The Schools We Need ... ... and how to get there

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The Schools We Need ...... and how to get there

• New Leadership and Governance
• Nicholas Abbey, Meryl Andrews, and Jacinta Cashen
• Presentation at the ACCSO National Conference
• October 27 2006

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Introduction

• The purpose of this presentation is twofold
• To briefly examine some of the key issues facing
  all education systems and schools
• To explore five things that can be done to help
  build the 21st century schools and education
  systems that all students need

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First of all a reality check

• Two big issues facing all education systems and
  schools are
• How to solve the performance plateau problem and
  significantly improve learning outcomes and
  opportunities for all students
• How to reduce the large achievement gap based on
  social class/family background

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The performance plateau

• For example, as with other countries, England's
  National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy was
  successful
• But in many countries the results levelled off -
  and have more or less stayed at that level to the
  present
• This plateau effect - which has been seen in
  other large scale projects - signifies that the
  strategies that generated earlier results were
  not sustainable (at http//www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4
  1/2/34923120.pdf)

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The effect of socio-economic status
Year 9 literacy and numeracy in Australia (OECD,
2000)
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The achievement gap

• Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, Finland, Iceland,
  and Sweden manage to combine high overall
  achievement with relatively small gaps between
  schools
• Finland contains quality differences between
  schools to within 5 of the overall performance
  variation among students (Schleicher, 2006)
• As Dr. Barry McGaw, then Director for Education
  at the OECD, put it If you are going to be born
  in circumstances of poor family background, it
  would be better to be born in Finland, Korea,
  Japan or Canada, than in Australia (2002)

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Impact on subject choices
The table below shows the percentage of Year 12
female students from each of the different
socio-economic groups who enrolled in each of the
mathematics and science subjects and English over
the period 1999-2001 (at a large secondary school
in Victoria). There is a trend which can be
observed in Chemistry, Physics, Mathematical
Methods and Specialist Mathematics of increasing
percentage enrolment of the socio-economic groups
as one progresses from Group 1 through to Group
5. From the table the most remarkable difference
is in Specialist Mathematics where females from
Group 1 are over eight times less likely than
Group 5 females to be enrolled.
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Equity and quality

• Written by Professor Richard Teese and John
  Polesel at The University of Melbourne,
  Undemocratic Schooling (2003) documents how the
  system of schooling produces unequal outcomes
  which both reflect, and help to entrench, social
  inequities
• It is obviously of interest to all educators and
  parents in the context of how best to promote
  equity and quality in all schools

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Why? A fundamental shift!

• Immediately after WW II, only 1 in 10 children in
  Victoria completed a school program leading to
  university today, nearly 8 out of 10 do so
• Teaching has been undergoing a long period of
  major adjustment to mass secondary schooling
• Bigger changes in teaching practice are yet to
  happen with many teachers leading this (but
  such changes are not effected overnight)

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But an inputs approach prevails!

• Many schools are obviously locked into
  competition for students, seeking to attract the
  most desirable students, in order to boost year
  12 results (via, to a large extent, the
  advantages of these students backgrounds)
• If the focus is on securing certain students as
  inputs, and if such practice is encouraged or
  not actively discouraged by education systems, it
  is difficult for schools to work to optimize
  outcomes for all students (by developing 21st
  century teaching and learning)

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The challenge of school leadership

• The impact of leadership on optimizing learning
  outcomes for all students is critical, perhaps
  second only to teaching as a major school-based
  influence
• While it is increasingly recognized that
  leadership should be shared among many members of
  a school community, this does not diminish the
  importance of a principals leadership in
  partnership with others!
• But there can be constraints on a principals
  leadership role and school leadership at all
  levels, as the following two extracts from a
  Victorian report show

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School principals and planning
From The Privilege and the Price a Study of
Principal Class Workload and its Impact on Health
and Wellbeing (2004) at www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edul
ibrary/public/ohs/PCWFinal.pdf
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School principals and leadership
From The Privilege and the Price a Study of
Principal Class Workload and its Impact on Health
and Wellbeing (2004) at www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edul
ibrary/public/ohs/PCWFinal.pdf
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SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

• Better school community dialogue
• Leadership and professional learning
• Good governance and accountability
• Real planning for 21st century schools
• A new democratic education system

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Action 1Better school community dialogue

• It is important to enable all school community
  members to exchange information, share
  experiences, honestly express perspectives, pose
  questions, clarify viewpoints, explore the best
  available research, and develop a new way forward
  
• Dialogue is a structured process, at times
  supported by a trained facilitator, that aims to
  lead to new knowledge and better practice and
  improved outcomes
• Not developing a professionally facilitated
  school community dialogue (and setting clear
  ground rules for it) is perhaps the most common
  reason school improvement efforts fail

