, Sam; Hogan, Anna; and Thompson, Greg; (2017) “Commercialisation in Public Schooling (CIPS)”. New South Wales Teachers Federation: Sydney, NSW. pp7-8.
[11] Wheelahan, Leesa “The race to the bottom in the VET market & why TAFE cannot win” (1 May 2013) Submission to House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment Inquiry into TAFE.
Lorraine Beveridge makes the case for high quality writing experiences in every classroom…
A concerning, declining trend in writing national data over time (NSW Department of Education, 2017) suggests that the teaching of writing could possibly be “a neglected R” (Graham, Hebert and Harris, 2015; Korth, et al., 2017 and Sessions, Kang and Womack, 2016). Writing is a literacy skill, relevant to all key learning areas in school and a necessary communication skill in life. Early literacy includes the interdependent skills of reading, writing and oral language, and it has been suggested that the prioritised focus on reading has led to limited attention to teaching writing as well as inadequate research on early writing instruction (Korth et al., 2017). Declining writing results “casts a light on our teaching practice”, (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017 p167), how we teach writing, including the component writing skills and writing processes, our understanding of how students learn to write and suggest a need to investigate writing strategies independent of other literacy skills. Writing is a crucial skill linked to reading and academic success, and engagement in society more broadly (Cutler and Graham, 2008; Gerde, Bingham and Wasik, 2012; Mackenzie and Petriwskyj, 2017). This paper is a result of my research and reflection on practice.
I begin with a focus on an historical overview of learning to write. Then, I outline strategies identified in the literature that work in improving student writing skills and outline examples from my research and the wider literature of best practice in the teaching of writing. The paper concludes with how we, as a teaching profession, can move “onwards and upwards” in ensuring that students are effective written communicators who are also passionate writers and, as a result, their love of writing and chances of success at school and beyond are maximised.
Historical overview of learning to write
Teachers need a shared understanding of how children learn to write as a starting point in improving student writing. (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016). Learning to write is often described as a progression from scribbles on a page to conventional text (Genishi and Dyson, 2009), but it is so much more, linked to emotions and communication, and the progression is not always a linear one (Mackenzie and Petriwskyi, 2017). Beginning writing behaviour usually includes exposure to quality texts, models of good writing, classroom talk, drawing and captioning pictures, and tracing over words. In addition to copying captions, students replicate words from around the room and environmental print. Copying print leads to students remembering word forms and writing them independently. At the same time, students are inventing spellings of words that they wish to use in their independent writing, eager to share the stories that are important to them, based on their growing oral language, phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge and sight word vocabulary, in doing so, learning about the writing process through writing (Clay, 1979; Fountas and Pinnell, 1996). In the beginning stages, it is common to see pretend writing, scribble, and copying text. By encouraging early writing experimentation, which includes miscellaneous marks as students master letter formations, a range of print conventions and the use of invented spelling, students are encouraged to create meaning from print and share the messages that are important to them, fostering a love of writing and utilising students’ growing graphological and phonological knowledge.
Through partaking in early writing, students are making connections between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds). They are learning about the skills that constitute writing, and that writing is a process that conveys meaning to the reader. Students have a meaningful context to practise and apply their growing awareness of how language works. It can certainly be challenging to decipher students’ early independent writing attempts. However, it is important that we as teachers work hard to determine the message that students are attempting to convey. By seeking to understand students’ intended written message, we are valuing their work, and encouraging them to expand their writing repertoire and take pleasure in it. We are modelling the purpose of writing, which is to convey a message to the reader, “through responding to and composing texts…, and learn(ing) about the power, value and art of the English language for communication, knowledge and enjoyment” (Board of Studies, 2012 p10).
Figure 1: Supporting students’ early independent writing attempts
Student writing can be viewed through a formative assessment lens (Wiliam, 2011, 2016, 2018), as a measure of writing growth, an indicator of the impact of teacher practice and to signpost where to next in writing instruction for individual students. Student writing samples provide rich evidence of learning, reducing the over-reliance on narrow test scores to monitor progress (Mackenzie and Petriwskyi, 2017; Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017). By keeping regular chronological logs of student writing, teachers and students have evidence of writing growth, as a basis for where students are at, and where they need to go to next in their learning, “monitoring student success criteria” (Hattie, 2012 p19). Syllabus scope and sequences, as in the NSW English syllabus (NSW Board of Studies, 2012) and the National Literacy Learning Progressions (NLLP) (ACARA, 2018) are useful tools for teachers to identify achievement and plan for individual student instruction across the various elements of literacy. Additionally, the
NLLP are potentially useful for students to determine their own learning intentions and success criteria (Wiliam, 2018), providing a framework for them to self-monitor their progress.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) released the Literacy Learning Progressions (NLLP) in 2018, to assist Australian teachers in identifying, understanding and addressing students’ literacy learning needs. In NSW, the NLLP, although not mandatory, are an additional tool to support teachers in implementing the English syllabus (NESA, 2012), which drives teaching and learning in classrooms. Teachers use evidence of student writing to appraise practice, drawing on the English syllabus and NLLP to inform decision making on where to next for individual students, in doing so personalising writing instruction. Similarly, by familiarising students with the indicators of the progressions, they have access to tools to monitor their own learning (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017). By students identifying what they can do using their own writing, and using the progressions as a guide, they are formulating future writing learning goals, and taking ownership of their learning. Student self-assessment is identified as a powerful formative assessment technique (William & Leahy, 2015).
In a recent classroom study, Korth et al., (2017) found that it is rare to observe teachers modelling or scaffolding writing for their students, opportunities for students to write in the classroom are decreasing, possibly due to a myriad of pressures on teachers and a crowded curriculum, and most important of all, teachers explicitly modelling writing processes to students makes a difference to student writing progress. Teacher modelling is a form of direct instruction, specifically targeting identified student needs. Through participating in writing in the classroom, teachers are demonstrating the importance of writing and their enjoyment of writing to their students, including drafting, editing and proof-reading. Modelling writing powerfully demonstrates the writing process, providing opportunities for mentoring and instructional sharing of skills in-context (Calkins, 1986). Through teacher modelling, students see the importance of writing through teachers demonstrating their love of writing and, at the same time, explicitly addressing identified student writing needs.
When they write, young children learn to use sounds and corresponding symbols. During composing, beginning writers say words slowly, and stretch words out to identify, then write, the individual sounds that they hear. Early writing attempts often contain grammar errors. These lessen as students’ grammatical competence increases through direct teaching and immersion in quality texts, increasing their oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension (McCarrier, Pinnell and Fountas, 1999; CIS, 2018), similar skills that students draw on in learning to be readers. Through writing, children manipulate sounds using symbols and learn how written language works.
Figure 2: Example of early writing attempt
Reading and writing are complementary processes. Just as it is important to model early reading skills explicitly for students, it is equally important to model early writing skills. For example, directionality can be taught using quality texts as models, as can the place of spaces between words.
A small number of letters can make many words, drawing on students’ graphological and phonological skills, establishing mental models and increasing their control over written language (Beck and Beck, 2013). Through building on what is already known, students rapidly extend their written vocabulary. Sentence starters are commonly used to teach basic grammatical knowledge and to scaffold students’ early writing attempts. For example, the sentence stem, “Here is…” is an example of the recurring principle (Clay, 1979) that students can build on in their own writing. Many children’s picture books are based on this principle.
Figure 2: Innovation on text using the recurring principle
Holland (2016) encourages teachers to find quality texts containing features that they wish to explore with their students, matching texts to lesson objectives and identified student learning needs, while at the same time providing authentic models for students to draw on whilst writing, propelling them forward in their writing learning journey. ACARA released a text complexity appendix to the NLLP, which explicitly states that “throughout their school years, students will be exposed to texts with a range of complexity” (ACARA, 2018b p2). The text complexity appendix identifies four broad levels of texts, which are simple, predictable, moderately complex and sophisticated texts. These text levels are referenced throughout the NLLP. Simple texts are the simplest form of continuous texts, with common usage vocabulary, language, structure and content. Predictable texts include a more diverse vocabulary than simple texts, there are a range of sentence types and the text structure is usually predictable. Moderately complex texts increase in difficulty in terms of the subject specific language used, use of figurative language and more complex language structures. Finally, the fourth level of texts complexity refers to sophisticated texts, which may draw on academic and extensive technical language. Sophisticated texts contain a wide range of sentence types, complex structures, content and print layout features. The purpose of the text complexity appendix is to encourage teachers to consider the features of texts that they use in their class English programs to ensure that the texts match student identified learning needs and the specific purpose that teachers are targeting in their teaching.
Strategies that improve the teaching and learning of writing
The teaching of writing does need to be a priority. We as a profession need to ensure that those conditions that accelerate student growth in writing are being practised in classrooms and are available to all students. Although it is unrealistic to expect that all strategies would be successful for all students, the literature identifies clear instructional strategies that are more likely to achieve student writing success than others.
Logic dictates that increased, dedicated time to write in schools will improve student writing (Korth et al., 2017; Mo et al., 2014; Bromley, 2007). Mo et al. (2014) calls for a “writing revolution” in which the time spent writing at school is doubled. This strategy not only includes providing regular writing opportunities for students to write frequently and fluently using a growing repertoire of skills, but also teachers providing intentional, regular instruction that addresses students’ specific writing needs, often referred to as point-of-need “mini lessons” (Korth et al., 2017). It is important for students to have time to write daily in an unstructured way, including free personal choice writing that will not be critiqued, writing in which they can engage their emotions and tell the stories that they dearly wish to write about. This may take the form of journal writing or some other developmentally appropriate task for emergent writers, possibly symbolic representations, including “think- draw- write”. By putting school-wide structures and systems in place to ensure that all students write every day, schools are growing a culture that values writing and the messages that students’ writing contain. When students are also provided with explicit and regular feedback on their writing, research suggests that students’ writing skills increase dramatically (Hattie, 2012; Simmerman et al., 2012; Cutler and Graham, 2008).
Undeniably, writing is a complex task. Cutler and Graham (2008) also identify the need to spend more time teaching writing. They find that many teachers take an eclectic approach to teaching writing and call for a more balanced instructional line of attack between time spent independently writing and learning writing skills and processes. There are two clear components to effective writing teaching, the explicit teaching of writing skills, which sits alongside the second, possibly more important component, which is teaching the writing process. Writing instruction focusing on a skills-based approach is not enough. It does not evoke a passion for writing. Writers go through a process, a series of steps to compose a piece of writing that needs to be modelled and taught explicitly. The writing process includes collecting and organising information, writing a draft, revising, editing and rewriting. To learn about the writing process, students require protected time to write, choice over the topic they wish to write about and targeted feedback from teachers (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016; Cutler and Graham, 2008; Korth et al., 2017).
Education systems need to do a better job of providing targeted teacher professional learning in writing that addresses school and students’ identified writing needs. (Mo et al., 2014; Cutler and Graham, 2008). A focus of a recent professional learning course for middle school teachers delivered over a term, and spanning 12 schools, was teachers, collaboratively reflecting on the cognitive dimension of teaching writing, as Oz (2011) describes writing as, “the operation of putting information, structured in the brain, into print” (p251) . Teachers were thinking about and sharing how writing is taught in their local context, and brainstorming how they could possibly do it better, an example of the power of collaborative professional learning, in which teachers learn with and from each other (Beveridge, 2015).
Figure 4: Middle Years Writing Course reflection (2017)
In the middle years writing course (Brassil, Bridge and Sindrey, 2012), teachers identified what they regard as going well in the teaching of writing, what still needs be a focus and ideas for improvement. Table 1 below lists participating teachers’ responses as to how they were addressing the teaching of writing in their schools and where they needed to go to next in the teaching of writing in their local contexts to address the learning needs of their particular students.
What’s going well in the teaching of writing?
What still needs to improve?
What are ideas for improvement?
ALARM[1] (cognitive scaffold, framework for writing).
Clarify the learning intention at the lesson outset (and encourage all staff to use this language).
Identifying audience and purpose of writing. Unpacking rubrics together so students are clear about what the task involves. Co-writing rubrics with students drawing on syllabus/ progression indicators to increase student ownership of learning.
Students to reflect on their writing (self /peer-assess).
Activities and strategies that improve sentence structure. Teacher professional learning on grammar with a shared focus and understanding of how language works.
Using writing tools; a range of writing apps
Discussing ideas together before we begin writing (dialogic teaching).
Identifying the writing demands of the key learning areas and map the commonalities across KLAs.
Sharing of ideas/ writing strategies with staff facilitates professional discussion.
Coherence and consistency of teaching writing across the grades.
Building subject specific vocabulary to draw on when writing. Subject-specific teachers to agree on a consistent approach for teaching writing school-wide.
Making writing a school focus and linking effective teaching of writing to other school foci.
Assessment of writing from a school-wide perspective that all staff share ownership of.
Improving grammar knowledge in context, through explicit teaching and using quality texts as writing models.
Students believe that they can write, irrespective of skill level.
Providing students with quality writing models / texts and explicit quality criteria for writing.
Generating ideas to write about together at the outset of a lesson (in creative ways, to put the magic back in the teaching of writing).
Table 1: Writing in the Middle Years course reflection (2017)
Increasing classroom discourse, where the teacher and students together discuss and clarify complex tasks, has an effect size of .82, double the effect size of .4, which is generally regarded as one year’s teaching for one year’s growth (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017 p3). In the writing classroom, this may look like the students and teacher participating in joint writing construction, and modelling metacognitive processes, which could involve asking self-questions (for metacognition and self-reflection) whilst writing. Self-questions relate to the learning intentions of the lesson, and whether students have explicitly addressed these in their writing.
