Subject: Whole school priorities

Christina Ho makes the case for improved understanding of the complex relationships between ethnicity, class and school achievement…

James Ruse tops the HSC’. ‘NAPLAN: Non-English speaking background students come out tops’.

These are some of the headlines demonstrating the so-called ‘ethnic advantage’ when it comes to schooling in NSW. Whether it’s NAPLAN results, HSC leader boards, or the composition of selective schools, children of migrants seem to enjoy extraordinary educational success. This paper takes a deeper look at the complex relationships between ethnicity, class and schooling in NSW, using data from the My School website. Students from language backgrounds other than English (LBOTE) comprise 30% of all students in NSW public schools. But this LBOTE category includes students who face enormous socio-educational disadvantage, as well as those highlighted in the media as schooling superstars. There is also evidence of self-segregation based on ethnicity and class. How can we use this information to better understand the diverse needs of NSW students?

The ‘ethnic advantage’

Every year, images of high achieving Asian-Australian students from selective schools feature in media coverage of HSC results. For example, James Ruse Agricultural High School in north-western Sydney has topped the HSC leader board for 21 years in a row.

Discussion of annual NAPLAN results also typically notes the strong results of students from LBOTE, who are now out-performing non-LBOTE students in many areas of the test (e.g. Tovey 2013; Gleeson 2016).

As the table below demonstrates, most selective schools are heavily dominated by LBOTE students, mostly from Asian backgrounds. They are also extremely socially advantaged.

Top Selective schools in Sydney (by HSC scores): Ethnicity and Socio-educational Advantage

These LBOTE figures represent a huge transformation over one generation. In the late 1980s, educational researchers were bemoaning the lack of NESB students in selective schools, which were overwhelmingly Anglo (Kalantzis and Cope 1988: 49).

Given the increase in migration from Asia around this time, it’s not surprising that Asian background students have become more numerous in our classrooms. But the growth in their numbers within selective schools in particular has led to the stereotype that Asians always do well in school.

Culturalist explanations are usually put forward: Chinese and other Asian cultures prize hard work and aspiration. Some put it down to Confucianism. Culturalist explanations are proposed by both admirers (‘they’re a model for the rest of us’) and critics (‘tiger mothers abuse their children by pushing them too hard’) (see Ho 2017).

Culturalist explanations have been around since the 1980s, when education researchers argued the existence of an ‘ethnic advantage’, challenging the previous association of disadvantage with LBOTE students. Birrell (1987) argued that family support and ‘ethnic’ valuing of education and upward mobility allowed LBOTE students to overcome any disadvantage related to migration. Bullivant (1988) explained high achievement in terms of the ‘migrant drive’ and ‘ethnic work ethic’.

The ‘ethnic advantage’ has been conveniently used to justify cuts to funding of ESL programs, which has declined steadily over the last 20 years (Creagh 2016: 279).

But: great variation within LBOTE

The category LBOTE includes any student who speaks – or whose parents speak – a language other than English at home. This means that it includes students from a wide range of English competency, from new arrivals who don’t speak English at all (and refugee children who have very little schooling), to children who are native English speakers, but whose parents speak another language.

LBOTE is a very broad category that is not disaggregated, so we can’t compare outcomes by English language proficiency or by specific ethnic group. In Australian educational data, ethnicity is only identified for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (Lingard et al 2012: 319).

Researchers have noted that the LBOTE category hides great variation, with some students performing exceptionally well, and others at the opposite end of the spectrum. In fact, NAPLAN results show that variation among LBOTE students is greater than that among non-LBOTE students (Rice 2016; Creagh 2014; Lingard et al 2012). Similar results were found in earlier years with the category of ‘Non-English Speaking Background’ or NESB (Meade 1983).

But because on average, LBOTE students do not perform worse than Anglo-Australian students, and on some measures, perform better, there is now a stereotype of the high achieving LBOTE student, meaning that there are no equity issues that need to be addressed.

However, Creagh argues that the LBOTE data ‘are in fact hiding some of our most disadvantaged students’ (2014: 1). In particular, she shows that visa category has a dramatic impact on educational performance. Students of refugee background perform at the lower end of the national minimum standard, while those from skilled migrant backgrounds are well above average (Creagh 2014: 11-12).

While ESL (English as a Second Language) learners are included in LBOTE, their specific experience is lost in the focus on the average LBOTE outcomes, which look positive. Creagh argues that the ESL language learner has been ‘invisibilised’ (2016: 279). She summarises: ‘If a group of students who are not performing well on NAPLAN are rendered statistically invisible, then equity of educational outcome for this group is impossible (Creagh 2016: 285).

The highest LBOTE schools are disadvantaged

In fact, the schools most dominated by LBOTE students are almost invariably in disadvantaged areas. According to MySchool, there are 125 schools in Sydney that are 90%+ LBOTE. More than three quarters (76%) are public schools. Their median ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage) score is 992, compared to a median of 1054 for metropolitan Sydney (Author’s calculations based on MySchool data). This shows that these schools are socio-educationally disadvantaged. (i)

Most of the highest LBOTE schools in NSW are public schools in Western Sydney. The following postcodes have schools with a median LBOTE of over 90%.

Source: MySchool 2016, Census 2016

All of these high LBOTE schools are socio-educationally disadvantaged, according to their ICSEA scores. In particular, Fairfield and Cabramatta/Canley Vale are in the bottom 10% of ICSEA scores for metropolitan Sydney.

They are all also below average in terms of NAPLAN performance. This is measured by the NAPLAN Index, a composite score that equally combines the results of different cohorts and weights literacy-based domains equally with numeracy results. The overall average for the NAPIndex is 500 (Shepherd & Bonnor 2014). In metropolitan Sydney, NAPLAN Index scores range from 419 to 714, with a median score of 518. Auburn comes closest to this median, but all other areas in the table above are well below average.

