This is a longer read at just over 1,500 words. Enjoy!

The year 2018 was a mixed bag for schooling policy in Australia.

We had new ministers, a new organisation and some auspicious anniversaries. As Christmas approaches, it’s worth reflecting on the year that’s been.

Let’s begin in the states and territories

New South Wales

One of the biggest ticket items this year is the overhaul of the NSW school curriculum for the first time in decades. The curriculum is currently under review – and when it’s reformed, the effect will likely be felt far beyond NSW’s borders.

There have been multiple indications the reformed curriculum may have a greater focus on capabilities. These are also known as “soft skills” or “21st century skills”, and include creative and critical thinking. (The new Victorian Curriculum, and to a lesser extent the national Australian Curriculum, have also focused more closely on general capabilities.)

This shift is a response to growing evidence of the vital importance of capabilities to school performance, life outcomes and the economy. There is also evidence they can and should be developed in education settings from toddler-hood through to the tertiary years and beyond. Debate now turns to the best way to do so.

South Australia

NSW is not the only state marching forward with its own bold program. The new South Australian government is embarking on an ambitious school improvement agenda to “speed up” the learning growth of every student in every classroom. This system-wide reform combines tailored approaches with a heavier emphasis on planning, data, literacy and numeracy, building on their successful trial of the phonics check.

Queensland

Queensland is steadily closing gaps in educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

It has also launched a new strategic plan. Notably, this includes early childhood education and post-school education, and additional measures for students in regional and rural areas, and students with disabilities. This is part of a cohesive approach to lifting and sustaining learning outcomes for all students.

Victoria

The re-election of the Andrews government in November sees the continuation of its Education State reform agenda. This includes funding more specialists in schools (teachers, doctors, speech pathologists, psychologists and social workers), building and renovating more schools, and providing more preschool.

Yes, in a landmark policy announcement, Victoria’s youngest residents will receive two years of funded preschool. Given the benefits of quality preschool to all students, especially reducing developmental vulnerability on school entry, it’s a solid investment. It is one of the only strategies proven by research to lift outcomes for all children.

Western Australia

Western Australia is turning its attention to better recruitment, development and support for school leaders, as part of its broader system improvement strategy.

Tasmania

In Tasmania, the ongoing implementation of the 2017 Education Act kept schools and department officials busy – in large part due to giant shift to 13 years of compulsory schooling (prep to year 12) by 2020.

Until recently, many schools finished at year ten and students wanting to continue their education move to a new school, often in a new town. This is a major factor in Tassie’s low year 12 completion rate of only 72% - a full 10% lower than the national average.

The Northern Territory

And the NT launched it’s latest strategic plan with a focus on school leadership, quality, equity, differentiated learning, community engagement and better data.

They also put out a new school funding model, with a greater emphasis on action and targeting to student needs and interventions.

ACT

The ACT became the first jurisdiction in Australia to provide every secondary student in a government school with a laptop. The ACT 2018-19 budget also provided A$9.2 million for research and trials of new teaching techniques in response to damning research that found once socio-economic backgrounds are taken into account, ACT students are up to a year behind their counterparts in other states and territories.

Turning to the federal level

Gonski 2.0

The March release of the Gonski 2.0 report was an early highlight. This review was tasked with identifying the school and classroom factors that can make the biggest, sustained difference to educational achievement. This includes what funding should be spent on, rather than structural issues like funding allocations.

Gonski 2.0 advocated for a student-centred schooling system based on learning growth over time. Key recommendations focused on enhancing student voice, and better valuing of and support for teachers and school leaders, including providing them with the time and tools (including finer grain data, and data beyond NAPLAN) to focus on teaching and educational leadership, so they’re not swamped by administrative compliance.

(Astute readers will have noticed the key elements of Gonski 2.0 are already key elements of existing state and territory policy platforms and strategies.)

Happy anniversary?

2018 was the tenth anniversary of three major pillars of Australian schooling policy: NAPLAN, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and the Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians. Each celebrated this milestone amidst growing debate on whether they had served their intended purpose.

Read more: The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians: what it is and why it needs updating

In the case of NAPLAN, this was accompanied by a growing call for its abolition or overhaul. NAPLAN was intended as a nationally-comparable, point-in-time dataset on a few vital areas to support schools and system leaders to make program and resourcing decisions. It was also meant to inform parental choice of schools.