Figure 5: Tools to support students asking self-questions.
For example, in Figure 5 above, the pedagogical framework strategies “WILF and WALT” provide visual prompts to students of the learning intention: What are we learning today? (WALT), and success criteria: What am I looking for? (WILF). Such lessons support students in self-monitoring and evaluating their writing. Self-questions students may ask from the WILT and WALT framework include:
Have I used adjectives in my writing? Where are they? How do they make my writing more interesting?
Where are my spaces between words, full stops and capital letters? Have I used them correctly? How do they help my writing make sense to the reader?
What language choices have I made to make my writing more interesting? How successful was I in achieving this?
Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) outline three guiding principles for teachers to keep in mind when teaching writing:
Students are actively involved in the writing process
They share what they write
They perceive themselves as writers.
Increasing classroom discourse may look like students discussing their current performance and the criteria that they will use to measure their writing success. It has been stated that “the more clearly they [students] can see the goals, the more motivated they will be [to achieve them]” (Fisher, Frey and Hattie p43). Overall but not exclusively, the aim of classroom discourse in writing lessons is for teachers to gradually release writing responsibilities to students (Kaya and Ates, 2016, Pearson and Gallagher, 1983). To become expert teachers of writing, teachers must become skilled at supporting students in achieving their (self-) identified success criteria (Hattie, 2012). The NLLP are a useful guide for students to identify what they can do, and where they need to go to next in their writing learning journey.
Writing at school has infinite possibilities to integrate learning across the key learning areas which include various genres inclusive of imaginative, persuasive and information texts (Board of Studies, 2012). An emphasis on writing across different content areas reinforces the integrative nature of writing and its high gravitas in all key learning areas at school, and in life. For example, writing class books about a specific topic or activity, describing the attributes of characters or animals and writing expositional texts in science, are all evidence that writing is much more than narrative. Students need to write arguments and information texts; in fact, a wide range of texts across all subjects. In turn, teachers need to clearly state how writing skills learned in one classroom or key learning area can support developing writing skills and processes in another, making explicit and strengthening the writing links across the key learning areas for students.
School leaders have a responsibility to facilitate the organisation of opportunities for teachers and students to develop and share what good writing looks like. This can be achieved through ensuring teachers have time to collaboratively plan for and review student writing. This could involve using the samples provided in the Assessment Resource Centre as authoritative sources, analysing student exemplars locally and collectively studying published writing and quality texts. By developing shared teacher understandings of what good writing looks like across the school, writing expectations for students are aligned and cohere, clarifying and democratising writing instruction from one classroom to another (Wiggins, 2000).
Through exposure to and deconstruction of a range of quality texts, students learn writing strategies through engaging with real authors and identifying how they engage readers in their texts. At the Australian Literacy Educators (ALEA) National Conference in Adelaide in 2016, I attended a writing session presented by an Australian Capital Territory (ACT) community of schools. The schools reported that the most significant factor that contributed to their collective, improved and sustained writing results, and increased student engagement in writing, was a shared “Visiting Children’s Author Program” in which students learned to “write like a writer”. Exposure to quality texts improves student writing through providing inspiration that they talk about, share and build on in their own writing. A rich diet of a wide variety of texts provides opportunities for critical and creative thinking, and sustained conversations about authors, real texts and aspects of texts that engage readers (Haland, 2016).
At a recent middle school writers’ workshop at a local high school, it was reported to me that the first activity of the day involved students voting with their feet. They moved to a specific corner of the room if they enjoyed writing at school and considered themselves good writers. Similarly, students who considered themselves poor writers and didn’t enjoy writing at school moved to the opposite corner. Students placed themselves along the human continuum based on their feelings about writing in the school context. Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the group of around 90 students from the local high school and its primary feeder schools, regarded themselves as poor writers who did not enjoy writing at school.
Whether this informal poll is generalisable data is admittedly dubious. However, when I arrived at the school at the end of the day for teacher professional learning, I found a group of highly engaged, happy and proud students, eager to share their writing with me. The lucky students had spent the day being motivated to write by a high profile children’s author who shared his authentic secret business in relation to “writing like a writer” with the students. He provided them with insights and writing models from (his) quality texts, narrative, humour and multimodality that totally engaged and engrossed students in the writing process. Students’ shared excitement and pride in their writing efforts and their successes were tangible and infectious. The students had been mentored in writing by a “real” writer, providing a genuine context for their writing. The author worked hard in encouraging students to weave their emotions into their writing, delving into the affective domain, which involved a coming together of their hearts and minds in the act of writing.
It is suggested that the creativity and originality that promotes imagination, expressiveness and risk taking in the writing process is what is missing in the way that writing is taught in schools today, possibly as a result of the way writing is currently measured (Ewing, 2018, Frawley and McLean-Davis, 2015). Increasingly, the decline in writing results Australia-wide is attributed to the movement away from students engaging with processes linked to the creative arts, including imagination, creativity, flexibility and problem solving, processes that have transformative potential (Rieber and Carton, 1987). It has been suggested that the creative magic of writing is possibly what is missing in the teaching of writing in schools today. “What if we brought the magic back into the teaching of writing? It’s in teachers’ hands” (Adoniou, 2018).
Figure 6: Middle Years Writing workshop (2017)
Teaching writing in the digital age
Our students are products of a digital world, and they seem to not respond well to the writing teaching practices of the past (Johnson, 2016; Kaya and Ates, 2016; Vue et al., 2016, Engestrom, 2001). Table 2 below shows how our digitally mediated culture has impacted the way we teach writing, classified by Engestrom (2001) as the old and new way to teach writing. Teaching writing with new technologies requires a shift in how teachers conceptualise writing teaching in their classrooms.
This is now
That was then
Process approach sits alongside writing skills focus.
Product based approach.
Draws on methods and motivators used by published authors. Learning to “write like a writer”.
Teaching writing usually the domain of the classroom teacher.
Both writing skills and processes taught together.
Skills-based focus.
Writing tasks have real-world purpose. Focus on communicative action/ meaning.
Compliance discourse, for example, praise for product.
New understandings and models of authoring and publishing texts. Focus on how language works. Functional view of grammar.
Grammar focus.
Use of an increasing range of digital writing tools and web based apps and programs.
Pencil/pen and paper writing tools.
Writing and sharing to a wider [often electronic] audience.
Traditional publishing of stories and books.
Authentic writing tasks across all key learning areas.
Writing was the domain of subject English.
Need to combine digital and non-digital media in teaching writing.
Writing was taught using non-digital media.
Table 2: Writing in a digitally mediated culture (adapted from Engestrom, 2001)
Students (and adults) are forever writing, in the forms of text messages, blogs, emails, snapchats, Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram posts and so on, suggesting high and increased engagement in, and importance of, writing as a result of our digitally mediated culture. The use of digital tools has changed the composing and publishing process. Yet there seems to be a divide between school writing, typified by low engagement and writing in the real world, typically a high engagement task. We need to build a bridge between school and home writing, so teachers and students alike see the high gravitas of both as forms of written communication and making meaning. Digital tools are increasingly part of our world. Well-considered professional development and support is required, to address teacher dispositions in relation to using digital tools in the writing process while, at the same time, building teacher and student skills and expertise that will be sustained and built upon in practice.
As we discover more about neuroscience and human cognition, we are increasingly learning about how multiple formats of texts (multimedia) have a positive effect on learning through reducing the cognitive load on working memory, resulting in improved information processing and understanding (Johnson, 2016; Vue et al., 2016; Wilson and Czik, 2016). Computers do need to be a more integral part of the writing classroom. However, we need to authentically integrate them into learning tasks to improve pedagogy (Cutler and Graham, 2008). Most students have access to digital technology and use it to stay connected. It is their preferred mode of text-based communication. The challenge as we learn more through research seems to be how we can increasingly integrate digital tools to promote quality writing through real-world, authentic and semiotic (meaning-making) writing tasks; and at the same time “hook into” the high student engagement associated with digitally mediated communication (Johnson, 2016; Jones, 2015).
I witnessed one school’s attempt to span the home-school writing divide, similar to the “bridgeable knowledge gap” (Hattie and Yates, 2013). Stage 3 students wrote stories, illustrated them, captured them digitally, they then displayed them as QR codes in their classrooms accessed via their mobile phones. In this way, the old and new ways of teaching writing come together in an engaging format, easily shared both locally and with a wider electronic audience. However, focusing on digital tools in the writing process is not enough, as these can fail on application, and students need to be independently competent written communicators, to succeed at school and in life. The goal is for students to achieve capability writing in authentic ways, to the real world. Authentic writing involves students understanding the relevance and importance of what they are writing, often publishing to a wider, electronic audience.
Turning around school writing results: a case study
In 2013, I surveyed 160 schools and from these data, selected 4 case-study schools to determine the impact and sustainability of collaborative professional learning (Beveridge, 2015). One of these schools had an ongoing focus on the teaching of writing which resulted in a significant and sustained “turn around” in their writing results. They achieved this enviable outcome through a range of whole school strategies that other schools could possibly learn from, and are worthy of sharing to a wider education audience. The school is classified as a metropolitan government primary school, with an enrolment of 166 students (ACARA, 2012). There are seven full-time teaching staff, a non-teaching principal and one class per grade. It is a small country school, situated on the outskirts of a large regional centre. Contrary to the extant literature (Little, 2006; Louis, Marks and Kruse, 1996; Stoll et al., 2006), I did not find that school size is a clear determinant of whether professional learning is sustained, as this school, as well as a large high school case study, both sustained their learning over a number of years, whilst my other two case study schools did not. It seemed to have more to do with a school culture of collaboration and sharing that facilitated the changes that resulted in professional learning being sustained (Beveridge, 2016).
Specific strategies the school had firmly in place that supported a sustained improvement in writing, are loosely coupled to the framework of factors that sustain collaborative professional learning (Beveridge, 2016), and include:
Leadership strategies
The Principal was engaged in professional learning as an equal partner, and participated in team teaching sessions alongside teachers.
The school leadership team monitored teacher workloads to prevent teachers from taking on too much change at any one time.
Teachers were allocated 30 minutes additional release, to discuss and focus on the writing progress of three targeted students per week with the Principal.
The Principal and the class teacher jointly monitored student writing data.
The Principal was aware of and actively interested in students’ writing progress.
School-level strategies
Writing time was a priority in all classrooms, at a set time, every day.
There was whole school buy-in of a spelling program that staff co-designed, daily, at an assigned time. There was ongoing reflection on and adjustment of the spelling program based on formative assessment data and identified student learning needs.
Teacher professional learning was regarded as a high priority. Regular collaborative professional learning meetings where teachers discussed latest research, how to implement relevant writing strategies in their classrooms and what they looked like in practice, was facilitated by an external literacy coach. The literacy coach worked towards making herself redundant by building school capacity that would remain in the school when she moved on.
Teachers had between session tasks to complete in their classroom, concretely linking theory with their daily practice of teaching writing.
Collaborative reflection on what worked in the local context, based on evidence, was a feature of professional learning meetings.
Professional learning cohered with the school plan and focused on one target at a time, with leadership support.
Teacher-level strategies
A literacy coach worked in-class, shoulder to shoulder alongside teachers. She also had timetabled one-to-one regular release time with teachers to reflect, and provide feedback on their individual goals, teaching practice and student learning.
The class teacher targeted three students per week to discuss writing goals with the Principal and literacy coach, who supported them in-class in achieving their goals. In this way, over a term, each student received specific, intensive individualised writing instruction in addition to their regular class support.
Teachers organised and implemented their own peer evaluation and feedback sessions with whomever they felt most comfortable among their colleagues. Peer observation and feedback sessions were timetabled regularly.
The literacy coach observed teachers’ lessons, and provided targeted feedback to assist them in achieving their jointly planned professional learning goals. Class teachers put a lot of effort into showing the literacy coach that they were using her advice in practice. Professional trust was tangible.
A range of multimodal writing tools were used by teachers and students to create texts, share their texts with a wider audience and stay connected both inside and outside the classroom.
I have viewed a number of conference presentations and teach-meets at which teachers from the school presented their writing program, and shared their exemplary practice with wider educational audience. The staff and students shared a love of writing. The strategies that the staff learned were firmly embedded in their daily practice, have been expanded and built upon, and are now regarded as “the way we do things around here” (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Fullan and Hargreaves, 1991; Schuck, et al, 2012). Additionally, other schools visit the school to view first-hand teaching practice that resulted in them not only “turning around” their writing results but also sustaining their improved results over time. In opening up their writing classrooms to others, teachers were sharing the good news about what works in the teaching of writing across the broader education landscape.
…we collect data for writing and it’s really specific data for each student. Every student in my class gets feedback at least once a week on a piece of writing and that’s all part of what we’re doing. It’s hard. You see the improvement in student outcomes and it’s so worth every bit. (Natalie, team leader)
There was a clear, coherent developmental path to improving writing. It had both an individual and collective focus. There was ongoing teacher support from colleagues, a literacy coach, who was a “knowledgeable outsider” (Beveridge, Mockler and Gore, 2017) and acted as a critical friend to the school, as well as supportive school leadership. Strategies such as timetabled teacher meetings and team teaching sessions with the literacy coach, as well as data tracking meetings with the Principal, ensured that teachers were supported and learning was targeted to address both teacher and student needs. Professional learning which focused on improving student writing was like a continuum, a complex interplay of affect, cognition, and metacognition, where teachers acted and collaboratively reflected on learning processes and ways to improve them in an ongoing cycle of improvement and reflexivity.