I’ve also included the LBOTE figures for the overall postcode, to compare the ethnic profile of the schools with the communities they’re located in. In all cases, the schools have a higher LBOTE score than the postcode. This could indicate that Anglo-Australian families in these postcodes tend to be older, so don’t have school-aged kids, or if they do, they are avoiding their local schools. This mirrors international research that shows that education systems with school choice ‘have schools with higher levels of economic, ethnic, and ability segregation than the levels in the neighbourhoods in which children reside’ (Keels et al 2013: 242, see also Burgess et al 2005, Johnston et al 2006, Rangvid 2007).

What about Asian students in particular? It’s not possible to identify the experiences of particular ethnic groups within the LBOTE category. However, the 2011 Census tells us that the areas with the highest concentrations of speakers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindi and Tagalog (the most commonly spoken Asian languages in Australia) are: Parramatta, Liverpool, Blacktown, Fairfield and Hurstville. Apart from Hurstville, all are located in Western Sydney; and apart from Parramatta, all areas are below NSW average when it comes to weekly incomes.

While there are wealthier Asian migrant families found throughout Sydney and NSW, the areas with the highest concentration of Asian language speakers tend to be below average income areas. So the popular image of the Asian high achieving selective school student masks the reality that most Asian-Australian students do not attend highly advantaged schools.

Case study: Cabramatta/Canley Vale (postcode 2166)

Postcode 2166 is dominated by Asian migrants. The top three ancestries of residents were Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian in the 2016 census, together making up 59% of the residents. 65% of residents were born overseas, and 82% speak a language other than English at home.

It is a low income area. The median weekly personal income for people aged 15 years and over in 2166 was $408 (NSW average: $664).

Nine out of the eleven schools are public. One is Catholic and one is Buddhist.

The median LBOTE across the eleven schools is 94%. Interestingly, Pal Buddhist School has the lowest LBOTE (80%) while Sacred Heart Catholic School has the highest (99%). As mentioned, the LBOTE scores for schools are higher than those for the suburbs the schools are located in. Are Anglo-Australian families avoiding local schools in this area?

The median ICSEA is 931, well below the national average of 1000, and the Sydney average of 1054. Sixty percent of families come from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Only 4% came from the top quarter.

The median NAP Index for Cabramatta/Canley Vale schools is 494, well below the median of 518. However, three schools are above average in NAPLAN: Harrington Street Public School (which has an Opportunity Class), Sacred Heart Catholic School, and Canley Vale High School.

Schools in Canley Vale have attracted some public attention for improvement in NAPLAN results. In 2017, for the third year in a row, Canley Vale High School was included in the list of schools achieving above average NAPLAN results (Smith 2017). Meanwhile Canley Vale Public School won a 2016 Premier’s Award for Public Service for improving its students’ NAPLAN results (Fairfield City Champion 2016). These are remarkable achievements, given the level of disadvantage that characterises these school communities.

The NSW bigger picture: disadvantage & Indigenous communities

In NSW as a whole, the areas of greatest educational disadvantage are those with concentrations of Indigenous populations. The following table shows the ten most educationally disadvantaged areas in NSW, all of which have relatively large Indigenous communities.

The ‘whitest’ schools are highly advantaged

According to My School profiles, the lowest LBOTE schools in Sydney are either private schools on the North Shore or Eastern suburbs, or public schools located on the outer fringe of Sydney. The latter are predictable because these are overwhelmingly Anglo dominated areas, e.g. Windsor, Camden, Heathcote.

However, the schools on the North Shore and Eastern suburbs are located in often very multicultural suburbs, indicating that many Anglo-Australian students are travelling from other areas to attend these private schools, and also that local migrant families may be avoiding these schools.

In metropolitan Sydney there are 99 schools with a LBOTE score of 10% or under. Their median ICSEA score is 1074 (1108 for the private schools). Among the private schools, 44% of families come from the top quarter of socio-educational advantage, and the median NAP Index is 532.

My analysis mirrors that of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC) report, which shows that nine out of the ten most educationally advantaged areas in Australia are located in Sydney’s North Shore or Eastern suburbs (in addition to Camberwell in Victoria) (BCEC 2017: 70).

Top 10 advantaged areas in NSW

Case study: North Sydney/Kirribilli

North Sydney/Kirribilli is a wealthy harbour-front area housing eight schools, seven of which are private (North Sydney Public School is the only public school).

There is a dramatic contrast in the ethnic profiles of public and private schools in this area. The private schools have a median LBOTE of 11% (the lowest is Wenona at 7%). Meanwhile, North Sydney Public School is 46% LBOTE.

Predictably, the area’s schools are highly advantaged, with a median ICSEA of 1181. The most advantaged school is St Aloysius College, with an ICSEA score of 1234, and 91% of students coming from the most socio-educationally advantaged quartile.

Overall, 80% of students in this area’s schools come from the most advantaged quartile, and only 1% come from the lowest quartile of socio-educational advantage.

These schools NAPLAN performance is well above average. The median NAP Index for these schools is 561. Again St Aloysius is highest, at 604.

Given that this is a very wealthy area – with median weekly personal income ($1,418) more than double the NSW average ($664) – the levels of advantage within these schools is not surprising.

However, the relatively low LBOTE scores do not match the profile of these suburbs. According to the 2016 Census, 53% of residents in North Sydney and Kirribilli were born overseas, and 28% speak a non-English language at home. Eight percent are of Chinese ancestry. So the schools are much less culturally diverse than the suburbs in which they are located. This suggests that Anglo-Australians from other suburbs are sending their children to private schools in North Sydney in large numbers.