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Ground rules for dialogue

• New ideas and insights will be strongly
  encouraged
• We will tap the deep practical experience and
  more formal knowledge held by all participants
• No simple choice between the pragmatic and the
  visionary
• Open, attentive, and respectful exchange will be
  strongly encouraged
• We will explore areas of commonality and
  difference, not papering over differences in
  order to reach a quick consensus

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Workshop agenda an example

• An agenda as used at a schools full-day workshop
  (that
• involved the principal, teachers, parents, and
  students)
• Welcome, purpose, agenda, and ground rules for
  on-going dialogue
• First key question Our school and backgrounds,
  what we hope for, and what we want to achieve in
  the workshop
• Second key question What can be done to improve
  learning outcomes and reduce the achievement gap?
  Research findings and discussion
• Final set of questions What useful ideas,
  insights, and possibilities are emerging? How do
  we best lead and support a new way forward? With
  whom?
• Closing thoughts, opening thoughts for the next
  stage

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Toolkits for community dialogue

• There are many toolkits that can help parents and
  others to develop a dialogue at a school
• For example, the Community Dialogue Toolkit at
  www.rural.gc.ca/dialogue/tool/index_e.phtml
  offers a flexible approach that can be easily
  adapted to a school community

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Action 2Leadership and professional learning

• Parents may be most welcome in schools, of
  course, but more as helpers and fund-raisers
  rather than as co-learners let alone as school
  community leaders
• The whole school all individuals must get
  into the change business (Fullan) but the old
  problem persists of squandering opportunities for
  parent participation in school leadership and
  governance
• And when adults do think of students, they think
  of them as the potential beneficiaries of change
  . They rarely think of students as participants
  in a process of change and organisational life
  (Fullan, 1996 170)

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Leadership is everyones business

• As Alma Harris (Crossing Boundaries and Breaking
  Barriers, 2005) suggests, practical questions for
  teaching staff and increasingly all school
  community members include
• How far is leadership distributed currently?
• How many formal leadership roles are there? Are
  they effective?
• Who are the informal leaders and do they have
  significant influence?
• What would need to happen to make leadership more
  distributed in your school?

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Parent and student participation

• Inviting parents as participants in staff
  workshops and PD
• Parents as team leaders (of high-level teams to
  set policy directions, not old-style committees!)
  in a range of areas (e.g., technology, health
  promotion, and school building design)
• The largely untapped power of ex-students and
  parents (e.g., creating small teams and alumni
  groups in subject areas such as music and science
  and areas such as civic participation)
• Mainstreaming student leadership roles (e.g., as
  peer mediators and student leaders and coaches in
  areas such as technology, music, and PE) and
  developing a new student leadership strategy

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Better professional learning

• For leadership to become everyones business,
  school council and parent organizations may
• Develop a more structured program of professional
  learning and induction for parents (lets learn
  from each other - across all states - as to how
  stakeholder organizations can improve
  professional learning and their work to skill up
  parents)
• Ensure that a substantive focus item is a
  feature of every school council or parent
  association meeting
• Set up a Furl account to share edgy articles
  from the Web (for help, go to http//www.furl.net
  / and http//del.icio.us/)

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Action 3Good governance and accountability

• Effective governance in a school means that it
• Has a shared vision and shared goals and its own
  evidence-based policy framework which has been
  publicly discussed and endorsed and built into
  its plan and budget
• It achieves this through strong democratic
  governance and accountability practices

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Get the governance balance right

• School governing bodies and parent groups that
  provide real leadership for improved outcomes
  combine a high degree of challenge with high
  levels of support
• It is obviously not always easy to get the
  balance right, to be a critical friend, as shown
  in the following diagram
• But candid discussion of this can help to build a
  strong, high-support, high-challenge
  partnership between a principal, leadership team,
  teachers, and parents

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Building a real partnership
From Governing the School of the Future (2004),
Department for Education and Skills at
http//publications.teachernet.gov.uk/eOrderingDow
nload/Governing20the20school20of20the20future
.pdf
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Increasing accountability

• It is wrong to single out schools and teachers as
  the sole sources of performance improvement
  which can be a convenient diversion from
  system-wide issues
• The work of One World Trust can help us to better
  assess the responsibility and accountability of
  schools and departments of education according to
  four criteria
• Transparency
• Participation
• Evaluation
• Complaint and response mechanisms

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Four types of increased accountability practice
from www.oneworldtrust.org/
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Does school governance matter?

• Some school councils are obviously rubber stamps
• Nearly 60 of schools in one study (Ranson et
  al., 2005) had weaker forums or sounding
  board governance and less than 10 had strong
  governing bodies with real strategies and
  accountability
• A strong school governing body can focus a
  schools discussions and decisions on how best to
  progress learning and improve learning outcomes
  for all students

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So important to focus on learning!