The “neglected R”: onwards and upwards
Reading and writing are complementary processes. Like reading, writing needs to be a priority across all grades and key learning areas, every day… both electronic and traditional writing, to get our message across and make ourselves understood. Too often in the literature it is termed “the neglected R” (Mo et al., 2014; Sessions, Kang and Womack, 2016; Graham, Hebert and Harris, 2015). A stronger systems focus on teaching writing is required to move and improve student writing results. Teachers are in a privileged position to be able to ignite students’ passions in writing, and “put the magic back” (Adoniou, 2018) into the teaching of writing. One means of fostering a love of writing is by engaging students in writing through drawing on quality texts. In this way, students know and experience what great writing looks like, and jointly (and individually) experience the emotions that quality writing evoke. Through dialogic instruction, teachers are able to explicitly teach those skills that students demonstrate that they need in their independent writing, at the same time ensuring that there is designated, frequent class time for students to write and share their own written messages. Students require regular, authentic opportunities to write and share their work with others because writing is a communicative tool, the goal of which is to convey meaning to the reader and engage readers in meaning making Do you think our identities as teachers of English and literacy more closely align with reading than writing? Have we unconsciously devalued writing? (Frawley and McLean-Davis, 2015)
[1] ALARM is a learning and responding matrix to support student learning.
[2] SEAL and TXXXC are student writing scaffolds.
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Dr Lorraine Beveridge has been a NSWTF member for all of her 35 years teaching in the NSW Department of Education. She has held a range of executive roles, both in schools and supporting schools, building teacher capacity across the state. She currently works in curriculum. Her passion is building a love of literacy in students and teachers, and Quality Teaching. Lorraine’s PhD research is in the area of collaborative teacher professional learning.
In a world of rapidly advancing Artificial Intelligence, Leslie Loble and Kelly Stephens provide teachers with a framework of questioning when making decisions on using edtech to enhance teaching and learning. . .
In an era characterised by rapid technological advancements, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), we find ourselves at the brink of a ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ This revolution, fuelled by AI, is not just about the technology itself but about the profound impact it has on our daily lives – ‘a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another.’(World Economic Forum, 2024)
What does this mean for education? As teachers we are always encountering change as we strive to support students to live and learn in the contemporary world. Inherently curious and questioning, teachers are frequently early experimenters with new ways of doing things, especially if they sense benefits for their students or their profession. At the same time, teachers and education leaders are highly developed critical thinkers, with an inclination always to test the ‘why’ before adopting the ‘what’.
Nobody is better placed to navigate this new technological wave.
It is a little over a year since ChatGPT was released, creating excitement and alarm in equal measure. Oh wow, it can write a Shakespearean sonnet about a microwave, or help create a lesson plan. Oh dear, it can write to a rubric and generate a very passable essay. What does this mean for high-stakes assessment tasks? What does this mean for day-to-day teaching?
Before ChatGPT, the educational technology landscape was already being shaped by AI, with tools like adaptive learning platforms and predictive analytics available to support teaching and learning experiences. Only a year on, many applications have already incorporated generative AI into their platforms, and this number will doubtless grow. For example, the Microsoft suite offers the AI-enabled Copilot tool, Google now has Gemini and Khan Academy its Khanmigo chatbot.
Teachers are always looking for the best ways of supporting learning for the students in their classroom. NSW public school teachers are also always looking for ways to help lift the experiences, learning and outcomes for students experiencing disadvantage, and to tackle the enduring problem of educational inequity. There is strengthening evidence that good technological tools might be able to help us in this quest. To do so, however, they need to meet certain conditions. As outlined in the report Shaping AI and edtech to tackle Australia’s learning divide (Loble and Hawcroft, 2022), to create positive impact and avoid harm, edtech must be well designed, effectively used, and carefully managed.
There is more work for us to do as a society to ensure that these conditions are met – to make sure the edtech our students and teachers use are of high educational quality, ethical, safe and effective – without creating additional work for teachers and schools.
This article contributes to the conversation by suggesting five questions you might like to ask when considering using edtech in your teaching program. Spoiler alert: it’s all about doing what you already do – teaching first, technology second. Used well, good edtech can, and should, enhance and amplify your professionalism and expertise. In education, it is imperative we keep the human in the lead.
Five Key Questions to Consider
1.Which tool or resource should I choose?
We know that quality teaching tools and resources can make a difference in the classroom; teachers can, and do, invest significant time creating or finding resources they believe will work best. Edtech, including generative AI, has only increased the range of resources available to choose among. For example, even five years ago, there were nearly 500,000 learning applications just on the Apple and Google app stores.(Holon IQ, 2019) Resource publishers, including edtech providers, frequently approach schools with the intent of selling their products, often with a significant, ongoing price tag.
In making any choice:
Start with your whole-school strategy. We know that cohesive effort across a school community drives results. What are the key priorities in your school plan? Is there a useful app on the NSW Department of Education’s approved list?
Think about the curriculum and your pedagogy. We know that teachers have the greatest in-school impact on student outcomes. Does the tool align with, and support, quality teaching practice in your subject/s? A good edtech application should amplify teacher expertise and professionalism, not diminish it. For example, the right tool might help you carve out time to work with individuals or groups of students with differing needs, by providing an adaptive platform for others to use during that time.
Ask about the evidence base. Is it easy to find out what research informed the development of the tool? Was it informed by how students learn? Is there any research showing how well it has worked, in what circumstances and for whom?
Other markers of a quality tool include accessibility, and the security, privacy and ethical use of teacher and student data. There is more about accessibility and inclusion below, as well as about schools’ and teachers’ responsibilities regarding student data. Beyond this, it is worth asking, what type of student data a tool captures? (for example, does it include keystroke data and other monitoring of student behaviour?), who owns the data, and how it might be used?
It is often difficult to find the answers to these questions, and even when it is possible, it can take up precious time. There are some organisations that seek to make this process easier for teachers. Closest to home is the Department’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue. Tools listed here have been through an assessment process and integrated with the Department’s single sign on. Further afield, other organisations that review materials include EdReports,1 Edtech Impact,2 or Digital Promise.3
2.(How) Does this app help me understand more about my students’ learning?
Technology-based learning applications typically offer the ability to tailor student learning through adaptable lessons, activities, and assessments. For example, one tool offers possible lessons and activities around three broad levels – ‘core, deeper learning, or challenging’ – to allow teachers to scaffold and differentiate their instructional strategies based on student and class capabilities. Another tool gives students the option to select ‘something easier,’ or ‘something harder’; others use adaptive ‘branching’ to meet a student’s ability level and then move onto a greater challenge.
Most technology-based tools also now incorporate data dashboards for teachers, with displays that provide quick, easily accessed insights to student understanding and progress. Some tools also offer data on learning ‘flow’ or engagement. These data can be at quite granular levels (for example, by student, task, skill, curriculum unit and so forth) giving detailed, useful feedback to support a teacher’s plan and approach. Where a learning application also allows students to see their own data, it may help develop metacognitive skills (which are aligned with positive learning behaviours and outcomes (OECD, 2012).
But not every tool will work equally well or match a teacher’s classroom and students. The utility and impact of any tool rests strongly on how and when teachers decide to integrate it in their programming. Teachers deserve good information to understand the capabilities of the tool and its pedagogical design (as outlined above) and professional support to keep education technology use in proportion and firmly within their plan and control.
3.(How) does this application help me teach the full range of students in my classroom?
The craft of teaching depends on meeting a student at their point of learning development and need. We know that any classroom will have students working at a span of levels, sometimes a very wide span. NAPLAN data tells us that by Year 9, the range can be as great as five years.4 At the same time, approximately one in four students in NSW public schools are living (and studying) with disability. (ACARA, 2023) Eighty-six percent of these are studying in mainstream classes in mainstream schools. (NSW Department of Education, 2022) Meeting the needs of all these learners is key to improving the equity of learning outcomes for students in NSW and beyond.
Technology should have an inbuilt advantage in meeting the needs of diverse learners, due to the potential to adjust even simple settings, such as font size, or incorporate translational functions (e.g., text to speech, or speech to text). These inbuilt functions are worth looking for. In addition, many applications are web-based. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 cover a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.5
Adaptive learning systems are some of the best researched edtech applications and can help support students to develop mastery, including identifying and filling in learning gaps, and providing stretch learning opportunities.[1] Teachers are also exploring the use of generative AI to make it easier and less time-consuming for them to adapt resources so that all students can effectively access the curriculum. For example, generative AI can quickly and easily rewrite passages of text for students with different reading levels. Of course, it is critical that teachers check any output from a generative AI tool for accuracy and suitability, from the perspective of their professional expertise.
Accessibility and inclusion don’t stop at technical adjustments and adaptability. Edtech – like all human creations – can be culturally insensitive or biased. An aspirational goal is that developers listen to and work with the communities most likely to be impacted by their products. Over time, we hope to see greater use of co-design and universal design for learning principles.
4.What type of AI does this application include?
Not all edtech includes AI and when it does, it is not necessarily generative AI. Very broadly, AI can be thought of in two types:
‘Good Old-Fashioned AI’ (known as GOFAI) – This encompasses a range of technologies including the chess program (Deep Blue) that beat Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and the technology that serves up recommendations to us in our daily life – videos to watch, songs to listen to, people to befriend. These technologies have advantages of memory and computational force that far exceed human capacities (Tegmark, 2017). An upside of some of these applications is that they can learn from your choices and improve their advice to you. A downside is that they can contribute to a polarisation of views. You may notice that you rarely see suggested information that offers a different perspective from the one you already hold (hence the term ‘echo chamber’).
Generative AI – This technology is distinctive in that it doesn’t just analyse existing data and predict the future on the basis of the past but creates new data instances that resemble the data it ‘trained’ on. For example, ChatGPT was trained on large sections of the internet, including all of Wikipedia – approximately 300 billion words. (Hughes, 2023) Generative AI tools can generate language, but also images and increasingly long video segments. Unlike older types of AI, the generative AI models are so complex that even the creators cannot understand exactly why a tool produces the output that it does. (Heikkila, 2024)
Generative AI has raised particular concerns from an educational perspective, not least because it is known to ‘hallucinate.’ Because ChatGPT writes like an articulate human, it can be hard to spot when the tool is just making things up.
Other issues – such as bias – can arise regardless of the type of AI involved. The output of any algorithm is only as good as the data set it draws on, and the rules it applies to that data, both of which may reflect systemic inequity.7 This has been shown across many fields including education.8 For example, the use of an algorithm to predict A-level results for UK students during COVID was found to systematically disadvantage students from state schools and had to be abandoned. (Gulson et al, 2021) Examples like this are powerful reminders that humans, not machines, remain accountable for decisions. When we do use technology to support student learning or streamline our work load, we need to stay abreast of its recommendations and adjust them when necessary.9
5.What data or information should I put into an app?
Personalisation can come at a price, and that price can be privacy. Recommendation engines improve the more they ‘know about’ (the more data they have on) the user. Data is highly valuable to many companies, including Edtech companies[KS2] . Data that can be linked to specific students, known as personally identifiable information (PII), falls under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 due to its sensitive nature. Personal information is any information that can be used to identify an individual directly or indirectly. It could be a student’s name, address, class, school, family details, fingerprints, or a combination of information from which a student or other individual can be identified.10 Applications accessed via the NSW Department of Education’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue have data safeguards in place. Outside of that framework, the responsibility for the appropriate treatment of personal data rests with teachers and schools, with advice available.11 It is worth noting that ChatGPT uses your content – uploaded files, prompts and chat history – to train the model, unless you choose to opt out.12
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence can be a polarising topic, represented as the answer to all our problems, or an impending risk to humanity. Educators are well positioned to avoid such extremes, approaching edtech firmly as a tool, not oracle, in service of the human pursuit of teaching and learning. If you would like to stay connected with our work seeking to ensure that edtech is leveraged for quality and equity across Australian schools, consider signing up to our mailing list here.
6 A synthesis by Escueta et al. (‘Upgrading education with technology: Insights from experimental research’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2020) finds that adaptive learning systems offer ‘enormous promise,’ with two-thirds of the high-quality research studies examined demonstrating substantial and statistically significant effects. Similarly, a meta-review of Intelligent Tutoring Systems by Kulik & Fletcher (‘Effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems: A meta-analytic review’, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 86, Issue 1, 2016) reports a mean effect size of 0.62 from their analysis of 50 controlled experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations of ITS in elementary, secondary, and tertiary institutions. This effect size is considered moderate-to-large in social sciences and well above many other traditional education interventions.
7 For example, a data set ‘may not be representative or may contain associations that run counter to policy goals’ (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations, Washington DC, 2023), p.33.
8 For a very readable look at the way AI and algorithms can replicate and reinforce existing inequities, see Ellen Broad, Made by Humans: The AI Condition (Melbourne University Press, 2018).
9 Even when automated processes are explicitly designed as decision-support tools, we humans can defer overly to them due to our ‘trust in automated logic, lack of time and the convenience of relying on pre-processed data’ (Anna Huggins, ‘Addressing Disconnection: Automated Decision-Making, Administrative Law and Regulatory Reform,’ UNSW Law Journal, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2021), p.1060.
Professor Leslie Loble AM is Chair of the Australian Network for Quality Digital Education. Leslie is a recognised leader of public purpose reform, both in Australia and the US. Leslie has spearheaded significant reform in school, tertiary and early childhood education, including the Gonski funding reforms, and establishment of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, the Centre for Learning Innovation and the Catalyst Lab, within the NSW Department of Education. Leslie holds governance roles at the Australian Education Research Organisation and Copyright Agency and appointments to government expert advisory panels in education. She is Industry Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and affiliated with its Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion. Leslie is also a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow.