In the next suburb, Crows Nest is home to two selective schools, North Sydney Girls and Boys, which are more than 90% LBOTE. The comprehensive Cammeraygal High School is 44% LBOTE, similar to North Sydney Public School at 46%. These schools are disproportionately LBOTE, considering that the local area is only 28% LBOTE. There is a clear polarisation here, with LBOTE families disproportionately choosing public schools, and Anglo-Australian families disproportionately choosing private schools. In fact, the North Sydney area may well be one of the most ethnically polarised school areas in the country.

The pattern continues for the entire North Shore region. Across the North Shore, public and private schools are remarkably similar – they are all highly advantaged, and all high performing, even scoring identically on the NAP Index (555). The only difference is in terms of LBOTE, with public schools having more than twice as many LBOTE students as private ones, as the table below shows.

North Shore (postcodes 2060-2090)

Given there are no educational differences between public and private schools on the North Shore, at least according to NAPLAN scores, and there is very little difference in terms of social advantage, one has to wonder why there should be such

Conclusion

Despite the stereotype of the successful, over-achieving Asian student, in reality, being non-White in NSW is more likely to mean that you do not go to an advantaged school, and that you live in a below-average income area. Improvements in achievement in suburbs like Canley Vale are all the more impressive when seen in the context of disadvantage in these areas.

Conversely, those schools that are most dominated by Anglo-Australian students are split between schools in very Anglo-dominated suburbs, and schools in wealthy areas like the North Shore and Eastern suburbs. These schools are likely to be highly advantaged private schools, that ultimately act as bubbles of white privilege, despite their location within quite multicultural suburbs.

Selective schools are a conspicuous exception to this pattern. These high achieving, highly advantaged and high LBOTE schools have been largely responsible for the stereotype of the successful Asian student. While they provide a unique opportunity for a minority of high achieving students, they also contribute to the segregation and polarisation of our education system.

For example, if selective schools did not exist, we would arguably see more LBOTE students in elite private schools, helping them become more diverse and reflective of the diversity of the Australian population (but of course, not the socio-economic diversity, given their fees). MySchool figures show that in Melbourne, high performing private schools are much more culturally diverse than they are in Sydney. This is potentially because there are only four selective schools in Melbourne, which has contributed to a different cultural environment associated with elite schools.

And if selective schools did not exist, we wouldn’t have the best and brightest from suburbs all over Sydney abandoning their local schools to travel, sometimes across town, to attend selective schools. This would boost the performance of local schools as well as providing the social, financial and educational resources to those schools that come from having highly educated and aspirational families within the community.

So, the next time you see a media story about a successful Asian selective school student topping the state in Maths or Economics, remember that for every one of those types of students there are hundreds of other LBOTE students who are attending a disadvantaged school in a poor neighbourhood, and of course, everyone in between. And ultimately, the face of educational advantage in NSW is most likely to be white, in a wealthy suburb, and wearing a private school uniform.

This kind of polarisation in our education system is bad for kids’ education, and unhealthy for our society.

References:

ACARA (2017) ‘What does the ICSEA value mean?’ https://acaraweb.blob.core.windows.net/resources/About_icsea_2014.pdf

Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (2017) Educate Australia Fair? Education Inequality in Australia, Bankwest and Curtin University.

Birrell, R. (1987) ‘The educational achievement of non-English speaking background students and the politics of the community languages movement’. The Economics of Immigration: Proceedings of a conference at the Australian National University 22-23 April 1987. L. Baker and P. Miller. Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service.

Bullivant, B. M. (1988) ‘The ethnic success ethic challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant disadvantages in Australia’, Australian Journal of Education 32(2): 223-243.

Burgess, S., et al. (2005) ‘Parallel lives? Ethnic segregation in schools and neighbourhoods’, Urban Studies, 42(7): 1027-1056.

Creagh, S. (2016) ‘A critical analysis of the Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) category in the Australian national testing system: A Foucauldian perspective’, Journal of Education Policy 31(3): 275-289.

Fairfield City Champion (2016) ‘Canley Vale Public School win Premier’s Award’, Fairfield City Champion, November 3, http://www.fairfieldchampion.com.au/story/4266531/canley-vale-public-school-win-premiers-award/)

Gleeson, A. (2016) ‘NAPLAN: Migrant students are outclassing Aussie kids in literacy and numeracy’, The Daily Telegraph December 13, http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/naplan-migrant-students-are-outclassing-aussie-kids-in-literacy-and-numeracy/news-story/ca5260a9f89458dfc835725cff3a05fe

Ho, C. (2017) ‘The new meritocracy or over-schooled robots? Public attitudes on Asian–Australian education cultures’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1315855

Johnston, R., et al. (2006) ‘School and residential segregation: An analysis of variations across England’s Local Education Authorities’. Regional Studies, 40(9): 973-990.

Kalantzis, M. and B. Cope (1988) ‘Why we need multicultural education: A review of the ‘ethnic disadvantage’ debate’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 9(1): 39-57.

Keels, M., Burdick-Will, J., and Keene, S., (2013) ‘The effects of gentrification on neighborhood public schools’, City and Community, 12 (3), 238-259.

Meade, P. (1983) ‘The educational experience of Sydney high school students: A comparative study of migrant students of non-English-speaking origin and students whose parents were born in an English-speaking country’, Report No. 3, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service.

Rangvid, B. S., (2007) ‘Living and learning separately? Ethnic segregation of school children in Copenhagen’. Urban Studies, 44 (7), 1329-1354.