But misunderstanding and misuse of NAPLAN has led to perverse effects. These include an overemphasis on preparation by some schools and families, resulting in anxiety and curriculum narrowing.

In with the new

2018 also saw the launch of a new national institution - the Gonski Institute focused on addressing education inequality across Australia. Despite - or perhaps because of - near continuous reforms at state and federal levels this past decade, inequality continues to grow.

We also got a new federal education minister – Dan Tehan. He received the poisoned chalice of continuing the long and testy negotiations with the states on a five-year school funding agreement derived from the 2017 Education Act (the previous round of funding refoms) and the Gonski 2.0 findings.

These funding agreements are also a key element of the Coalition’s Quality Schools policy package, which has remained fairly constant the last few years.

It wasn’t until this week all jurisdictions were finally signed-up. But the last signatory - Victoria - only made a one-month deal. The Victorian government has expressed their concerns about a “dud deal” that provides more funding for students at non-government schools than those at government schools.

This short-term deal raises a bunch of questions as we head into the near year and the 2019 federal election - will there be by more short-term deals? Will other states seek to renegotiate better terms? Is Victoria banking on a change of government - and negotiating partner?

What do we know about federal Labor’s plans for education?

The key elements of Labor’s schooling policy pillars are restoring funding to schools cut by the Coalition. This includes, contentiously, restoring funding to some of the most over-funded non-government schools.

They have also pledged an additional year of preschool for all kids across Australia, and have announced they will establish a national evidence institute for education policy.

A new year and new goals

The updating of the national goals for Australian schooling by Australia’s state, territory and Commonwealth education ministers next year provides an opportunity to reflect on the purposes of schooling in the 21st century.

It’s hard to find fault with Minister Tehan’s statement that “Australia needs a shared agenda across the country to ensure alignment between policy, practice and delivery” and that young people need “a quality school education, tailored to individual needs”.

But it’s also true the 2008 goals were never achieved because it was never properly implemented.

Grand goals are well and good, but we need to also provision for implementation and work hard to make it happen. This means time, resources, clarity on each stakeholder’s role in creating an excellent and equitable schooling system (which enables all young Australians to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals), and active and informed citizens.

It’s time to commit to action and cooperation, regardless of who wins the 2019 elections.

5 min read

If we think back to our own childhood days, most of us would agree making good friends in primary school was not always an easy task. Sometimes friendship occurred out of convenience or survival when there was a limited number of peers to choose from. Sometimes friendship was a utility to be bought and sold through the transaction of lollies or other interesting lunchbox snacks.

Sometimes friendship developed through shared interests and extra-curricular activities. But the friendships found to stand the test of time are those that work to enhance both lives through a mutual sense of humour, empathy, honesty, loyalty, trust and respect.

From this perspective, the best type of friendship is not based on utility, pleasure or convenience which may dissolve over time, but rather the character or virtues of both people. Such friendship needs to be given freely (rather than forced), reciprocal (rather than one-sided), and recognise the virtues both people contribute in getting to know each other and themselves more deeply.

What is developmentally normal?

From a psychological perspective, there are five stages of social competence that influence the formation of friendships:

1. stage one (three to seven years) involves momentary friendship with whoever is in close proximity
2. stage two (four to nine years) involves one-way friendship with someone who can help us achieve our own goals
3. stage three (six to 12 years) involves reciprocal friendship, but only under specific conditions
4. stage four (11-15 years) involves mutually close and supportive friendship
5. stage five (12 to adulthood) involves friendship which respects the autonomy of each individual even though they may share similar interests and deeper feelings.

From a sociological perspective, friendship is not a series of biologically determined hoops children are expected to jump through in sequential order. Children draw on social strategies to resist or create their own peer culture in ways that may differ from adult expectations. They don’t simply mimic adult socialisation.

Yet, the members of select cliques still define what’s considered normal or acceptable within this peer culture. In fact, being chosen as friends by those of equal or higher peer status can decrease the risk of peer victimisation.

Given such complexity in friendship formation, it’s not surprising many parents are concerned with how their children can make quality friendships in primary school. Particularly as research has found a positive link between high-quality friendships and better academic results. They also experience less stress from peer exclusion.