Dr Kelly Stephens is an experienced education policy and research leader. Kelly served as Director, Strategic Analysis within the NSW Department of Education’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation for a decade, where she played a leading role in the development of the School Excellence Framework and the fostering of evidence-based practice through What Works Best. Kelly has also held leadership roles in the Centre for Learning Innovation, the Education for a Changing World program, and as Director, Schools Policy, where she managed the strategic policy framework for K–12 education. Kelly supports the Network and its associated work program as Director, Edtech and Education Policy.
Geoff Gallop challenges us to commit to the aspirational goals of ‘excellence’ and ‘equity’ in education in a world of meritocratic hubris. . .
“Equity in education as the fundamental education policy is important not only for economic reasons, but it is a moral imperative especially in those countries that have made a promise to give all their people a fair go”. (Sahlberg and Cobbold ,2021)
Any commentary on what we ought to expect from the nation’s education system needs to start with the Education Ministers and their Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). Its over-arching and aspirational goals for the system as a whole are “excellence” and “equity”. I interpret this to mean (1) a system that is continually improving in educational performance and (2) one that pushes hard to ensure all who access it can realise their talents and capacities. So too, our ministers say, it ought it be a system that helps create “confident and creative individuals” with “high expectations for their educational outcomes”. These objectives should never be far from our mind, they represent a promise to the people as to what we should expect from our schooling system.
Such goals are particularly relevant to the government sector within whose classrooms are “the vast bulk of students with disability and disadvantage”.1 The NSW statistics relevant to the finding are as follows:
The number of students with disability estimated to attract funding support has increased by almost 300 per cent since 2002.
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) students in public schools has risen by 83 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
The number of students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) has increased by 45 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
Students classified from a low socio-educational advantage (SEA) status now make up 32 per cent of the student population.
One-third of NSW’s low SEA students live in regional, rural and remote areas and 86 per cent of those are enrolled in public schools. 2
With these facts related to a segregated system on the table, we are obliged to go further and ask whether or not our stated objectives of excellence, equity and creativity are being achieved, not just for some but for all segments of our society, including the disadvantaged? In Australian language it’s what we call a “fair go”!
Sahlberg and Cobbold
In taking up such a challenge, both philosophically and practically, we have been greatly assisted by the work of Pasi Sahlberg and Trevor Cobbold. They note the deficiency of the current National Schooling Reform Agreement (NSRA), namely that it doesn’t clearly enough define “equity-in-education”. They point to plenty of loose talk about “equality of opportunity” but insufficient clarity about it for policymaking, implementation and evaluation.
Their solution to this has two aspects:
“First, from an individual perspective, equity in education outcomes should mean that all children receive an education that enables them to fully participate in adult society in a way of their choosing. We can refer to this as an adequate education. Second, equity in education should also mean that students from different social groups achieve similar average outcomes and a similar range of these outcomes. We call this social equity-in-education”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)
Their definition of “equity-in-education” is particularly significant because:
“…it is unreasonable to expect in education policies or in school leadership strategies that all children will achieve the same education outcomes because, as individuals, they have a range of abilities and talents which lead to different choices in schooling. However, it is reasonable to expect that these different abilities and talents are distributed similarly across different social, ethnic and gender groups in society”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)
Put the two objectives together – an adequate education for all and more equity in educational outcomes across the society – and we have a strong and meaningful basis for guiding design and evaluation.
Sahlberg and Cobbold also point out that there may very well be groups within groups, “sub-groups” as they call them. For example, they may exist between indigenous students in remote as opposed to urban settings. This necessarily complicates the objective of improving social equity and needs to be thought through as required. It doesn’t, however, change the argument for equity.
Fairness and Public Policy
There are conservative commentators who dispute the assumption that different abilities and talents are distributed similarly within the groups that make up society. They are left defending hierarchy as in some sense “natural” or, for all of its faults, a better and more stable way to run a society, especially if there is room for some upward mobility. More to the point, and counter to Cobbold and Sahlberg, such conservatives say that fairness can’t actually be the focus of public policy, even as a generalised aspiration. Pushing the system towards equity-in-education may be good in “theory” but in “practice” it leads to more harm than good, upsetting as it does merit based decision making. This is so, says leading conservative critic, F.A. Hayek, because social justice is a “mirage”, “meaningless” and incompatible with a liberal, market society. (Hayek, 1976)
In response to this we are all obliged to ask the question: Why shouldn’t we aspire to more equality in educational outcomes as part of a broader agenda of fairness for all? It’s an objective derived from our human rights commitments (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26) and one that gives clarity to the anti-discrimination implications of those commitments. Whether it be gender, class, race, ethnicity or domicile around which we gather relevant information, we ought to ensure that educational outcomes allow equal access to further education, highly paid occupations and influential positions in society. We ought to be widening rather than limiting the pool of talent. (Sahlberg and Cobbold, 2021)
Let me now turn to some of the relevant statistics. On the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) Cobbold writes:
“The paper shows that 28% of low SES Year 9 students were below the national reading standard in 2022, 35% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly 30% of Indigenous students were below the reading standard, 38% were below the writing standard and 16% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly one-third of remote area students were below the reading standard, 46% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. By contrast, only 3% of Year 9 high SES students did not achieve the reading standard, 5% did not achieve the writing standard and 1% did not achieve the numeracy standard.
These are shocking inequities. For example, it is totally unacceptable that the percentage of low SES Year 9 students not achieving the national reading standard is 9 times that of high SES students and the proportion of Indigenous and remote area students not achieving the standard is 10 times that of high SES students”.
In some areas there were improvements but not enough to say that there isn’t “an appalling inequity” in the system.(Cobbold, 2023)
Do Schools Matter?
It is the case, of course, that social and economic factors play a crucial – some say decisive role – in all of this. A radical interpretation of these SES factors is that of sociologist – and social mobility scholar, John Goldthorpe (2020) . He writes: “It’s not schools and universities, but differences in home environments, and particularly the time parents can give their children, that are the obstacles to equality of opportunity”. Another perspective is that of the OECD who say that “some children from disadvantaged households do achieve strong outcomes, demonstrating that equitable outcomes are possible”.(OECD, 2022) Note the reference to “some” rather than “many”!
My conclusion from this is the same as that of Sahlberg and Cobbold:
Schools are in a constant battle against the reproduction of inequality and poverty in society. Since the out-of-school factors explain majority of variation in students’ achievement in school, their efforts must be supported by economic and social policies to reduce growing inequality and poverty. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp16 -17)
I would read this as saying that both external, SES factors, and internal, school factors, need to be working in tandem to ensure adequacy and improve equality outcomes, step by step, as part of a broader ambition to bring about a fairer and more productive society.
It’s Sahlberg’s view that it’s not just the continuous reproduction or disadvantage that holds back educational equity but also the policy agenda that has dominated in recent decades. He calls it the Global Education Reform Movement (or GERM) and it involves standardisation, a focus on core subjects, the search for low-risk ways of reaching learning goals, the use of corporate management models and test-based accountability policies”.(Sahlberg, 2012) Unless qualified with some real-world issues related to teachers position in the labour market, school leadership and management, classroom realities and, of course, school funding, such an agenda is bound to fail if improved educational outcomes are the objective.3
A Meritocracy?
The twin pursuit of excellence and equity is not helped either by what Professor Michael Sandel has called “meritocratic hubris” or the tendency of those who land on top to believe that their success is their own doing and, by implication, that those who were left behind, must deserve their fate as well”. Underpinning this hubris is “the tendency to forget our indebtedness to family, teachers, community, country, and the times in which we live as conditions for the success that we enjoy”.(Sandel, 2020)
Certainly more competition for jobs at the top and more diversity in the CEO class that emerges is in the public interest. Former OECD economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall puts it this way: “Inequality in the market for education is a barrier to long-term success” and is clearly in play in Australia. He points to the “remarkable outperformance of students from expensive private schools for entry to the best university courses, and their eventual dominance of corporal boardrooms”. (Blundell-Wignall, 2023) In other joint studies of the experience of the USA, France and Sweden, he finds evidence consistent with views “that more egalitarian societies that value innate ability more than social standing will generate better commercial leadership and economic performance than countries that do not”. (Atkinson and Blundell-Wignall, 2021)
In relation to GERM and the policies it produces, none have been as influential as “choice and competition” as opposed to “excellence and equity”. It leads to the conclusion that the government sector is best set up as a collection of semi-independent schools, minimally united and supported. This isn’t, as we argued in the first chapter of Valuing the teaching profession, “a sound basis upon which to build the commitment, capacities and leadership needed to turn the corner of disadvantage.” (Gallop, Kavanagh, and Lee , 2021) Let alone is it the basis to pursue equality of outcomes (as defined by Sahlberg and Cobbold). Our policy makers need a strategic, co-ordinated and prioritised approach to the way it builds its public school system.
It’s the case that many of the challenges facing principals and classroom teachers today are being experienced by all schools, government and non-government. Mental health issues and behavioural issues are at play in society – and, therefore, in classrooms today. In relation to this there’s plenty of evidence to lead us to conclude that the pursuit of equality – in all of its manifestations – starting with income and material equality puts schools in a better position to tackle those challenges.4
Thus far I’ve addressed some of the realities that make difficult the achievement of improved performance in both excellence and equity – the sociology of disadvantage, the politics of GERM and the ideology of meritocracy. On the other side of the equation we now have a clear definition of equity and what can demonstrate whether progress is – or isn’t – being made in that direction. This is the breakthrough that gives definition and structure to the argument.5
Strengths of Government Schools
We know too, that the all-important government sector has strengths lacking in the non-government sector – and which can be mobilised for progress in equity.
We know, for example, that within the limits laid down by the social and economic environment within which schools operate, government schools perform as well as their non-government counterparts, and that is the case even with all the resources and infrastructure the private sector has to provide for its students. (Larson, 2022)
We know too, that state (public) school graduates do better at university than private school graduates within the same end-of-school tertiary entrance score, this being “a clear finding” in England as well as Australia. (Preston, 2014).
We know too, that values, more inclusive and science-based than propagated in parts of the non-government sector, prevail in government schools. Learning to live with differences, a basic requirement for policy-makers in a multicultural society, is at the core of the mission of a government school today.6
In noting these positive drivers related to a government school system, I’m reminded of the early years of the Australian Nation when public sector institutions or enterprises were set up with the clear aim of not only competing with private sector equivalents but also seeking best practice in what they do. It soon became obvious that strong political support was needed – in funding and organisational innovation – if we were to create a genuine mixed economy. The same applies today, and in the context of education needs to be strategic and more than strong, and coming from both the national and state arms of government.
The politics of all of this can’t be avoided. Myths are myths. Prejudice is prejudice but it doesn’t mean they won’t be influential. A significant portion of the community have come to see the education debate in terms of choice (parents) and competition (government). They want government priorities to support their own families and their own children. It’s that old battle that can’t be avoided, self-interest versus the public interest. It’s one thing to have a mix that seeks to reconcile the two principles, quite another to allow one of the two elements to undermine the other.
Definition, measurement and reporting
More practically our focus needs to be on developing further the work on the statistics and information generally needed in relation to “equity-in-education”. As Cobbold has put it:
“A clear definition of equity in education is fundamental to making real progress towards it. Not only would it clarify expectations about equity but it is necessary to set clear achievement targets for students from different social groups and monitor progress in achieving equity. It is equally necessary to ensure government accountability for making progress on equity”. (Cobbold, 2022)
Currently, says Cobbold, reporting on progress is deficient. The same points are made by Jim Tognolini and Tom Alegounarias(2021) “ The relative lack of confidence in key concepts or generally understood definitions in the assessment domain is, therefore, an acute problem in teaching”
In relation to this “The inculcation of higher order thinking skills, non-cognitive skills, and competencies into the Australian Curriculum, in accord with the 2019 Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, has raised the stakes for beginning teachers to be able to teach, assess, interpret and measure progress on skills that have been traditionally found difficult, if not impossible, to measure” (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021)Making equity matter in all our thinking about education isn’t easy and, as we have seen, has its detractors and, indeed, its enemies. It requires a commitment that all may not share and it requires serious work in the province of measurement and assessment. It’s a – work – in – progress that needs leadership from our public schools as well as partnerships between them and the wider community, including our researchers.
Certainly, I trust that nothing I have written is meant to imply that “confident curriculum expertise” and “basic and varied pedagogical principles” aren’t crucial in the education endeavour (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021). Indeed they are, but unless they are backed up with “assessment expertise” and framed in the way outlined by Sahlberg and Cobbold (2021) there is every chance that only little – if any – dents into the prevailing inequalities will be possible.
Education Department quoted in Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021), p. 20.
Ibid.
See Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021) for an alternative approach to “reform”.
See Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.
See also, Cobbold, T. “Equity in Education must be clearly defined, measured and reported”, Pearls and Irritations, 1 July 2022.
See Gallop, G. Evolving Partnerships in Education (Australian College of Education, 1990), pp. 43-44.
Blundell-Wignall, A (2023 December 19) “Tip private schools out of boardrooms for a more productive Australia”, Australian Financial Review.
Sahlberg, P and Cobbold, T (2021) “Leadership for equity and adequacy in education”, School Leadership and Management, 20 May 2021,
Sandel, M (2020, September 14) Quoted in Evan Osnos, “A Political Philosopher on why Democrats should think differently about merit”, The New Yorker.
Tognolini,J. and Alegounarias, T (2021) Submission to the QualityTeacher Education Review
Wilkinson, R and Pickett (2009) K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.