Rice, S. (2016) ‘NAPLAN results reveal little change in literacy and numeracy performance – here are some key takeaway findings’, The Conversation December 13, https://theconversation.com/naplan-results-reveal-little-change-in-literacy-and-numeracy-performance-here-are-some-key-takeaway-findings-70208

Shepherd, B. & Bonnor, C. (2014) Equity in Australian Schooling: An Update, Prepared for the “Need to Succeed” Symposium 23 October, http://apo.org.au/system/files/41866/apo-nid41866-47061.pdf

Smith, A. (2017) ‘My School: the NAPLAN big improvers revealed’, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/my-school-the-naplan-big-improvers-revealed-20170306-gus4wx.html

Tovey, J. (2013) ‘NAPLAN: non-English language background students in year 7 come out tops in NSW’, The Sydney Morning Herald December 13, http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/naplan-nonenglish-language-background-students-in-year-7-come-out-tops-in-nsw-20131213-2zc1n.html

About the author

Dr Christina Ho is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She currently researches diversity and inequality in education in Australia. Her publications include ‘“For those who’ve come across the seas”: Australian multicultural theory, policy and practice’ and ‘Beyond the Hijab Debates: New conversations on gender, race and religion’.This paper was prepared for the Multicultural Education and Social Inclusion Conference, NSW Teachers Federation, 21 July 2017. To access a recording of Christine’s presentation click here.

(i)The MySchool website reports an ICSEA score for each school in Australia. These scores reflect parental education and occupation, the geographical location of the school and proportion of Indigenous students (ACARA 2017).

Tom Alegounarias suggests that teachers should be aware of moves towards deregulation masquerading as progressive public policy…

While the world needs an effective teaching profession more than ever before, the essential elements of teaching’s professional standing are being discarded in key jurisdictions around the world. It is worth reflecting on how quickly and effectively Australian policy for supporting the teaching profession has evolved, and the implications for continuing reform, in the global context.

In his significant November 2000 Report for the NSW government on the quality of teaching – Quality Matters[i], Dr Gregor Ramsey dubbed teaching the first profession, the profession of professions. He noted that teaching is the professional practice most necessary for building other professions. All others – doctors, dentists, actuaries, pass through our hands on their way to professional status.

teaching is the professional practice most necessary for building other professions. All others – doctors, dentists, actuaries, pass through our hands on their way to professional status.

Dr Ramsey did not and could not have meant that teaching pre-dates other professions, as the idea that teaching is and should in all circumstances be a profession was still being debated, even among teachers, well into the 1970s. By the time of Dr Ramsey’s report there was no question of the importance of professional status among teachers. The point of his report was to describe the elements of professional structures and cultures that would secure the professional status of teaching into the future.

That report was the first of a series of policy and legislative advances that have arguably provided Australia with the most coherent regulatory and policy frame for supporting teaching in the world.

Cutting a long story very short, Ramsey’s work led to the establishment of the NSW Institute of Teachers and a Professional Standards Framework which was ultimately adapted and adopted to become the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) Australian Professional Standards for Teachers[ii].

Of course, no important policy flower is ever cultivated in isolation, and this work was nurtured by professional bodies from around Australia, including important contributions by teacher unions, and boosted by federalist government activism, of both the cooperative and competitive sort.

Moreover, in places like Scotland a form of minimum standard for registration as a teacher had been in place since 1965[iii]. In the United States the work of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was implementing a formal recognition process for outstanding teachers[iv]. The Australian Council for Educational Research played a key part in bringing many ideas to Australia[v] and academic researchers were drawn to the space between theory and application that Professional Standards represent.

So the provenance of success is myriad, and I don’t intend to claim exceptional standing when I note that in 2000 I was the CEO of the NSW Institute of Teachers as this particular policy approach was set in legislation for the first time anywhere in Australia or the world. This policy which was transcribed into AITSL’s charter shortly after AITSL was established is generally still supported across the profession, including by the teacher unions that were subsequently excluded from AITSL’s governance arrangements – but only after the standards charter was adopted nationally.

policy approach was set in legislation for the first time anywhere in Australia or the world

As a result, I do claim some insight into the policy pressures, sectional perspectives and conceptual breakthroughs that originally resulted in the particular form of the policy. And the relevance here is what insight this might provide for dealing with the current reaction against professional standing for teachers in places like England and parts of the United States.

Unfolding the standards

I won’t describe here every element of the Australian Standards Framework and associated policies that make it both unique and significant, but a couple of dimensions are worth noting.

One is the availability of accreditation as an outstanding teacher – either at Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher. This places outstanding teaching in a context of professional growth with all other teachers. Outstanding teachers and leaders evolve their practice on the basis of knowledge gained as students and in practice, not independently from collegial experience.

The Framework also includes requirements for Initial Teacher Education graduates. The capacity to be accredited or registered at Proficient Teacher level, and subsequently at Highly Accomplished or Lead is built on knowledge gained through a recognised university degree, complemented subsequently by prastice and further development.

The Standards were developed by practicing teachers. A range of representative bodies including teacher unions nominated individuals that dedicated months of time to developing drafts that were subsequently independently validated by teachers in different contexts. Teachers themselves exercise judgment as to who meets the standards, within a strict system of oversight, run largely by accredited teachers. Outstanding teachers, for example, are selected from among those that are regarded by their peers, including principals, as indeed being outstanding practitioners, and who are already active in providing leadership and support in their schools and classrooms.

The integration of graduate qualifications with effective and outstanding teaching in a single framework represents teachers’ expectations of themselves as a coherent profession.