So, if high-quality friendships are important for student academic results and stress reduction, what can parents and teachers do to facilitate this?

What parents can do

A magic formula doesn’t exist, but there are some general evidence-based strategies that have proven to assist in friendship formation without the risk of “bonsai parenting” (where parents over-nurture their children) or “bubble-wrapping” children. These include:

• sending your child to a more culturally diverse school where no ethnic group represents the majority of the population and there is a lower risk of visibility and peer victimisation
• encouraging your child to participate in school-based extra-curricular activities such as sport, creative arts or youth groups where they have the opportunity to broaden their social networks
• organising play dates with peers who are socially competent and have similar interests to your child
• supporting your child’s own strategies for making friends at school such as observing peers, making or accepting requests to play, initiating or participating in clubs or teams and intervening to include others.

What teachers can do

Given the large amount of time students spend at school, teachers also have a role to play in supporting students to make and maintain positive friendships through:

• explicitly teaching interpersonal skills such as expressing opinions in constructive ways, respecting difference, and caring about the feelings of others
• providing time, space and opportunities for students to work or play with others, identify new friends and maintain their own existing friendships
• being aware of peer culture and attuned to changes, tensions and exclusions in student friendship groups in the classroom or on the playground
• creating a safe space where children can discuss friendship issues such as regular “circle time”.

How to work through ending friendships in primary school

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to maintain friendships as we transition from primary to secondary school (and beyond). Research has shown this may have a positive effect on academic performance and mental health.

But sometimes we grow out of friendships as we evolve in different directions and our values and interests change. There may be times when friendships need to be dissolved if they breach our trust and/or damage our well-being. Children as well as adults, need to know when and how to dissolve such friendships and how to work through any sense of loss that may result.

5 min read

In the past decade, federal government agencies and their state regulators have packaged most things in education in Australia. Big education decisions, like what to teach and what should be tested, are largely made in capital cities. These moves have all been made in the name of improving standards, but they’ve come at the cost of local independence.

We introduced anti-discrimination legislation across Australia between the 1970s and 1990s, but then we centralised curriculum and assessment between 2008 and 2010. One move opened up more opportunities for equity, while the other restricted the ability of teachers to make autonomous decisions in response to their local needs and values.

Belief systems – whether religious, philosophical, political, ideological or a combination – are one of the most understated influences in education. These systems are based on communities’ collective values and beliefs about what matters. Because we have diverse beliefs in Australia, we also have a diversity of schools.

We need to empower and trust local people to take responsibility and collaborate to develop programs for local people. National programs have not yielded improved achievement rates, so why do we persist with the idea of centrally packaging the curriculum?

“Them and us” attitudes make rural students disengage

Although we have about 9,500 schools across Australia, there are two central education powerhouses: The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) in Sydney, and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) in Melbourne. Urban bureaucratic perspectives are foregrounded and local and regional perspectives are marginalised. It’s a long way from Melbourne to Broome or Bamaga.

All over the country, schools spend hours reporting their activities to government departments, and bureaucrats spend hours checking and publishing school outcomes. It’s a big compliance game.

ACARA administers and reports on NAPLAN. Curriculum is developed by ACARA and interpreted by state agencies in capital cities. AITSL sets standards for teachers and principals, and state governments use these to set awards and develop career paths for them.

Because school data is published on the internet, efforts by local teachers and principals to provide high quality education are hijacked by comparative assessment and reporting agendas. If there wasn’t a national comparison game, local educators could give more time to creating meaningful learning experiences for their students.

Meanwhile, non-attendance is a major concern in the regions, but we fail to recognise the significance of the “them and us” attitudes that prevail between schools and parents in regional communities.

A review into regional, remote and rural education found there is a genuine concern in regional communities that students are “learning for leaving”. This means the main focus of education is seen to be to get educated school-leavers out of the country into the city.

Many non-urban students choose to disengage because they think school is irrelevant. A mismatch of beliefs about what’s important in education can lead to disengagement and poorer schooling outcomes for regional students.