Emeritus Professor Dr Geoff Gallop AC FASS was Director of Sydney University’s Graduate School of Government from 2006 to 2015. From 1986 to 2006 he was a Labor Party Member of Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly, a Minister in the Lawrence Government from 1990 to 1993 and Premier from 2001 to 2006. Currently he is the chair of the Research Committee for the New Democracy Foundation, a director of the Constitutional Education Fund of Australia, and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
He recently chaired a NSW Teachers Federation commissioned inquiry into the wages and working conditions for government school teachers in NSW.
Lisa Edwards explores how we can shift school-wide assessment practice and create a culture focussed on learning for both teachers and students . . .
As teachers, we know that assessment of, for and as learning is happening every day, in every classroom. We know that it occurs through the questions we ask; the answers we elicit, in both writing and through discussion; in the conversations we facilitate between students; in the self- and peer-assessment opportunities we provide; in more formal tasks; and in the ways that we record the evidence of learning following these formal and informal assessments. We know that in best practice, the feedback we provide to students through this varied assessment is designed to advance the learning of our students, and that the feedback we gain through our assessment drives improvements to our teaching, as we tailor learning experiences based on what the evidence tells us that our students need.
Yet, despite our best intentions, in many secondary contexts a continuing focus (conscious or otherwise) on formal, summative assessment can overshadow the value of both this continuous formative assessment, and of feedback, particularly in the eyes of our students. In many high schools, if we asked our students to tell us about assessment connected to their learning, it’s likely the majority would talk about formal tasks and tests, exams and assignments. They’d talk about HSC exams, NAPLAN, check-in, assessment tasks and schedules, weightings, marks and grades.
The research has indicated for a long time that providing marks and grades has the potential to detract from student engagement with more detailed constructive feedback and can have a detrimental impact on learner motivation and self-efficacy. It de-motivates low performing students and can foster complacency in high achievers (Black and Wiliam, 1998a). When a grade is present, students are less likely to heed written or verbal feedback. “A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking” from Oxford University (Elliot et. al, 2016) is an excellent recent review of the literature on this topic.
The big question school leaders face is how can we shift school-wide assessment practice, and perceptions of assessment, and create a culture focused on learning across the school – for teachers and students?
The importance of a growth mindset
Before digging deeper into assessment, let’s consider the mindset that our students need to become adaptive learners who engage with our feedback to improve. Carol Dweck’s (2006) mindset research remains highly relevant in our schools, almost 20 years later. Dweck found that 40% of students believe their ability is fixed; they believe that either they can do it or not and will give up when encountering difficulty. Another 40% understand that learning requires time and effort; these students try harder in the face of difficulty – our growth mindset students. The remainder sits in the middle. So, for about 60% of our students, we have work to do on mindset.
There is certainly hope – Dweck’s work showed that the growth mindset can be cultivated. Yet in many cases the fixed mindset prevails. How many times have we heard, “I just can’t do Maths,” or “My essays are never going to be better than a C,” or “Why would I bother trying when I know I am going to fail? Or just get another D?”
The good news is that as an educational community, we continue to strive towards growth – our collegial dialogue continues to explore the problem of these fixed mindsets. How can we encourage all students to see the value in effort and practice? How do we ensure that students use our feedback to improve? How can we develop students who take responsibility for their learning, as well as building self-efficacy and resilience?
Yet even as we attempt to solve these problems, in many schools we retain assessment practices that hinder a growth mindset. Yes, we have system requirements to be adhered to for assessment in Stage 6, but we have much more flexibility to develop growth-oriented practices to lay the foundations and create self-motivated learners in Stages 4 and 5. Some practices we continue to see that undermine our best efforts towards a growth culture include:
Summative assessment driven HSC-style assessment schedules and tasks from Stage 6 right down to Stage 4
Teaching and learning programs that emphasise content without planning the evidence of learning to be collected.
A lack of clarity about the purpose of learning and what success looks like for students.
Feedback that is not explicit and task-oriented, which students ignore or don’t engage with, particularly when there’s a mark or a grade on the page.
Missed opportunities to teach meaningful self- and peer-assessment.
A lack of time and metacognitive support for students to understand themselves as learners and set meaningful and individualised learning goals.
School reports that still emphasise grades (and in many cases marks and ranks – imagine coming last in the class or year in Year 7 or 8 – what would be the impact on motivation for that student moving forward?)
The “image” of the student
Professor Jim Tognolini, Director of the University of Sydney’s Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment (CEMA), defines assessment as follows:
“Assessment involves professional judgement based upon an image formed by the collection of information about student performance.” (Tognolini & Stanley, 2007).
“… that professional judgement is owned on a day-to-day basis by teachers… Central to the way that teachers assess is the idea of building up an image of what it is students know and can do. It is this image in a standards-referencing system that is used by teachers to build evidence to “track” and report student progress along a developmental continuum.” (Tognolini, 2020)
Not only does Tognolini’s definition emphasise that we are assessing formally and informally in every lesson, but it also empowers teachers by underscoring the importance of teacher professional judgement.
I highly recommend listening to The CPL’s podcast with Professor Tognolini “The Teacher’s Voice in Educational Assessment”which emphasises the importance of teachers having confidence in their own professional judgement about assessing their students’ development (in relation to grade and performance descriptors provided by our system). The important role of the school community and its leaders in this is to collaborate with, and support, teachers to exercise their professional judgment.
This approach to assessment is also an important reminder that when reporting on student achievement, we need to recognise that a student might have demonstrated achievement of an outcome in class discussion, or in a class-based task or activity. Summative assessment should not be the sole source of information about student achievement – and particularly not in Stages 4 and 5. It is just one of many sources of information teachers should be using to create the “image” of the student, which is then reported to parents (and students).
Vitally, to shift away from a culture that values only marks and grades, this view of assessment supports students to understand that every piece of learning matters; every activity and task matters and is an opportunity to improve, and they are not just being assessed on three or four key summative tasks over the course of a year.
What does assessment look like in a growth culture?
Black and Wiliam’s (2009) research into formative assessment and feedback remains a staple of best practice. Their work emphasises clear learning intentions and success criteria, classroom activities designed to elicit evidence of learning, quality feedback, peer learning and assessment, and self-assessment. Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment (2018) is rich in practical application and Lyn Sharratt’s Clarity is another useful and accessible text for teachers and school leaders regarding assessment planning across the school, where assessment informs instruction. There are, of course, many other excellent resources on assessment practice, and in the next section, I provide some ideas and strategies drawn from a range of research to develop a growth culture in my classroom, faculty, and across the school.
1.Learning intentions: A roadmap for learning
Clear learning intentions should be connected to syllabus outcomes and describe (in student-friendly language) what students should know, understand, and be able to do.
This doesn’t mean every lesson needs a learning intention (though many schools have gone in this direction, and that can be helpful). Structured unit outlines can set up learning powerfully, with higher order driving questions and a clear expectation that assessment is continuous and all learning matters, thus providing a roadmap for students’ learning. This is a unit outline I created for English. The structure can be adapted for different courses – what’s important is that we share with students where we are going with the unit, and what they are going to be learning.
It is vital for students to understand what they are learning, and why. Clarity in all stages of learning and assessment is one of the keys to growth.
2.Success criteria
Quality success criteria describe what success looks like in relation to the learning intentions. Some of the best success criteria are those that are co-developed by students and teachers, and remember, success criteria are not just for formal tasks.
Checklists for success, detailed rubrics, models and scaffolds, annotated models, annotated student work samples demonstrating high/mid/low levels, and co-developed criteria are all examples of success criteria – showing students clearly what is expected. Explaining the difference between a high and middle sample in explicit terms can be very powerful in increasing student understanding.
One of my favourite strategies for modelling success is to use descriptive rubrics. I like to use progression terms that DON’T align to the common five grade structure, as a small step away from student focus on grades, and language that fosters growth. Once familiar with them, students can be supported to use rubrics for self- and peer-assessment. I have also found that rubrics enable parents to understand expectations and support their children at home. Moving away from grades to rubrics like the one below can be a powerful enabler for students to understand their current level, and where they need to head next. This is an example that I have used in English, but again, rubrics can be developed across KLAs, and for different types of tasks.
3.Explicit descriptive feedback
“Feedback is only successful if students use it to improve their performance.” (Wiliam, 2016)
Therefore, central to our provision of feedback is teaching students how to engage with it, and providing the time for them to do so. Whether written or verbal, you have taken time to provide feedback to students. In order for students to recognise its value, it is vital we incorporate feedback into class time.
Quality feedback involves reciprocal dialogue. Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next and how to get there? Provide feedback on what the student did well, what they need to focus on, and next steps.
Teacher feedback should be specific and descriptive. Avoid ego-based praise – focus on the task. When you wrote THIS, it was effective because… To keep improving, do THIS.
Frame lessons around one or two deep questions. Think-pair-share and provide task-oriented verbal feedback on student responses. Don’t just say, “Good answer,” but tell them why it is was good and prompt further thinking. “Did you consider…?”
“Avoid grading. Grades are consistently found to demotivate low attainers. They also fail to challenge high attainers, often making them complacent. So avoid giving a grade or mark except where absolutely necessary. It is rarely necessary, and almost never desirable, to grade every piece of work.” (Black and Wiliam, 1998b)
Importantly, the feedback that assessment provides to teachers about student learning must now be used to plan future learning. “Assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet the needs.” (Black and Wiliam, 1998a)
4.Peer- and self-assessment
“The amount of feedback we can give our students is limited. In the longer term, the most productive strategy is to develop our students’ ability to give themselves feedback.” (Wiliam, 2016)
Peer- and self-assessment fall into NESA’s “Assessment as learning” category. As with feedback, teaching students to peer- and self-assess requires time – but it is time well spent in the long term. Wiliam’s “The Secret of Effective Feedback” (2016) is a useful article to use with teachers, and contains a range of practical tips that are applicable across the curriculum.
Wiliam recommends starting students in assessing anonymous student work: what feedback would you give the creator, based on the criteria we’ve developed together? Then, move onto the work of peers, and finally, self-assessment. Not only is this strategy useful to develop the metacognition and self-assessment skills of individual students but having a team of critical friends providing constructive feedback to each other is a powerful tool for teachers to build collective efficacy. As trust and skill develop, this strategy can strengthen the achievement of the whole group.
Some specific and creative self- and peer-assessment strategies, courtesy of Dylan Wiliam include:
Self-marking – students mark their own piece using the criteria and teacher comments prior to receiving back the task and grade – indicate performance against criteria/rubric and add comments.
Task/criteria matching – for extended responses – small groups (3-4 students) are given responses with completed criteria but they are mixed up. They must match the criteria to the response.
Tell students how many of their answers on a task are incorrect and ask them to figure out the incorrect responses – this is a great one for Maths, Science, or any multiple choice tests.
Teacher provides verbal recorded feedback instead of written – students to annotate their work as they listen.
Give comments only and students are required to reflect on what they did well, what they need to improve, and their next step learning goals BEFORE a mark or grade is given.
Other simple peer- and self-feedback ideas:
Two stars and a wish – identify two positives and an area for improvement.
Plus, minus, interesting – a positive, something to work on, and something that makes you think.
Colour coding – highlight elements of own or peer’s writing in different colours eg key concepts in yellow, supporting evidence in green, evaluation in pink
Traffic lights – use green, amber and red cards for students to provide feedback to teachers about their understanding.
Checklists – what do students need to include to meet the criteria? Have you included all of these elements? Checklists can be co-created with students.
What would I change to improve my work? – after reflecting on feedback.
5.Goal-setting and planning learning
The next step in quality assessment as learning practice is to guide students to reflect on their learning and achievement and to set goals for future learning. Again, growth-oriented schools will prioritise processes and TIME for student self-reflection, before rushing into the next content. Essentially, by providing this time and guidance, we are valuing growth skills over content. This means we are teaching students to be better learners, not just delivering content. In many cases, this involves a shift in mindset for teachers.
Some guided reflection questions:
How did your self-assessment compare to your teacher’s feedback? Did you identify similar or different strengths and areas for focus?
What did you do well and why do you think you did well with this?
What did you not do as well and why?
What questions do you have?
What specifically do you need to improve in the next learning phase? Identify three key focuses for improvement.
Identify three specific learning goals from this reflection.
Similarly, teachers must use their assessment to plan the next phase of learning. What skills have most students achieved? What areas need further development? What differentiation needs to occur to cater to the differences in student need, as evidenced by the data you have collected and the “images” of your students?
How, then, do we report on student achievement, if not based solely on summative tasks?
Using this range of formative assessment and feedback strategies with students does not preclude us from reporting outcomes on the required five-point scale. It does mean that instead of basing our reporting on a small number of summative tasks, we are using a broad range of evidence collected over a semester or year, which has created the “image” of our student, to make a professional judgement of our students’ achievements against each of the outcomes. The professional dialogue created during the standard setting of alignment to the common grade scale or course performance descriptors between teachers of a cohort is in itself powerful learning for us.
Finally, we need to be creative (and brave) in our reporting. An overall A-E grade is not required. We can use the five descriptive word equivalents of A-E grades to report on each outcome, based on the range of evidence we have collected: outstanding, high, sound, basic and limited. We certainly don’t need marks and ranks. If parents request information about their child’s achievement in relation to the cohort, we can provide them with the number of students in each grade category. We need to educate students and parents about the rationale behind our reporting.