The Standards are a reference point for determining professional standing. In exercising consistent judgment against these high standards teachers are issuing an assurance to the community that systems are in place for every student to be taught by a high quality teacher. The Standards describe this expectation. Judgments against the Standards enact it. This is the essence of a profession. It is independent from but related to employment practices. Employers, that is, schools or systems, can and should be able to exercise judgment in selecting individuals to employ as teachers.

This is the essence of a profession

The point of a profession is that this choice is exercised within the accreditation processes designed to protect the interests of the community and the status of the practitioners.

This is important and virtuous public policy, and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers make it happen.

Slipping standards

But it would be wrong to present the Australian situation as a heralding of inexorable progress, with variations emerging on recognisable principles in similar jurisdictions. In fact, in many places around the world, the policy dynamic for quality teaching is in the opposite direction.

In these places there is an emphasis on deregulating qualifications and aligning the right to be called a teacher directly and simply with employment status.

In 2010, England abolished its General Teaching Council. Now, if you Google Unqualified Teacher England, you will see endless pages of advertisements placed by schools. In the United States the Global Financial Crisis caused a reversal of previous gains in requiring minimum qualifications for teaching in many states.

In Sweden and Norway, there is what appears a reluctance to even describe what constitutes quality teaching, beyond broad ethical statements, for fear of undermining the individual’s autonomy, leaving the formal status of teacher to be a simple function of employment and tradition.

From a policy development perspective, these conflicting approaches from relatively similar socio-economic environments is not a surprise. The two approaches to regulating teaching reflect a deeper set of values being applied to a common challenge.

The challenge is to lift educational attainment. There is increasing awareness among governments of the importance of education to a jurisdiction’s relative competitiveness and prosperity.

In a global economy with easily shifting capital flows, the relative advantage of developed economies is in the quality of the ‘human capital’ which might attract services and creative industry investment. This makes the quality of education a primary social and economic policy lever. The single most direct policy lever for improving educational attainment is teaching.

We teachers may want to emphasise complex contextual factors that influence our effectiveness, but for decades now the story has been a simple one among legislators – lift teaching to lift educational outcomes to lift investment.

The broad approaches to achieving this objective represent archetypal public policy values. The deregulatory approach has been the most common frame for policy reform of the past 30 years.

Put crudely, it places trust in the judgments of individuals pursuing their perspective, with dispersed and localised accountabilities. Having been, over these decades, a focus of political contestation, it is perhaps better understood than the regulatory approach represented by formal standards.

The regulatory standards approach draws on principles of collective, or at least organised and shared, responsibility and faith in technical expertise. In the case of teaching it also relies on government recognising that expertise.

A true profession

The principles represented by a regulatory Standards approach go to what constitutes a profession in the first place. The history of professions draws on collective protection of standards on an ethical basis. The idea and history of professions is also closely tied with the establishment and growth of universities.

It is also arguable that professional status and formal professional standards draw intrinsically from principles of evidence and observation and order that are inherent in modernity and even enlightenment thinking. Faith in the role of professional judgment and expertise is the shared method in matters requiring expert judgment, whether that be law, engineering or accounting. And in each of these there are statements of practice that act as a common reference point for validating that judgment.

It is not possible to have a profession without common and agreed standards of practice. Not necessarily as prescriptions, but as bases for connecting judgments and therefore being in professional practice.

When the current teaching Standards approach was being developed in the early 2000s in NSW it represented a new perspective on teaching for legislators. As they considered what was then and for them a completely new way of thinking about teaching, some ‘first principle’ arguments came to the surface.

Those most opposed to Standards for teachers argued exactly that teaching was not a profession. It was either an ethical vocation or a form of paid public exposition. They also argued that creating a Standards and Accreditation framework would give teachers the sort of power over labour supply that only ‘real’ professions can be trusted to exercise. While those opposed were a minority, in bureaucratic and legislative circles there were regular murmurings intoning Dracula and blood-banks.

There were two arguments that the deregulators brought up as practical examples of why teaching should not be regarded as a profession.

The first was that the quality of initial teacher education did not warrant it, that individuals emerge from degrees without the uniformity of quality that a true profession would insist on. In professions the relationship between the practice and the theoretical base is tight and individual members of the profession are vigilant to ensure that quality is upheld.

The second argument was that teachers resist recognising and celebrating outstanding quality from among their members, which a true profession uses to drive both status and improvement. The solution from their perspective to addressing the challenge of quality teaching was: Part 1, Deregulate entry so that teaching qualifications as such are not required for appointment as a teacher; Part 2, Instigate a system of performance pay linked directly either to principal/employer judgment, or to outcomes data.

Maintaining high standards…

Deregulators highlighted the advantages of such an approach above the Professional Standards approach. Getting teachers to agree on a set of Standards that would also make sense to the broader public would be impossible they said; and a deregulated approach would be a lot cheaper to maintain.

I am hoping that at this stage of the article the reader will recognise the currency of those arguments in recent public debate.

Abolishing licensing or registration requirements for being a teacher and implementing crude performance pay systems are common reflexive responses to perceived crises in education internationally.

The arguments most often emanate from outside education[vi].

Education policy sways with the winds generated by the bigger debates on how to run a modern society and economy.

It’s the market versus the government, again.

The contest of ideas on how to promote teaching is not over, including in Australia, and arguments made against Professional Standards have not been defeated. While the Chicago School has disciples they will be vigilant on professional teaching Standards, waiting for data.

