Education Policy

17 September 2024

Both Labor and Liberal parties have now announced, as the major commitment, that they support the implementation of the recommendations of the Literacy and Numeracy Education Expert Panel, released in April 2024, and have promised to allocate significant funding, particularly for resources.

There is no doubt in my mind that the recommendations of the Expert Panel should be implemented but a much broader reform agenda is needed to reverse the current inequality of our educational system and to ensure a quality education for all students in the ACT.

Federal/ACT context

Crispin Hull reported in The Canberra Times on August 20, 2024, that in 2023 “state schools were getting just $11 billion of the total federal $29 billion spend and private (including Catholic) schools got the remaining $18 billion”. The ACT is impacted as much by this as it is by local systemic problems because federal funding contributes to a two-tiered educational landscape in the ACT, as it does elsewhere.

While federal funding may be outside the scope of an ACT education policy at the present time, I mention it here as an underlying structural problem and as an area where aspiration and discussion/lobbying is urgently required.

Given the Federal/ACT context I believe all effective educational policies in the ACT should sit under a powerful statement of educational equality. For example,

• We will strive for equitable educational experiences for all students in the ACT, committing to ending the unfair funding arrangements whereby private schools enjoy better environments and resources than those in the government system. Taxpayer funds should be directed to the government system which educates most students, including most students with a multicultural background, a disability, Indigenous students, and disadvantaged students. This is to create a cohesive society where the potential of all young people is valued as a personal and social asset.
• We are committed to affirming the value of teachers in the ACT public school system, so teachers can be effective and successful, and regain their professional self-esteem. Significant change at the system and school level is required to do this.
• We support the implementation of the recommendations of the Literacy and Numeracy Expert Panel.

Rationale

• Education policy has not been an election issue in ACT for a long time, if ever. Even with the long poor governance of the ACT Education Minister and Directorate, there is a listlessness about things ever changing. The same applies to the level of federal funding directed to the states for private schools. Many people believe it is unfair, but it has been going on for so long that it seems a permanent, unchangeable reality. There is an opportunity with an upcoming election to open a debate about what sort of society we want to live in. And with all the things that taxpayer funds could be spent on, is a funding anomaly like this justified in a secular society?
• Canberra is an ideal location to have this debate and a new, strong direction. We have the highest percentage of students in private schooling in Australia. If we look at voting on other issues such as a long preference for voting Labor, same-sex marriage and The Voice, Canberra people favour inclusivity and a democratic spirit. The percentage of students in private schooling here is discordant with other evidence of what Canberra people prefer. It may well reflect a fear that the government system is performing poorly overall, which it is, and parents are worried that their child will not receive an adequate education at a local public school. At least six reviews into the ACT education system in as many years have indicated that not all is well. The Expert Panel is the latest and builds on the earlier findings.
• A ‘big picture view’ of education policy and direction is required not only to motivate and recharge voters’ idealism but to avoid band-aid solutions and the resulting waste of money. The ACT ran a Literacy and Numeracy Field Officer program with over twenty primary school and five high school specially trained Field Officers in 2010-2016. The experiences of the Field Officers varied depending on the school, with some schools welcoming the support and many others finding that it did not work with their autonomous philosophy. (Professor Kaye Lowe of the University of Canberra did a review of the Field Officer Program during this period but I no longer have a copy of it and can’t find reference to it.) In any case and years later, any benefits were short lived. The philosophy of the ACT system/school needs to align with any reform agenda, for success to occur and to avoid the waste of millions more dollars.
• Better learning environments are not superficial things. They go to the heart of allowing students to develop their potential. Many government schools in Canberra no longer have a librarian or even a library. Some private schools employ coaches for debating, sport, and extension academic activities, or to help teachers by marking essays. They can afford to pay teachers more, and are thus less likely to have teacher shortages. Students in mouldy, rundown schools with broken furniture, struggling to attract staff, simply do not feel good about being there and neither do the staff. Some schools have the money to hire educational experts to present courses for staff development, others not. Some students have their lunch in shaded courtyards with good canteens, others stand in a concrete yard and there is no canteen. Typically, private schools have their own buses to transport students to outside opportunities, whereas this is rare in the government system. I am not suggesting that students need luxuries to receive a good education. The problem is we have a deeply inequitable system of haves and have-nots, which conditions children to accept that a deeply inequitable society is satisfactory. This partially explains the dissatisfaction and shortage of teachers. The government system is the largest employer, but these teachers find that working conditions make it difficult to do a good job. If teachers were treated as professionals, it would be a far more attractive form of employment. In my experience, working conditions, rather than salary, are why teachers want to leave.
• Private schools usually screen students when they enrol. They may ask to see the latest NAPLAN report or ask students to sit a test where they will need to get a C grade to enrol. Once enrolled, the student may not be a ‘good fit’ and may be asked to leave if their behaviour/performance is not up to expectations. These students are likely to enrol in a government school. The new school then must manage both the behaviour and the sense of failure in the student. Private schools are not doing the educational heavy lifting. They should not be funded to run boutique establishments.