Of course, shifting culture is a challenging process, which will not happen overnight. Students need to see their teachers prioritising this practice right across the school, which requires commitment and consistency. I have found that professional learning communities engaged in a form of reflective action learning can be a successful way to learn together, put theory into practice, reflect on our impact and thus refine our practice together. Hargreaves and O’Connor’s (2018) Collaborative Professionalism is a fantastic resource to explore strategies for collaborative professional learning in teams or school-wide. But, starting small is also ok. A faculty, or team, can find success, which can gain momentum and be shared across the school.
Improving assessment for learning starts with a seed of intent – to refine our practice with student learning at the centre. With emphasis on evidence-informed formative assessment practice, that seed of intent can grow into a rich school – wide culture of quality assessment for learning. A culture in which teacher and student focus is not driven by formal, summative assessment, nor by marks and grades (as is so often the case in the secondary context), but by a positive mindset of growth and improvement, where every activity is valued as an opportunity to learn.
Black, P. (2016) ‘The role of assessment in pedagogy – and why validity matters’ in D Wyse, L. Hayward, & J Pandya (eds), Sage handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, vol. 2, pp. 725–739, Sage, London.
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998a) (reprinted 2014 with updates) Inside the Black Box, VIC:Hawker Brownlow Education.
Black and Wiliam (1998b) “Assessment and Classroom Learning” in Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, vol 5, issue 1.
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2009) ‘Developing the theory of formative assessment’, Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, vol. 21, no. 1, pp 5-31.
Elliott, V., Baird, J., Hopfenbeck, T., Ingram, J., Thompson, I., Usher & Zantout, M., (2016) A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking Oxford
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
Hargreaves, A. and O’Connor, M. (2018) Collaborative Professionalism. Corwin.
Sharratt, L., (2019) Clarity.What Matters MOST in Learning, Teaching, and Leading. Corwin.
Tognolini, J., (2020) “The Beginning of a Journey to Assessment and Data Literacy for Teachers” The Journal of Professional Learning
Tognolini, J., & Stanley, G., (2007) “Standards-Based Assessment: A Tool and Means to the Development of Human Capital and Capacity Building in Education” Australian Journal of Education
Wiliam, D. (2018) Embedded formative assessment. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.Wiliam, D. (2016) ‘The Secret of Effective Feedback’ Educational Leadership, April 2016, Vol 73
Lisa Edwards is a school leader passionate about the potential of public education to change lives.
With over 20 years of experience with the NSW Department of Education, working in schools in Sydney’s south and southwest, Lisa is an English teacher by training, and at heart. Her leadership journey has included the roles of Head Teacher Wellbeing, Head Teacher English, and Deputy Principal. She has developed resources and presented on assessment, pedagogy and programming, working in collaboration with the Department’s secondary curriculum team, and has published and presented for the NSW English Teachers’ Association. Lisa received an Australian Council for Educational Leaders award and a Premier’s Award for Public Service for her work leading improvement in literacy and HSC achievement, and currently presents for the NSW Teachers’ Federation’s Centre for Professional Learning on leading lifting achievement and quality assessment practice.
Lisa is a strong advocate for public education and educational equity, dedicated to supporting teachers in public schools to maximise learning outcomes and, therefore, opportunities for our students.
Melissa Preston highlights the role of collegiality, compassion, and collaboration within the context of teaching in TAFE. . .
The education landscape is constantly evolving, and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions play a pivotal role in imparting vocational skills and knowledge to students. TAFE teachers are instrumental in ensuring the quality of education and the success of these institutions. Among the numerous factors that contribute to the effectiveness of TAFE, collegiality, collaboration, and compassion are key. The importance of these three interrelated aspects, within the context of TAFE teaching, highlights their role in enhancing peda/ andragogical practices, teacher development, student outcomes, and the overall learning environment.
Collegiality encompasses a sense of camaraderie, mutual respect, and shared responsibility among colleagues. For TAFE teachers, this means cultivating an environment of open dialogue, constructive feedback, as well as a willingness to collaborate for the betterment of teaching practices and student learning outcomes. Effective collegiality fosters a supportive culture where teachers can learn from each other’s experiences, share innovative teaching strategies, and collectively address challenges. This sense of unity enhances job satisfaction (Louis & Kruse, 1995) and promotes a positive work environment, thereby contributing to teacher retention rates within the demanding TAFE landscape.
Collegiality not only enhances the professional growth of teachers but also has a direct impact on student outcomes. Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) support the idea that schools (and by extension, TAFE institutions) with a strong sense of collegiality tend to perform better academically. Collaborative planning and curriculum development ensure that courses are aligned with industry standards and meet the evolving needs of students. Furthermore, by engaging in peer observation and feedback, TAFE teachers can enhance their peda/andragogical skills and provide students with more effective learning experiences.
Collaboration extends the concept of collegiality by emphasising joint efforts to achieve common goals. In the context of TAFE, collaboration is not confined to year-level or faculty interactions; it extends to interdisciplinary teamwork that can lead to comprehensive and holistic learning experiences for students. Hattie (2012) argues that teacher collaboration has a substantial impact on student achievement. Collaborative endeavours allow TAFE teachers to pool their diverse expertise and perspectives, resulting in well-rounded educational experiences for students. In TAFE, collaboration becomes particularly significant as it helps bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical skills required in the workforce.
Through interdisciplinary collaboration, TAFE teachers can create complete learning experiences that simulate real-world scenarios. For instance, a collaboration between an automotive and business teacher could lead to the development of a project where students design a business plan for an auto repair shop. Such collaborative projects not only expose students to multiple facets of their chosen field but also foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills. By simulating workplace dynamics, collaboration among TAFE teachers prepares students for the challenges they will encounter in their careers.
In considering how to create positive and nurturing learning environments, compassion refers to the genuine care and concern that TAFE teachers show towards their colleagues and students. TAFE students often come from diverse backgrounds and face a variety of barriers to learning – including neurodiversity, cultural diversity, and damage to the affective domain – therefore, compassion plays a pivotal role in creating a supportive and inclusive learning environment. Teachers who exhibit compassion tend to be more attuned to the needs of their students and can ‘cherry pick’ between andragogy and pedagogy to tailor their teaching approaches and accommodate different learning styles and abilities.
Furthermore, compassion among TAFE teachers contributes to a positive workplace culture. Overall, when teachers feel valued and supported, they are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and committed to their roles. This sense of belonging enhances job satisfaction and reduces burnout, which is a common concern not only amongst the mainstream teacher cohort, but the TAFE teacher cohort (Ingersoll, 2003). Compassionate teachers are also more open to collaboration and knowledge sharing, fostering an atmosphere of continuous learning within the institution.
The potent combination of collegiality, collaboration, and compassion among TAFE teachers yields a multitude of benefits that extend beyond the individual teacher and student. Firstly, a culture of collegiality promotes a strong sense of unity among the teaching staff, leading to improved communication and teamwork. This ensures that curriculum development is comprehensive and aligned with industry demands. Collaborative planning and assessment also facilitate the identification of areas needing improvement, allowing for timely adjustments to teaching strategies. Secondly, collaboration among TAFE teachers encourages the sharing of best practices and innovative teaching methods. When teachers collaborate across disciplines, they can incorporate different perspectives into their teaching, resulting in more comprehensive and engaging lessons. Moreover, collaborative projects for students from different courses and faculties encourage interdisciplinary thinking and problem-solving skills, reflecting the complexities of real-world work environments. Lastly, compassion for colleagues and students contributes to a positive institutional climate. When TAFE teachers model empathy and understanding, students are more likely to feel comfortable and motivated in their learning journeys. Compassionate teachers also serve as mentors and role models, inspiring students to pursue their goals and overcome obstacles. Furthermore, a compassionate work environment promotes teacher well-being and retention, which is essential for maintaining institutional stability and long-term growth.
While the importance of the 3Cs – collegiality, collaboration, and compassion – among TAFE teachers is clear, there are challenges to achieving and maintaining these aspects within the TAFE environment. Limited time for collaboration, untenable teaching loads, gatekeeping of information, partially or poorly implemented ICT systems and heavy hierarchies of management hinder effective collaboration and communication despite these being core values of TAFE. The 3Cs can sometimes be overshadowed by burdensome administrative tasks and procedures that are, unfortunately, intrinsically linked to the Government’s funding model of TAFE which only serve to compound curriculum pressure. To address these challenges, TAFE must implement strategies such as dedicated time for collaborative planning, adequate and high-level professional development and interdisciplinary workshops, as well as meaningful mentorship programs. TAFE also demonstrates a reluctance for these to occur on a face-to-face- basis which demonstrates management’s inability to understand that fundamentally education is a social activity. The current ad hoc approach and mishmash of platforms designed for business, not education, further act as inhibitors for teachers to share best practices and partake in the 3Cs. Furthermore, fostering a culture of empathy and appreciation through recognition programs can reinforce compassionate behaviour among TAFE teachers, but again they must done in a way that is authentic.
Collegiality, collaboration, and compassion hold immense significance among TAFE teachers, fostering an environment conducive to effective teaching and student success. Collegiality forms the basis of mutual support and professional growth; collaboration leverages diverse expertise to enhance student learning experiences; and compassion nurtures positive learning environments and teacher well-being. The integration of these three aspects not only benefits teachers and students but also contributes to the overall growth and success of TAFE institutions. By acknowledging and prioritizing collegiality, collaboration, and compassion, TAFE institutions can create a culture of excellence that prepares students for the challenges of the modern workforce.
Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Hattie, J., 2012. Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge.
Ingersoll, R., 2003. Is there really a teacher shortage?A Research ReportCo-sponsored by The Consortium for Policy Research in Education and The Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy https://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/rmi/Shortage-RMI-09-2003.pdf
Louis, K.S. and Kruse, S.D., 1995. Professionalism and community: Perspectives on reforming urban schools. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Melissa Preston is a teacher at TAFE NSW. Her specialities include neurodiversity and LLND. The youngest daughter of migrants, Melissa came to teaching late in life after finishing her first degree in 2018. Prior to this Melissa spent nearly 20 years as a qualified financial planner and bank manager.
As the only permanent full time teacher between Canberra and Sydney, Melissa has a large geographic footprint and is proud to teach, learn and live on Ngambri, Ngunnawal and Gundungurra country. She predominately teaches on the high school equivalency programs, as well as the occasional specialist program.
Melissa has been active in the NSW Teachers Federation since joining the teaching profession and credits her sanity to activism and the collegiately, compassion and collaboration that it brings to her teaching practice.
Lara Watson argues the case for the importance of a Yes vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum. . .
After more than 65,000 years of continuous culture, it’s time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are recognised in our 122-year-old Constitution. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people want recognition in a practical form by having a say on issues and policies that impact their lives.
It’s not complicated or confusing, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are asking Australians to say ‘YES’ if they agree that we should be able to give feedback to the Federal Government when they are making laws and policies for us.
When the Constitution was being drafted, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were still being murdered, along with other atrocities and the view was we would die out with so few of us left. So, there was no thought or reason to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the document that sets out the rules for Australia.
I know many people are anxious and don’t want to silence any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ voices, but it’s curious that some people feel that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must have a 100% consensus to move forward and create a better Australia for all. We are just as diverse as any other group, we need opposition in our ranks, so we can have the robust conversations that deliver best practice and outcomes for our people.
Yes23 shared with us their polling which shows that 83% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people support being recognised in the Constitution (in the practical form of a Voice to Parliament). Further to this, there are numerous surveys and polls online that put this support at between 80% to 87%.
It is important to listen to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, when they talk about Sovereignty and Treaty before Voice, to understand their position isn’t against Constitutional recognition, but a continued fight against broken promises, oppression, systemic racism, exclusion and entrenched poverty. We all fight to better the lives and create opportunities for our families and our communities, we just choose a different path to get there.
Not only have government, but laws also and policies made for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples failed for centuries, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been blamed for this failure. This has contributed to stereotyping and misconceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
When I went to school, I learned about Captain Cook, the First Fleet and how the British ‘civilised’ the savage Natives. I was told not to identify as Aboriginal because I could get away with being white and I was asked why I was hanging around with ‘those’ people referring to my friends who were darker than me. I became disengaged from school; school became more of a social experience instead of a learning one. Educational disengagement is still relevant to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Indeed, many remote communities do not have high schools, so at 12 years old many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are put on a plane and sent away for school, away from everything they know, their family, community, culture, language and Country. There is little to no support, they are scared living in such a foreign environment and of course they don’t want to go back to that.
Our children deserve access to education in the community in which they live, they deserve to have their culture recognised and their history told to build understanding and to break down those misconceptions. They deserve opportunities that lead to employment and careers, they should be our hope for the future. This is just one reason why a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament is so important.
Governments have taken a generic approach to issues in our communities, and this doesn’t get to the heart of the cause of those issues. Each of our communities have different priorities and needs, and they have their own answers on how best to fix them. With a Voice to Parliament, we can share all this information, give our input on how to address them in a culturally safe way and really get to the core of the issue.
We have had representative bodies before, but when there is a change of government, they are de-funded and collapse. The vital work done fades into obscurity. We are continually having to start the work from scratch, time and time again: the same emotional and cultural labour.
We have sent petitions, asked to be seen and heard, rallied, lobbied, campaigned, we have gone to governments, and we have gone to the monarchs, yet our issues are still the same. Governments continue to create policies that are expensive with no meaningful outcome, and which are often more harmful than productive.
This time, in 2023, we are inviting the Australian people (through the Uluru Statement from the Heart) to walk with us, to help heal our Nation and to create a fairer, inclusive and better Australia for all.
We are asking you to say YES to recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as the First Peoples, and to enshrine a Voice, so we can have meaningful input on the issues affecting us (our peoples and our communities).