The areas of vulnerability first identified by de-regulators with regard to Professional Standards are still demanding attention. Accreditation of teachers at the higher levels of Highly Accomplished and Lead is advanced in NSW, where forms of financial recognition are either in place or about to be introduced across all school sectors. But some states are not committed, and internationally only the most secure (but effective) jurisdictions, like Singapore, have taken up the challenge. To hold off the performance pay push accreditation processes for Highly Accomplished and Lead must maintain the quality in professional judgment demonstrated so far. But it must also accelerate the rate of recognition of outstanding teachers. Being resistant or even lethargic in identifying and rewarding quality teaching is akin to issuing an invitation to deregulators to come on in and have a go.

The most active area of policy work since the establishment of the Standards has been Initial Teacher Education. The previous Federal Government’s introduction of unlimited funded undergraduate places has complicated efforts to ensure that all graduates meet the appropriate standards, in all disciplines. It is not in fact clear in what circumstances and in what ways Initial Teacher Education qualifications can be regarded as professional degrees, or generalist degrees. That is not a comment on the quality of those qualifications, but on the distance we still need to travel towards professional coherence with initial teacher education. An authentic webbing of the work of teacher educators and teachers has not yet been achieved and must be a priority.

An authentic webbing of the work of teacher educators and teachers has not yet been achieved and must be a priority

The policy reversals for the teaching Standards project in some important jurisdictions is best understood as a deregulatory public policy approach being applied to teaching, rather than an evolution of educational policy thinking.

The deregulation option was there when the Professional Standards Framework was first being formed in NSW, and it is still available to any policy maker who loses faith in the value of accrediting teachers against Standards.

What is at stake is the status of teaching as a profession.

[i] https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/teachrev/reports/reports.pdf

[ii] https://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers

[iii] http://www.gtcs.org.uk/about-gtcs/who-we-are/history-of-GTCS.aspx

[iv] http://www.nbpts.org/national-board-certification

[v] http://research.acer.edu.au/teaching_standards

[vi] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2013/10/24/a-key-reason-why-american-students-do-poorly

 

Tom Alegounarias is the Chair of the NSW Education Standards Authority.

 

 

Pasi Sahlberg and Jonathan Hasak

First published in Washington Post, 9 May 2016

One thing that distinguishes schools in the U.S. from schools around the world is how data walls, which typically reflect standardized test results, decorate hallways and teacher lounges. Green, yellow, and red colors indicate levels of performance of students and classrooms. For serious reformers, this is the type of transparency that reveals more data about schools and is seen as part of the solution to how to conduct effective school improvement. These data sets, however, often don’t spark insight about teaching and learning in classrooms; they are based on analytics and statistics, not on emotions and relationships that drive learning in schools. They also report outputs and outcomes, not the impacts of learning on the lives and minds of learners.

These data sets, however, often don’t spark insight about teaching and learning in classrooms

After The  No Child Left Behind  Act became law in 2001, education legislation in the U.S. required all students in grades 3 to 8 each year and once in high school to be tested in reading and mathematics using external standardized tests. On top of that states had their own testing requirements to hold schools and teachers accountable. As a result, various teacher evaluation procedures emerged in response to data from these tests. Yet for all of these good intentions, there is now more data available than can reasonably be consumed and yet there has been no significant improvement in outcomes.

there is now more data available than can reasonably be consumed

If you are a leader of any modern education system, you probably care a lot about collecting, analyzing, storing, and communicating massive amounts of information about your schools, teachers, and students based on these data sets. This information is “Big Data,” a term that first appeared around 2000, which refers to data sets that are so large and complex that processing them by conventional data processing applications isn’t possible. Two decades ago the type of data education management systems processed were input factors of education system, such as student enrolments, teacher characteristics, or education expenditures handled by education department’s statistical officer. Today, however, Big Data covers a range of indicators about teaching and learning processes, and increasingly reports on student achievement trends over time.

Despite the outpouring of data, international organizations continue to build regional and global data banks. Whether it’s the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, or the OECD today’s international reformers are collecting and handling more data about human development than before. Beyond government agencies, there are global education and consulting enterprises like Pearson and McKinsey that see business opportunities in Big Data markets.

Among the best known today is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which measures reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy of 15-year-olds around the world. OECD now also administers an Education GPS, or a global positioning system, that aims to tell policymakers where their education systems place in a global grid and how to move to desired destinations. OECD has clearly become a world leader in the Big Data movement in education.

pundits and policymakers often forget that Big Data, at best, only reveals correlations between variables in education, not causality

Despite all this new information and benefits that come with it, there are clear handicaps in how Big Data has been used in education reforms. In fact, pundits and policymakers often forget that Big Data, at best, only reveals correlations between variables in education, not causality. As any introduction to statistics course will tell you, correlation does not imply causation. Data from PISA, for example, suggests that the “highest performing education systems are those that combine quality with equity.”   What we need to keep in mind is that this statement expresses that student achievement (quality) and equity (strength of the relationship between student achievement and family background) of these outcomes in education systems happens at the same time. It doesn’t mean, however, that one variable would cause the other. Correlation is a valuable part of evidence in education policymaking but it must be proved to be real and then all possible causative relationships must be carefully explored.

The problem is that education policymakers around the world are now reforming their education systems through correlations based on Big Data from their own national student assessments systems and international education data bases without adequately understanding the details that make a difference in schools. A doctoral thesis in the University of Cambridge, for example, recently concluded that most OECD countries that take part in the PISA survey have made changes in their education policies based primarily on PISA data in order to improve their performance in future PISA tests. But are changes based on Big Data really well suited for improving teaching and learning in schools and classrooms?