Comments on the recommendations of the Expert Panel.

• The report is good and makes sense. Unfortunately, implementation will be problematic if the Labor government returns to office having already delayed the start of implementation. There have been many reports and inquiries into ACT public schools in recent years, and none have stirred the Minister or the Directorate into action. NAPLAN has been dismissed for many years although its data is accepted as valid and reliable including by the Expert Panel. Furthermore, NAPLAN assesses how schools are teaching the Australian Curriculum. It is the audit mechanism.

The system’s dismissal of NAPLAN has been internalised by ACT government schools. They may believe that NAPLAN does not capture the picture of the whole child’s development, for example the child may be excellent at art, sport, or dance but struggle with numeracy. They might say that the excellence in art does not show up in NAPLAN. However, NAPLAN has never claimed to be more than regular short literacy and numeracy tests. It is not designed to test the whole child. It is not a big deal in the life of a student who is required to do many school-based assessments on a regular basis. But because NAPLAN clashed with the ideology of the Directorate and the school system and because the results showed that the ACT was underperforming based on socio-economic factors, it has traditionally been undermined and sidelined in the ACT, not administered correctly, and the detailed feedback and teaching strategies provided by ACARA to schools has been underutilised.

• Teacher workload. The Expert Panel correctly points out that substantial changes to teaching practice will involve significant calibration for some schools. It is good that the impacts on teacher workloads are acknowledged, but nonetheless these will be difficult to reduce. I believe that the job description itself needs overhauling. For instance, why are professional teachers in short supply required to do several hours of playground duty each week? Playground duty could be treated the same as before and after school care.

Why is the EBA for teachers based on the number of hours of face-to-face teaching time? Creation of quality tailored curriculum, lesson planning, checking, and marking of students’ work, talking to students, parents and other teachers cumulatively take a lot of time and yet seem to be treated as ‘add-ons.’ Face to face teaching time should be no more than half a teacher’s load if they are to be able to do a decent job. Instead of spending many millions of dollars on the purchase of curriculum materials as implied in the Labor Party Strong Foundations document, it would be far better to use this money to buy time to reform the job description of a teacher so they can create their own high quality curriculum materials and so enjoy one of the higher level creative and collegiate aspects of teaching. Schools who encourage their teachers to develop high quality programs and units of work which can be shared with others are more effective, the teachers are happier, and the lessons are better.

There needs to be far more administrative support for teachers. They should not have to spend hours doing data entry, for example. They should not have to queue up to do photocopying.

• Curriculum deficiency. Curriculum development has not been an area of strength in the ACT, partly because professional development time is rarely dedicated to it and because executive teachers frequently have little experience of it if they have only worked in the ACT public system. It is also not highly valued as a professional attribute, for example at job interviews. Professional development in ACT government schools is usually focused on student well-being and pastoral care, which are important too, however they need to be in the context of supporting the learning of students, the core business of schools. Teachers are seen as doing a decent job is they can engage students and are often blamed if they do not. There is little incentive to have high expectations of students and go beyond a level they are easily able to achieve. In my opinion, many students are bored and under stimulated, and don’t feel as though they are learning and achieving. This is particularly so for more proficient students. The ACT has devolved Talented and Gifted education to the school level, and while there are some exceptions, there is little interest or acknowledge of the loss of potential when students are not challenged or extended. The problem is partly caused and certainly compounded in schools where there are significant behaviour problems and teachers are preoccupied with maintaining order or even just surviving. Some schools do not have effective policies or boundaries to assist teachers with behaviour management, and teachers can feel unsupported. This, combined with workload issues, explains why so many teachers either leave teaching, or wish they could.

If school autonomy is to continue in the ACT, principals need to be held accountable for these issues or be removed. It also needs to be pointed out that there will never be any consistency in educational outcomes, as recommended by the Expert Panel, if school autonomy is retained in its present form. The ACT Principals’ Association is a powerful lobby group.