Lara Watson is a Birri Gubba woman from Central Queensland.
Lara worked on the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ (ACTU’s) successful campaign to deliver working rights for Community Development Program workers.
She is currently the ACTU’s Indigenous Officer and is leading their Unions For Yes campaign. She also created the artwork for this campaign. The symbol she used in it means ‘wadja gathering’. ‘Wadja’ in Wiri language means ‘speech’ or ‘word’ (the closest word to ‘voice’); gathering because the campaign is a community one)
Jack Galvin Waight delves into the reasons why it is essential to make our public schools secular havens . . .
As educators we know that in the classroom, and in modern society, time is crucial. Workloads are excessive and the curriculum is crowded. As outlined in my Eric Pearson 2021 Report: Teaching not preaching: Making our public schools secular Special Religious Education (SRE) is a massive waste of valuable learning time. The equivalent of the loss of a full term for a primary school graduate.
It is also an administrative burden for schools and causes our students to both sit out and miss out. SRE, even contradicts the Department’s own Schools Success Model that “requires a focus on teaching and learning” and the 2020 NSW Curriculum Review which recommended as a priority that the Government reduce the impact of extra-curricular issues and topics. (NSW Education Standard Authority [NESA], 2020)
Compounding this loss of valuable time is the weekly battle to keep our schools secular havens. Programs like Hardcore Christians, Jesus Car Racing, andHillsong’s Shine are considered, by academia, as the exact opposite of what is appropriate and required for our students and society. Like the discredited $61million a year taxpayer funded chaplaincy program, there is a consensus that SRE is outdated, devalues the profession, potentially promotes extremism and is simply not appropriate for 21st Century learning.
My report (Galvin Waight, 2022), which was released in July 2022, analyses this research, examines special legal advice pertaining to legislation, and contains structured interviews with academics, activists, labour theorists, and union leaders. The paper provides key campaign recommendations to ensure that our NSW public education system is secular, inclusive and appropriately reflects multicultural and pluralistic contemporary society.
The findings highlight that, as a profession, it is time for us take this time back. Our students need education not indoctrination.
A profession united
This important work has started. For the first time ever in NSW, and as an outcome of my report there is a unified educational alliance — Primary Principals’ Association (PPA), Secondary Principals’ Council (SPC), the NSW Teachers Federation and the NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations (P&C) — arguing that SRE/Special Education in Ethics (SEE) simply must go, or at the very least, not interfere with curriculum time.
These peak groups are calling on both sides of politics to implement an independent review of SRE/SEE.1
It should be noted that there has not been an independent review of SRE since the 1980 Rawlinson report. The 2015 ARTD Consultancy2 terms of reference examined only the implementation of SRE and SEE in NSW Government schools – it was not an independent review into SRE/SEE.
All peak educational groups are unified in their view that not interrupting curriculum time is essential. Noting that SRE/SEE could take place in schools at lunch/ recess or before and after school. A precedent for this was created in 2015, when the incoming Victorian Labor Government introduced a ministerial direction, removing Scripture from formal class time, virtually eliminating the program (Galvin Waight, 2022), Providers and any other religious or community groups could still apply to use public schools, outside of curriculum time, as part of the Department’s Sharing of School Facilities policy (NSW Department of Education, 2021)
If it can happen in Victoria: it can happen in NSW. Both the Primary Principals Association (PPA), 2022, and the Secondary Principals Council (SPC) 2017 have published position papers on the issues which they have identified around SRE/SEE. They can be accessed via: https://nswppa.org.au/position-papers & https://www.nswspc.org.au/position-papers/. Federation also has a long-standing policy position that SRE has no place in NSW public schools and that any education (religious or not) should be done in line with an approved curriculum and by a qualified teacher. This includes Ethics which as highlighted in my research paper, started out with good intentions but has become a distraction, helped to legitimise SRE, and is now part of the problem.
Parental and community support
Surveys and census data continues to reveal a growing community consensus and groundswell of public opinion for secular education and society.As part of my report Federation commissioned a Quantitative Survey of the NSW public and in April 2022 an online survey of 1,467 adults was conducted. Results showed that most parents want religion to be taught after school hoursand that most support is for secular values to be taught.
Of note, interviews revealed that when parents find out what is actually occurring in their children’s SRE lesson, they often become the greatest activists for change. Fairness in Religion in Schools (FIRIS) is one of these parent and community groups that continues to hold the Department, Providers and Government to account. FIRIS is most concerned that SRE is a self-regulating system with no oversight, and calls for the legislation to change and the time be given back to the professionals.
This community activism, survey data and international research comparisons (Galvin Waight, 2022)show that Australia, and NSW in particular, is completely out of step with the rest of the world. Most developed countries have recognised the dangers of extremism and have shifted to a world view General Religious Education (GRE) approach.3
This is highlighted by Dr Jennifer Bleazby’s 2022 study showing that religious instruction (SRE) can indoctrinate students by encouraging them to uncritically accept beliefs that are not well supported by evidence. Including conspiracy thinking, science denialism and extremist thinking. Her report concluded that it is time to seriously revaluate the place of religious instruction in our schools.
Alarmingly, even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in international legal cases has criticised and likened countries that still have a segregated, partial exemption process such as NSW to a ‘ghetto approach’ (Evans, 2008b, p. 470). (Galvin Waight, 2022)
Our Unfair funding system
Australia is also an international outlier when it comes to schools funding by continuing to maintain one of the highest concentrations of religious schools compared with other OECD countries. Approximately 30 per cent of all schools in Australia are affiliated with a religion and 94 per cent of private schools.(Centre for Public Education Research (CPER), 2022) This system of segregating children along lines of class, wealth, and religion, with large government subsidies to private schools and little accountability, is unprecedented internationally.
The media has largely focused on the proportion of public money going to elite and well-endowed private schools, but my report examines what Jennifer Buckingham, from the Centre for Independent Studies, describes as “‘fundamentalist’ Christian schools.”(Galvin Waight, 2022),
As religious education author Marion Maddox outlines, in my interview with her, ‘Some of the philosophies underpinning these schools are far from benign yet many are receiving substantially more government funding than public schools’.(Galvin Waight, 2022)
In December 2022 ABC Four Corners rang me with questions about my report. Most significantly, they asked who is regulating and evaluating these schools? The programs excellent investigative report aired in January 2023 and investigates the disturbing practices of Opus Dei schooling and its influence in the NSW Liberal Party.
Reporter Louise Milligan reveals in some cases the schools are not following state curriculum. They are accused of persistent attempts to recruit teenagers to Opus Dei and of teaching misinformation about sexual health, including discouraging girls from getting the HPV cervical cancer vaccine. Former students at the elite schools reflect on the practices they say have scarred them for life, going as far as to call the schools “hell on earth.” (ABC Four Corners, 2023)
This is why Australia’s unfair and unsecular education system must continue to be challenged. This is why Federation continues to campaign for a funding system that prioritises public schools. This is why the School Chaplaincy Program (which remains unfettered by statute and oversight and that the High Court in 2014 ruled was of no benefit to students under the law) (Galvin Waight, 2022) must also be scrapped.
Recommendation 3 of my report calls on Federation and the AEU to reinvigorate a national campaign to replace chaplains with qualified school counsellors. For as Ron Williams (the dad who took on the government and Scripture Union QLD in the High Court and won twice), said in my interview: “Qualified school counsellors are exactly what is required we just need more of them.” (Galvin Waight, 2022)
Making History – a secular revolution
In the early 19th century, Australians did something very special. We put aside our sectarian division, came together and created the world’s first legislated secular education system. At that time, we abolished state aid to religious schools and cemented the NSW public education system as one of the best in the world. We did this by embracing the secular.4
Australia, once leading the world in secular education and academic results, is now falling behind on the international stage. It is no coincidence that this has occurred in the time of a sustained period of de-secularisation. A small, but organised, religious lobby has influenced our public life, institutions, and policy. This lobby has taken an active interest in public education. It is time that we, as a nation and union, take a respectful interest in religion in schools too.
This does not mean we need to halt teaching of General Religious Education, values and world views. Yet a fear of backlash has left many politicians, teachers and members of the general public scared to come out and say what they believe. We can no longer afford to be silent and need to be ‘loud and proud’ of our secular beliefs. The groundswell of public opinion against SRE, government-funded chaplaincy and religious schools needs to become a people-power movement. For, as Australia becomes more polarised and divided on political and religious lines, embracing the secular has never been so important.
Federation is starting this process and later this year (2023) will host an inaugural secular conference. The aim of the conference will be to raise awareness, build key alliances, highlight key campaigns and begin the secular narrative. This is important because secularism has the potential to be a unifying political and social force and a movement for social justice.
Australia can once more lead the world in secular education and learning outcomes. Reclaiming the secular represents an opportunity on all sides of politics to unite and embrace inclusion. It represents an opportunity to create a society in which people of all religions, and of none, can live together fairly and peacefully.
Imagine a country where all religions are treated equally with the freedom to practise without fear of discrimination. A country where education is free of vested interests and teachers are treated and respected as the professionals that we are.
Imagine a state:
• that doesn’t compromise on secular legislation where schools have the appropriate time and resources to meet all students’ needs
• where school children are taught about world religions by a qualified teacher as part of an inclusive, authorised curriculum
• where the educational focus is on student outcomes and creating a vibrant, cohesive society.
This can easily be us again. It’s time that we, as a profession, take the secular lead in NSW. Our students and society need education not indoctrination, teachers not preachers.
Endnotes
1 This review should examine:
The quality, and efficacy of the lessons, instructors and providers.
The effects of missed teaching and learning on students and schools.
Departmental policy and procedures,
Australian Bureau of statistics (ABS) data and
the collection and release of participation data on SRE/SEE, which has not occurred, despite this being a recommendation of the:
1980 Rawlinson Religion in Education in NSW Government Schools Report
2011 NSW Legislative Council inquiry into the Education Amendment (Ethics Classes Repeal) Bill
2015 ARTD (consultancy) review of SRE and Special Ethics Education.
2 ARTD Consultancy are a consultancy firm commissioned to review SRE in 2015
3 General Religious Education is “education about the world’s major religions, what people believe and how those beliefs affect their lives”. It is taught by qualified teachers employed by the Department of Education in a safe, respectful and inclusive classroom setting..
Bleazby, J., (2022) Religious instruction in the post-truth world: A critique of Australia’s controversial religious instruction classes in public schools Sagepub.com
Centre for Public Education Research (CPER) conference ( 2022) Why Money Does Matter
Galvin Waight, M. (2022). Teaching Not Preaching: Making our public schools secular NSW Teachers Federation Available here
NSW Education Standard Authority (2020) Nurturing Wonder and Igniting Passion : Designs for a new school curriculum. NSW Curriculum Review
Jack Galvin Waight is author of the 2021 Eric Pearson Study Report entitled Teaching Not Preaching: Making Our Public Schools Secular. He is a Federation Country Organiser in the Hunter/Newcastle area, Vice President of Hunter Workers, Federation’s Representative on the Department’s Consultative Committee for Special Religious Education (SRE)/Special Education in Ethics (SEE) and DoE Excellence in Teaching and involvement in broader educational issues Award recipient.
Wayne Sawyer is Emeritus Professor at Western Sydney University where he remains an active researcher. He began working with the MeE Framework with the Motivation and Engagement of Boys project in 2004 and continued this work in Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings, Teachers for a Fair Go and Schooling for a Fair Go. As with other researchers on the program, he has published widely on this work, and presented findings through national and international presentations. In this introduction, Wayne outlines the scope and structure of the edition and goes to the significance of the individual projects for teachers and students and the overall program for NSW public education.
The Special Edition
This issue of the Journal of Professional Learning is a Special Edition focused on the work of the Fair Go (FG) research program at Western Sydney University. The Fair Go research program is focused on pedagogy and engagement in low-SES schools through working with teachers on incorporating collaborative action research into their own practice. Fundamental to all of the research projects in which the overall Fair Go program has been involved are the principles or contexts of:
• pedagogy and engagement
• low-SES school communities
• practitioner action research
• collaboration.
We believe that the profession is enriched when teachers see themselves as generating, as well as delivering, knowledge as researchers, and to this end, we see the taking on of a ‘researchly disposition’ (Lingard & Renshaw, 2010) by teachers as fundamental to the work of the program.
Fair Go reaches its 21st birthday in 2021 and this Special Edition is helping to mark that milestone. The history of the overall program through its various specific projects is told in the article by Katina Zammit.
Many schools in Western Sydney and rural NSW have worked with the Fair Go program. Apart from the NSW Teachers Federation, numerous professional and academic organisations in Australia and overseas have cited Fair Go as an exemplary student engagement initiative for low-SES schools, including: Learning Difficulties Australia, Education Services Australia, Australian Council of TESOL Associations, Primary English Teaching Association Australia, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, and University of Toronto’s Centre for Leadership & Diversity. Fair Go has informed government policy around improving schooling outcomes in varied ways, such as being used as an exemplar program by, for example, the Departments of Education in NSW and Victoria, and in the evaluation of the Bridges to Higher Education program.
In 2011 the NSW Department of Education (The Department) reported Fair Go as ‘informing the system, school leaders and other teachers about different ways to encourage and support teachers to improve their classroom practices and student engagement’, and subsequently used FG in professional development material for hundreds of teachers. The Department’s paper on ‘Research underpinning the reforms’ in reference to the Commonwealth/States National Partnership on ‘Low SES School Communities’ traced a series of Fair Go projects since 2002, referencing its model of engagement as
showing ‘clear signs that (the relevant) changes to classroom teaching practices encouraged greater and extended interest in learning’. Fair Go was again featured in a cross-sectoral paper on the research base for the Low-SES National Partnership’s 2014 impact evaluation. This testifies to the program’s impact on the thinking of education authorities at high levels in Australia.