We believe that it is becoming evident that Big Data alone won’t be able to fix education systems. Decision-makers need to gain a better understanding of what good teaching is and how it leads to better learning in schools. This is where information about details, relationships and narratives in schools become important. These are what  Martin Lindstrom calls Small Data: small clues that uncover huge trends. In education, these small clues are often hidden in the invisible fabric of schools. Understanding this fabric must become a priority for improving education.

information about details, relationships and narratives in schools become important

To be sure, there is not one right way to gather Small Data in education. Perhaps the most important next step is to realize the limitations of current big data-driven policies and practices. Too strong reliance on externally collected data may be misleading in policy-making. This is an example of what small data look like in practice:

1. Reduced census-based national student assessments to the necessary minimum and transfer saved resources to enhance the quality of formative assessments in schools and teacher education on other alternative assessment methods. Evidence shows that formative and other school-based assessments are much more likely to improve quality of education than conventional standardized tests.
2. Strengthened collective autonomy of schools by giving teachers more independence from bureaucracy and investing in teamwork in schools. This would enhance social capital that is proved to be critical aspects of building trust within education and enhancing student learning.
3. Empower students by involving them in assessing and reflecting their own learning and then incorporating that information into collective human judgment about teaching and learning (supported by national big data). Because there are different ways students can be smart in schools, no one way of measuring student achievement will reveal success. Students’ voices about their own growth may be those tiny clues that can uncover important trends of improving learning.

Edwards Deming once said that, “without data you are another person with an opinion.” But Deming couldn’t have imagined the size and speed of data systems we have today. Automation that relies on continuously gathered data is now changing our daily lives. Drivers today don’t need to know how to use maps anymore when they can use smart navigators that find them the best routes; airline pilots spend more time flying on autopilot than by hand. Similar trends are happening in education systems with countless reformers trying to “disrupt” schools as they are.

Edwards Deming once said that, “without data you are another person with an opinion.” But Deming couldn’t have imagined the size and speed of data systems we have today

Big Data has certainly proved useful for global education reform by informing us about correlations that occurred in the past. But to improve teaching and learning, it behooves reformers to pay more attention to small data – to the diversity and beauty that exists in every classroom – and the causation they reveal in the present. If we don’t start leading through small data we might find out soon enough that we are being led by big data and spurious correlations.

Jonathan Hasak, based in Boston, is working to change public policies to better support youth who are disconnected from the labor market and disengaged from school. Follow him on twitter @JonathanHasak

Available online at Pasi Sahlberg Blog: : http://pasisahlberg.com/next-big-thing-education-small-data/

Alan Reid

A large achievement gap between rich and poor blights Australian education – and the gap appears to be widening. Australia is near the bottom of OECD countries in terms of equity in education.

A major cause of the gap is that successive governments have diminished the strength of public education and, in so doing, increased the social stratification of Australian schools.

This trend has major social and economic consequences for all of us. If these are to be addressed, governments need to properly fund public schools. However, adequate funding is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to strengthen public schools. Accompanying the decline in funding to public schools has been a trend to privatise them, which is diluting some of the important features of public education.

basing strategies on agreed understandings about the essence of being public

I will argue that both the decline in funding and the trend to privatise public schools need to be tackled simultaneously by basing strategies on agreed understandings about the essence of being public.

The neglect of public schooling

The policy neglect of public schools can be traced back to the introduction of systematic federal funding to private schools in the 1970s. If the public funding of private schools had been organised around a needs-based model as was originally intended by the Whitlam government, it could have ended very differently. But it wasn’t. Starting with the Fraser government, funding policies began to neglect the concept of need and foreground the principle of entitlement.

The entitlement principle resulted in increasing amounts of public money going to private schools, with a consequent expansion of that sector at the expense of public education. Increasingly public education has come to be seen as a safety net provision for those who cannot afford private education, rather than as a public good.

Over time, the total amount of funding from Commonwealth, State and Territory governments closed the gap between the per capita funding of students in the public and private sectors. The most recent MySchool data shows that when like schools are compared in these sectors many private schools are receiving amounts close to that of public schools.

Add in the income from fees, and the average per capita income that many private schools have to spend on teaching, resources and facilities exceeds that of public schools, sometimes by a considerable amount.

Increased funding has enabled private schools to enhance their market appeal through such means as improving facilities and creating smaller classes – which in turn attract aspirational parents. It has led to a steady drift of students from the public system almost entirely comprising those from higher socio-economic status backgrounds.

The consequences for Australian education

The public education system now carries over 80 per cent of all students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. Of course this pattern is uneven across the public system which is itself becoming increasingly fragmented with differences between schools in terms of resources and student backgrounds.

Such developments have a number of serious consequences for Australian education, including that they widen resource disparities between schools, reduce educational outcomes particularly for students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, and diminish the social and cultural mix of schools and thus the capacity of schools to promote social and intercultural understanding.

There is an urgent need to change the current inequitable approach to funding schools so that there is a fairer distribution of funds based on need. In particular, additional public money must be directed to the most disadvantaged schools, most (but not all) of which are in the public system.

Funding is not the only issue for public schools

But funding is not the only issue. Increased funding to private schools has occurred in a policy environment which promotes choice in an education market. In this environment public education has come to be seen by policy makers as a safety net provision for those who cannot afford private education, rather than as a public good.

What are the dimensions of public education that must be protected and enhanced?

This is compounded by the call for public schools to win back ‘custom’ by taking on the trappings of private schools. The problem is that those schools which do so inevitably have to jettison some of the characteristics that are so central to public education.

So, while a fairer funding model is needed to reverse the drift to private schools, it is not enough on its own. A new funding model may reduce disparities in resources between schools and sectors as a whole, but it will do nothing about the creeping privatisation of public education. A strategy is needed to address both these issues simultaneously.

The problem is that public discussion about education is being conducted in the absence of agreed understandings about what constitutes the essence of public education. Without such understandings education policy and practice can actually work to dilute those features of public education which make it such an important part of Australian democracy.