• As Hayes et al. in their book Teachers and
  Schooling Making a Difference write
• A key issue in current debates on educational
  leadership is the extent to which school-based
  management, particularly in large secondary
  schools, draws leadership away from pedagogical
  concerns to the many tasks of management
  marketing, budgeting, reporting, human resource
  management and so on.
• It is all the more important to foreground
  learning as the central focus of the school and
  to disperse leadership so that learning becomes
  the responsibility of as many people as possible
  (2006 201-202, emphasis added).

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Educational policy is the key

• As VICCSO found in its survey, responses to the
  question of what takes up most of school
  councils time were generally divided between
  reports, discussion, management of school,
  finances, committee reports and facilities
  and buildings/environment
• As well, in answer to the question What takes up
  most of your councils time? only 16 out of 780
  individual responses included either the word
  policy or policies
• Yet developing a policy framework should be the
  main responsibility of a school council/governing
  board

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Governance is also evolving!

• School governance to revitalize public education
  may increasingly include and link three levels
• P-12 and K-16 multi-school clusters and networks
  (that may meet twice a year to help build
  strategic groupings of primary and secondary
  schools)
• School councils/boards and parent associations
  focused on how best to improve learning outcomes
• High-level teams and alumni groups (that may only
  meet several times a year to set school
  directions)

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A Good School Governance Guide

• Need a Good School Governance and Leadership
  Guide with key principles and practical
  examples
• An example is the UK Independent Commission for
  Good Governance in Public Services set of
  principles (as depicted on the next slide)
• Their six principles of good governance could be
  easily developed and modified to fit the needs of
  schools
• These principles could also be combined with the
  One World Trust accountability criteria

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Six principles of good governance From
www.opm.co.uk/ICGGPS/download_upload/Standard.pdf
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Action 4Real planning for a 21st century school

• There are four major ways to significantly
  improve learning outcomes for all students and
  reduce the achievement gap (see the next slide)
• This can inform a new kind of community-friendly
  21st century school strategic plan
• Plus a simple succinct vision every school
  community member should know it!

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Improving learning outcomes for all and reducing
the achievement gap
Making ICT integral to all learning and
building networks and communities
A more coherent, inclusive, and
concept-based P-12 curriculum

• Student leadership and self-regulated learning
  skills and responsibilities

Personal learning and health plans and
capabilities to shape the future
Improving learning outcomes for all and reducing
the achievement gap
Improving learning outcomes for all and reducing
the achievement gap
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A school self-assessment tool

• To begin to develop a strategic plan, a simple
  self-assessment tool can provide parents,
  principals, teachers, and students at the school
  level with a useful starting point for
  considering
• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get there?

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Self-assessment elements

• Informed by the best available research and good
  practice in schools, key issues obviously
  include
• Relationships and networks
• Teaching and learning
• Technology use and communication
• Leadership and participation
• Culture and values
• Innovation and change
• Governance and accountability

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Self-assessment an example

• Parents can identify the strengths and weaknesses
  of their schools communication practice (e.g.,
  are blogs and wikis used by teachers and
  students?)
• A blog is also a building block for a new kind of
  school website to increase communication among
  parents, students, and staff, post student work,
  archive work, and create a stronger school
  community
• For an example, go to http//lewiselementary.org/
  and http//tim.lauer.name/)

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Action 5A new democratic education system

• As Richard Teese and John Polesel point out
• More fundamental changes are needed to address
  the basic policy issues which arises from this
  problem how to ensure that secondary education
  should not only be a mass system, but a
  democratic one as well. Or, in short, how to
  build equity on quality (Undemocratic Schooling
  Equity and Quality in Mass Secondary Education in
  Australia, 2003 13)
• Thus, what is required is a smart, sustained
  campaign for a new democratic education system
  (NDES)

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Features of a NDES

• A whole-of-government approach to improving
  learning outcomes for all and reducing the
  achievement gap
• The access of all schools and all students to
  21st century teaching and learning and new
  technologies
• Good governance and good accountability practices
  
• A significant increase in total education
  spending
• A major program for rebuilding and improving
  schools

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What is to be done?

• A campaign may begin with a policy statement and
  a charter for a new democratic education system
• Such a blueprint or charter could be endorsed by
  a broad cross-section of individuals and
  organizations
• This means discussing how best to combine the
  more pragmatic with longer-term strategic work,
  thus supporting continuing efforts to move
  educational reform beyond projectitis and
  superficial quick fixes

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Contact details

• The Victorian Council of School Organizations
  (VICCSO)PO Box 550, Richmond, Vic., 3121
• Telephone [phone] E-mail
  info_at_viccso.org.au
• Website www.viccso.org.au
• Jacinta Cashen, President, VICCSO
• Nicholas Abbey
• nicholas.abbey_at_optusnet.com.au
• Meryl Andrews
• meryl_at_viccso.org.au