• I believe a strong focus on literacy, numeracy and explicit teaching are anathema to many leaders in the Directorate and schools. This anathema is also historical. Recent school leaders have developed and been promoted from within this culture. There have been media interviews/press releases in the last few years based on interviews with younger, recently promoted principals where they have extolled the virtues of enquiry, rather than explicit learning, for primary school and high school students in the ACT. Presumably, these media opportunities were facilitated by the Directorate. These schools are sometimes in disadvantaged school districts where there may be many students with a language background other than English. There was no mention of whether these students had the sound reading, writing and research skills to complete an inquiry learning project independently.
• Accountability goes against school principals’ love of school autonomy which has been accepted or fostered by the Directorate. It has allowed the Directorate to avoid system responsibility for curriculum. It is all up to the individual school. The point is there will be very deep resistance to the changes recommended by the Expert Panel. There will be delays and I would not be surprised if the only part of the recommendations that are focused on for a long time is the early years reading/phonics.
• The same goes for the behaviour management strategies in place in some problematic ACT schools. Liberal leader Ms Lee is disingenuous in suggesting that she would offer the ACT government system access to the expertise of the local Catholic system if the Liberals gained government. The Catholic education system is being held up as an example of how to do it, and their Catalyst literacy and numeracy policy is certainly reassuring to parents in offering consistency and better outcomes, although it is early days. However, there are significant differences between the Catholic and government school systems in the ACT. The Catholic system is smaller, more tightly run, and centralised. Their teachers have frequently been educated at Catholic schools and trained as teachers at the Catholic University. Ideologically there is a strong consistency operating in the system. Crucially, students who do not fit in are able/advised to seek another school. Only the government sector is obliged to accept all students in their designated area.
• Recruitment. It is difficult to tell, from the Directorate website, how this is currently operating, but again there is history here. Recruitment has been run by teams of teachers and school leaders, pulled out of their schools to interview candidates. This is/was not a professional HR operation, and not linked to the actual vacancies in schools. Even if this has slightly changed, most permanent teachers in public schools now came in under this system. The result is that there are many teachers in the system who are required to teach out of subject which is stressful for them and unsatisfactory for their students. Particularly in subjects like Maths, there are many teachers in the system who trained in PE, did well at an interview and were offered permanent employment.
• College v high school. The college sector is not dealt with at length by the Expert Panel although they note that college teachers are required to teach approved curriculum by the Board of Senior Secondary Studies. Finally, in the last two years of high school, there is curriculum oversight in the ACT! College teachers also have a reduced face to face teaching load, compared to teachers of years 7-10 and primary teachers. College teachers also do far less playground duty. Disengaged students often just quietly leave. Naturally, these jobs are highly prized. While other teachers are expected to transfer to a similar school every five years, college teachers have managed to cut off and build their own empires and historically have been able to remain where they are for ten years. The educational rationale for this is unclear to me and in fact it creates a situation where teachers of years 7-10 have little idea of what demands college will make on their students and so little chance of ensuring that the required skills are in place.

In terms of workload, it is inequitable and involves a deskilling of both high school and college teachers who are not working within an educational continuum as happens in other states where high schools cater to years 7-12 and teachers can develop skills across a more varied cohort.

• Empowering students. The Expert Panel noted that marking criteria for assessments should be made explicit. In fact, the whole point of each unit of study should be made explicit, certainly by high school and preferably much earlier. Students should be issued with an outline of each course at the beginning which clearly states the intended outcomes in terms of the Australian Curriculum and the subject matter to be taught, as well as an indication of what will be assessed. This is normally 1-2 pages and covers 3-4 weeks of learning. This allows parents to understand what their child is learning and to allow students to do their own investigation into the topic or skill area. It helps students who miss lessons because of illness or absence and establishes a clear purpose for all lessons. These documents can be posted on the school website. Principals should be accountable for these documents being of a good standard and regularly provided. This is normal practice in government schools in other states.
• Textbooks are deeply unfashionable in the public school system. Instead, teachers photocopy endless sheets (from textbooks or the web) and issue them. Students are then responsible for filing them. Enormous amounts of paper are used and sometimes left behind at the end of the lesson. There should be a place for quality textbooks, as used at universities, especially in subjects which involve a lot of facts such as Maths and Science, not to replace planned units of study, but to allow students to refer, revise and work ahead if they choose.
• Minister Berry says that the Expert Panel will do an annual review of the progress of implementation of the eight recommendations. These will need to be closely scrutinised given the profound resistance that will occur.

Positive examples

Finland is often mentioned by educators as a high performing example of public education. An estimated 97% of students attend a quality local government school. Private schools are permitted but not funded by the taxpayer. Teachers are well educated with a master’s degree; their full education is free if they are among the 20% of applicants to be accepted into prized teacher training. They are treated as professionals. There are many articles online about this system which is part of a social welfare philosophy quite different from the one we find ourselves in now in Canberra. Finland nonetheless achieved this from a low base after the second world war.

An example of a discussion of Finnish education is at https://bigpicture.org.au/steady-work-finland-builds-strong-teaching-and-learning-system.

Pam Blakeley