The Fair Go program developed in its early years an engagement framework through which to research pedagogy and engagement, and to this was later added an arm devoted to motivation (thanks to a collaboration with Professor Andrew Martin, now of UNSW). The Motivation and Engagement (MeE) Framework is discussed in the article by Geoff Munns in this edition and is referred to by the authors of the other articles.
Authors of the articles in the Special Edition have each been involved with the program in some way over these 21 years, either as academics, as postgraduate students focusing on Fair Go work in the relevant schools, as Principals in Fair Go schools, or, particularly, as teachers in individual Fair Go research projects such as School is For Me, Teachers for a Fair Go, Fair Go from the Get Go and Schooling for a Fair Go. Introductions to each article point to the background of the author and particular projects out of which the article arose. Of course, a number of other teachers and Principals have also been involved in a number of the projects listed in Katina’s history. In all, teachers in almost 90 schools in Western Sydney and rural NSW have taken part in various projects within the Fair Go research program.
Fair Go has always had a connection with the NSW Teachers Federation. Current Federation Officers have been researchers on individual projects. In 2014, the Federation co-hosted the Equity! Now More Than Ever conference in which teachers in the Schooling for a Fair Go project reported on their work and the JPL has published a number of articles in previous editions coming out of Fair Go projects. Thus, we would like to acknowledge the union for its strong support of this Special Edition, as well as for more general support of Fair Go over the past 21 years.
References
Lingard, B., & Renshaw, P. (2010). Teaching as a research-informed and research-informing profession. In A. Campbell & S. Groundwater-Smith (Eds.), Connecting inquiry and professional learning in education: international perspectives and practical solutions (pp. 26-39). Routledge.
Pasi Sahlberg delves into a discussion of Australia’s place in the world of education, and examines why Australia is somewhat of an outlier in that world . . .
Wolves live in extended families called packs. That helps wolves to defend their territories and ensure the protection of, and food for, the young. Cooperation is why wolves survive in harsh conditions in wilderness.
Sometimes a wolf leaves the pack and becomes a lone wolf. A lone wolf is often stronger than the others in the pack. In the wolf kingdom a lone wolf can also be a curious young adult that wants to explore new territories rather than follow the others. Sometimes it is a rebel that doesn’t get along with the rest.
In this article I wonder whether Australia has become an educational lone wolf. While Australia formally belongs to international organisations such as OECD, UNESCO, and World Economic Forum, and takes part in their education programmes, Australia is becoming an outlier in terms of the directions its education systems are heading now. A couple of decades ago the Australian education system was a role model for many others, not so much anymore. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
International lessons
Leading an education system is not easy. Since no one seems to have an answer to all the questions to which education ministers and their servants are expected to respond, closer professional cooperation and exchange of ideas between governments have become the new normal in global educational leadership. Collective search for solutions to education systems’ problems does not always succeed, but it can help to avoid adopting some bad ideas that sometimes only make things worse.
International experts have voiced their concerns that Australia might be on the wrong course if it aims to offer world class education to all children in the future. Already a decade ago Michael Fullan advised Australians by saying there is no way that ambitious and admirable nationwide goals, set out in the Melbourne Declaration, will be met with the strategies being used then. “No successful system in the world has ever led with these drivers”, Fullan (2011, 7) wrote. Last year he told Australian education leaders that a decade may have been lost due to the inability to choose the right drivers in education reforms. In September, speaking to a group of school leaders, OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher warned Australia of the perils of the wrong way, saying we may end up training our youth to become second class robots instead of educating them to be first class humans. Both of these global authorities have deep personal understanding of Australian education.
During the last decade Australian education has had a trend of declining performance, similar to what most other OECD countries have experienced. For example, according to the latest international data, one fifth of Australian 15-year-olds miss adequate literacy skills targets needed in life (OECD, 2019). That figure reaches almost half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia (ACER, 2019). Trends are similar in mathematical and scientific literacy as well. Regardless of frequent reforms and steadily increased total expenditure on education, learning outcomes remain stagnant or decline.
We can change the course but not with the same logic that has caused this inconvenient situation. This would be easier through policy learning in closer collaboration with other education nations.
Living without a pack
Recent educational literature and research describes, in detail, various aspects of the state of Australian education today (Bonnor et al., 2021; Burns and McIntyre, 2017; Netolicky et al. 2019; Reid, 2020). Contemporary issues and challenges in professional publications are clear and commonly accepted among education practitioners, experts, and academics. These issues and challenges include, but are not limited to, school funding, systemic educational inequalities, and an inadequate initial teacher education system. It is good to keep in mind that we are not alone with these challenges; many other countries are trying to solve these same problems, too.
The problem is not that we wouldn’t know enough about what is behind the declining educational performance in Australia during the past two decades. There is no shortage of reviews, evaluations, declarations, and commission reports about the education system and how it is not working the way it should. The problem is that we are not good at turning these findings and recommendations into new practices that would eventually make education better.
The real issue is that during the past decade Australia has become a passive member in an increasingly vibrant international community of education system leaders. One such global platform is the International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) that was launched in 2011 by the OECD and Education International (EI) as a response to emerging problems such as teacher shortages, initial teacher education, and professionalism in the teaching profession (Edwards and Schleicher, 2021). ISTP is a high-level invitation-only policy forum for the world’s best-performing education systems. Delegates, that must include a nation’s education minister and the head of national teacher association (i.e., Australian Education Union), take two days to explore current issues in the teaching profession and discuss solutions to current issues and challenges, such as teacher shortages and initial teacher education.
Australia has been invited to attend these summits since the beginning. Every time, it has declined to attend. A decade of valuable opportunities to learn from others and build professional and political relationships has been wasted. In absence of these professional and policy dialogues, the perspective to the challenges we try to work out becomes narrower. At the same time, Australian schools and educators would have a lot to offer to their peers in other countries. It seems like we are a lone wolf in global education.
How are Australian schools different?
In many ways Australian schools are like schools anywhere in the OECD. In most education statistics (whether is about class sizes, curricula, or how much is spent on education) Australia is like most others (OECD, 2022). There are, however, some aspects where schools here are very different from most others. These are all issues that beg the question: What do these differences mean in practice?
Here is a brief description of three things that make Australian school system an outlier among the OECD community.
1. Total number of compulsory instruction hours for children during primary and lower secondary education
Around the world, children start primary education typically when they are six years old. They then continue schooling in lower secondary and upper secondary schools. Overseas, the total length of school education is about 12 years, in Australia it is 13 years. The school year includes normally 36 to 40 weeks (or 180 to 200 schooldays). Comparing compulsory instruction hours, that students in different countries are required to attend during primary and lower secondary education, reveals the whole picture See Figure 1.
Figure 1. Compulsory instruction time in general education in hours in public primary and lower secondary schools
Source: OECD (2021)
According to Figure 1, primary and lower secondary education in OECD countries, lasts on average, 7,638 instruction hours during 9 years of schooling. In Finland, for example, that time is 6,384 over 9 years of schooling. Australian students have a total of 11 years of primary and lower secondary education that equals to 11,060 instruction hours (OECD, 2021). That is more than in any other OECD country. Schooldays in primary education in other OECD countries are often significantly shorter compared to Australia. Again, children spend more time in primary school in Australia than their peers in Finland, Estonia, or South Korea spend in primary and lower secondary education combined.
What does that mean in practice? Some might expect that because Australian students spend so much more time in school by the age of 15, their academic outcomes in OECD’s PISA or other international assessments must be much better than students in Korea, Estonia, or Finland. But that is not so. There is no correlation between students’ instruction time and academic performance in school.
2. Distribution of public and private expenditure on primary and secondary schools
Education is not cheap. Governments in OECD countries allocate 10 to 15 per cent of their national budgets to education. There are different ways to compare how much – or little – countries around the world spend on educating their youth. One common indicator is total expenditure on primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary institutions as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Total spending in OECD countries on primary, secondary, and post-secondary non-tertiary education institutions, on average, is 3.5 per cent of GDP as Figure 2 shows.
Figure 2. Total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP by source of funds
Source: OECD (2021)
Education is quite expensive in Australia, too. Total spending on school education in Australia according to Figure 2, is about 4 per cent of GDP that is significantly more than the average spending in OECD countries. What makes Australia different in this club of world’s wealthiest nations is the share of funding that parents pay for their children’s education. At primary and secondary education, private spending from parents’ pockets accounts for 0.3% of GDP across OECD countries. In Australia it amounts to at least 0.7% of GDP that is one of the largest relative shares of private funding of primary and secondary education among all OECD countries.
In other words, private spending accounts for 10% of expenditure at primary and secondary education on average across OECD countries, but it reaches 20% in Australia (OECD, 2020).
Australia is also an outlier in terms of the relatively high proportion of students, in primary and secondary education, who attend non-government schools. Now, that figure is about 35 per cent, being higher among secondary school-aged students especially in urban areas where there is more choice (ABS, 2022). What it means to have public education has become a different question in Australia compared to many other rich countries.
3. Proportion of disadvantaged children attending schools where the majority of students are disadvantaged
Parents’ right to choose the suitable school for their children has been part of the global education reform movement since the 1990s (Sahlberg, 2016). This has served well some parents and their children but has led to growing segregation of schools by the socio-economic conditions of students. Market mechanisms don’t always work in education as expected. Absence of intelligent regulation of education markets have led many countries to see increasing number of disadvantaged students attending schools where most students are disadvantaged like them. Figure 3 illustrates what the situation was in 2018.
Figure 3. Proportion of disadvantaged students attending schools where the majority of students are disadvantaged in OECD countries
Source: OECD (2018)
There are only four other OECD countries where larger proportion of disadvantaged students are studying in schools where the majority of students are disadvantaged. In Australia, based on OECD data shown in Figure 3, that figure is 52 per cent. This is a consequence of education policies in Australia during the last two decades that have treated education as a marketplace where parental choice determines supply and demand of schooling. OECD’s (2018) analysis has revealed that when a disadvantaged student attends a school where the majority of students are not disadvantaged, by the age of 15 that student will be, educationally speaking, approximately 2.5 years ahead of students who attend schools where the majority of students are disadvantaged.
Where next?
Being a lone wolf may be good if the rest of the pack is heading in the wrong direction. But, if you are alone surrounded by challenges and have lost a way to go, being without a pack may become difficult. Navigating in the wilderness alone can be difficult and risky. Solving wicked problems with others often leads to better solutions.
In 2022, Australia has a new federal government and many of its jurisdictions are electing new parliaments soon. One good decision the ministers and their education system leaders could make is to return to international education policy dialogues. There are many good opportunities to learn how other countries deal with the teacher shortages or modernise initial teacher education to better meet the needs of future schools, for example.
Every year, since 2011, the OECD and Education International have organised the International Summit on the Teaching Profession with the world’s top-performing education systems. Here education ministers and education leaders from the top 20 education nations explore current issues and innovation in the teaching profession. Collaboration between ministers and teachers’ unions as well as genuine policy learning between the nations are the key principles of these summits. Minister Jason Clare could attend in the 2023 summit that will be hosted by the Biden administration in Washington DC. This is perhaps the best next opportunity to learn what could be improved in the current federal government’s action plan and in teacher policies across the country. All ‘education nations’ are there, why wouldn’t we be?
Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) (2019). PISA 2018. Reporting Australia’s Results. Vol. 1. Student Performance. https:// research.acer.edu.au/ozpisa/35/.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2022). Schools. Data on students, staff, schools, rates and ratios for government and non-government schools, for all Australian states and territories. Retrieved on 10 October from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/latest-release.
Bonnor, C., Kidson, P., Piccoli, A., Sahlberg, P. & Wilson, R. (2021). Structural Failure: Why Australia keeps falling short of its educational goals. Sydney: UNSW Gonski Institute.
Burns, D. and McIntyre, A. (2017). Empowered Educators in Australia: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Fullan, M. (2011). Choosing wrong drivers for whole system reform (Seminar series 204). Melbourne, Australia: Centre for Strategic Education.
Netolicky, D., Andrews, J., and Paterson, C. (Eds.) (2019). Flip the system Australia – What matters in education. London: Routledge.
OECD (2018). Equity in Education: Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD (2019). PISA 2018 Results (Volume I): What Students Know and Can Do. Paris:OECD Publishing.
OECD (2021). Education at a glance. Education indicators. Paris:OECD Publishing.
OECD (2022). Education at a glance. Education indicators. Paris:OECD Publishing.
Reid, A. (2020). Changing Australian Education: How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it. London: Routledge.
Sahlberg, P. (2016). Global Educational Reform Movement and its impact on teaching. In Mundy, K., Green, A., Lingard, R., and Verger, A. (Eds.) The Handbook of Global Policy and Policymaking in Education. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 128-144.
Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish educator, former schoolteacher, and award-winning author who has lifelong career in education. His books and essays about education are translated into 30 languages and read around the world.
Pasi is recipient of several honours and awards for his work for education as human right, including 2012 Education Award in Finland, 2014 Robert Owen Award in Scotland, 2016 Lego Prize in Denmark, and 2021 Dr Paul Brock memorial Medal in NSW.
His research interests include education policy and reform, equity in education, international education issues, and school improvement. He is Professor of Education at the Southern Cross University in Lismore, visiting professor at the UNSW Business School, and Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu in Finland. Pasi lives in Lennox Head with his wife and two sons.