So, an important precursor to changing current policy directions is to refresh the foundation principles upon which our great system of public education has been built. By offering a common language for public discussion, an agreed framework for public education would achieve a number of outcomes.

Why an agreed framework is essential

First, it would emphasise the individual and public benefits which derive from public education. In so doing it would promote the idea that public education is the schooling system of first choice, rather than a safety net for those who can’t afford private education.

promote the idea that public education is the schooling system of first choice

Second, it would provide a powerful public justification for the importance of a well-resourced public education system for Australian society, and would demonstrate the damaging effects of policies which produce large resource disparities between schools.

Third, it would identify those characteristics of public education about which our society can be most proud, and which must not be lost. These could constitute public benchmarks against which to judge many aspects of policy and practice, including what is expected of private schools for receiving public money.

In short, the first step in addressing the drift away from public schools and the associated stratification of the Australian schooling system lies not in the current trend of making public schools more private, but rather in (re)emphasising their public characteristics. What are the dimensions of public education that must be protected and enhanced?

Three fundamental dimensions of a framework for Australian public education

In a recent paper for the Australian Government Primary Principals Association (AGPPA), I argue that there are at least three fundamental dimensions of a framework for public education which must work together – to neglect one of them is to weaken the whole. They are:

Public education as a public good

This dimension relates to ‘ownership’. In this usage, public education is the same as a public utility: owned by the state, funded from taxes provided by the public, and managed by the state on the public’s behalf. The idea of public education as a public good is a powerful dimension that must be protected in contemporary Australia. From this perspective, public education should be understood not as a commodity to be used solely for the benefit of individuals, but as a community resource to which everyone has rights of access and which is non-exclusionary.

a community resource to which everyone has rights of access and which is non-exclusionary

The key principles of public schools as public goods are that they are free, compulsory and secular. Each of these principles are under threat today and must be protected and promoted, for without them the idea of universal public education can only be a mirage.

Public education for the common good

The lack of focus on the public purposes of public education has created the conditions within which the idea of public education as a safety net has been able to flourish. A rejuvenated understanding of public education therefore demands attention being paid to its role in advancing the common good. It is the second dimension of a framework for public education.

There are at least two key aspects to consider. The first is to create and maintain a system of education which itself models a commitment to the common good. This includes ensuring that education is available free to all on a comparatively equal playing field on a non-exclusionary basis, and has policy and practices which are consistent with, and promote, the common good IN education. The second aspect relates to the role of public education FOR the common good. This involves public schools developing the skills, dispositions and understandings of children and young people, such that they can engage – respectfully and thoughtfully – with others in deliberation about the common good in the broader society.

There are a number of implications for understanding public education – teaching and learning, culture, structure, organisation, funding and governance – through the lens of its common good purposes. In particular, it injects specific meaning into some important characteristics of public education such as quality, links with local community, collaboration, innovation, equity, diversity and cohesion, and democracy. These characteristics look very different in and through policy and practice when they are understood through a more ‘privatising’ lens.

Well-resourced public schools in every community

If dimensions 1 and 2 provide a philosophical framework for public education, they are meaningless unless public schools are adequately resourced. Thus, the third dimension of a three pronged understanding of public education is that governments have an obligation to provide and maintain well-resourced quality public schools, available to all, in every community in Australia.

The foundation premise of this dimension is that in a democratic society education should be available to all on equal terms so that each child can develop to her/ his full potential. Properly resourced public schools are the starting point for the achievement of this goal.

It therefore follows that our society should make every effort to ensure that the differences between schools in such basic areas as equipment, teacher quality, buildings, class-sizes and so on are reduced. And yet at the moment, the schools with the greatest challenges are given the least amount of resources to deal with them. In the main these are public schools.

The approach to funding schools in Australia has magnified rather than reduced resource differentials, and contributed to creating totally unacceptable educational outcomes. Australia has developed a funding model which is complex, arbitrary, inequitable and dysfunctional. It privileges choice for some, at the expense of quality and equity for all. But given the self-interest at play in the education debate, how is it possible to engineer an approach which turns this around?

The Gonski review provided a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return to the principle of needs-based funding. The fact that the government has effectively rejected the major intent of the review does not mean it was wasted. Future governments may reconsider, and if so would do well to adopt a version of the Gonski model which retains its strengths, and removes weaknesses such as the ‘no losers’ policy which was imposed on the review by the previous government.

Each of these three dimensions needs to be fleshed out through public discussion, resulting in a rich description of what is valued in public education which can then be used as the benchmark against which policies and practices are developed, enacted and evaluated.

Every community in Australia deserves a high quality public school

Public education is a precious community resource which is so essential to the life and well-being of our democratic society, and to the individuals and communities that live in it. The framework above demonstrates the folly of under-resourcing public education, and treating it as a safety net. It underlines the need for a different starting assumption for public policy: that every local community in Australia must contain well-resourced, socially-mixed, secular public schools which belong to a public system, provide a quality education, and are free and open to all.

every local community in Australia must contain well-resourced, socially-mixed, secular public schools which belong to a public system

It has never been as important as now for the whole community to support, nurture and strengthen our public schools and to celebrate the contribution they make to the common good.

Professor Alan Reid is a Research Professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia.

This article is based on a major report he has written for the Australian Government Primary Principals Association (AGPPA) on the past, present and future of public education. The report, which will be sent to every government primary school in Australia, can currently be accessed online at: https://app.box.com/s/8gb8s45n84g1ma7p8ubynudybf1ocowc

To contact Alan Reid email: alan.reid@unisa.edu.au