Reforms

In regional Indigenous communities, socio-cultural divisions are too often reinforced by teachers who are ill-equipped to meet the learning needs of Indigenous students. We have included Indigenous histories and cultures in the Australian Curriculum, but at the same time we’ve compromised Indigenous teaching strategies as local teachers are asked to implement pre-packaged curriculum or foreign instruction techniques.

The personal touch

We falter in democracy when we impose programs developed by centralised bureaucracies as band-aids for local problems. Programs alone don’t solve social issues. The catalyst for change is often the teacher, coach, mentor, friend, or colleague. A local person.

We can bureaucratise, standardise and normalise education all we like, but education will always be personal and emotional for local communities because they have their own beliefs, which might not match the beliefs in big cities.

So what do we do about it?

Community consultation is not enough. OECD reports show teachers who are able to contribute to decision-making also report education is valued in their community, and have higher job satisfaction.

Local schools and teachers should be able to develop their own programs that are tailor-made to meet the needs of local communities so learning is meaningful. This way, local beliefs will not be compromised by government agendas, and teachers will feel empowered to meet the needs of their students rather than just getting through the material.

The power of local autonomy has already been proven in Finland, a country that is known for its high educational outcomes.

On a practical level, local schools should be able to choose what they teach and how to test it so learning and assessment is meaningful. We need local autonomy so education can meet the needs of local students.

Educators like me welcome debate on educational issues, including this particular conversation around ATARs. We are keen to hear a range of views. However we are also very aware that public conversations often follow the loudest promoters of potential fixes for the woes of education. Unfortunately, many of these are led by bright ideas from political leaders, which are not supported by evidence.

The idea, fielded this week by Shadow Education Minister, Tanya Plibersek, to mandate a cap on places for teacher education courses to only those with minimum ATARs of 80, may sound like a great idea. Already it seems to have gained many supporters. However leaders in the field of teacher education, myself included, see this as yet another of those simplistic quick ‘fix’ ideas. It works well as a media grab for a politician but will do little to help encourage people into a teaching career.

In reality should any government act on Tanya Plibersek’s suggestion only a small percentage of the people who enter teacher education courses would be affected.

Had teacher educators been consulted we could have pointed out that fewer than one-in-four teacher education students who enter our universities are chosen on the basis of their ATAR alone. The landscape has changed and school leavers are exploring many other post-school options, rather than entering a program that prepares them for a vocation immediately after school completion.

According to the latest available statistics from AITSL at the undergraduate level, only 36% of commencing initial teacher education students entered straight from secondary education in 2016, which was a 1% decrease on the previous year. The statistics are not yet officially available, but it looks like this figure may have dropped to around 30% for 2019.

The point is fewer students are entering teacher education programs straight from school, and increasing numbers are entering after completing other careers, travel or after working overseas.

Evidence about what an ATAR can tell us

In 2014, the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group report noted research findings that indicate ATAR is a good predictor of success for students entering university with strong secondary school performance, but loses predictive capability for those entering university with lower scores. Many students with average or comparatively low senior secondary results also do well once at university. However while this research suggests that rankings are clearly a very good predictor of performance in engineering, agriculture and science, the relationship is low for education.

On the evidence available to date we cannot definitively show that those with higher ATARs become better teachers. This is not to deter universities from encouraging high achieving school leavers into teaching, however a series of reforms are now in place to complement academic scores for would-be teachers. These reforms signal the importance of non-academic traits such as high-level interpersonal skills as well as high-level literacy and numeracy standards, attributes that are vitally important in teaching quality.

Other things we use to select students for teacher education courses

The push to raise ATARs ignores the range of selection methods that universities use to choose teacher education students with the right mix of academic and personal traits. These include looking at prior experience, interviews or psychometric tests (designed to measure a candidate’s suitability for the role).

It also does not take into account the hurdles that teacher education students must clear prior to graduation. Among other assessments, the literacy and numeracy test for initial teacher education students, and the new Teacher Performance Assessment ensure that teaching students meet the robust national teacher professional standards.

How media reporting of ‘low ATARs’ is misleading

The reporting of students with low ATARs being ‘allowed’ into teacher education is misleading and done without context. A student may be accepted into a university course with a lower ATAR than the published cut-off for a variety of reasons. These include:

• The student has gained further experience and qualifications that supersede their ATAR, as their ATAR may have been acquired years before their university entry

• The student has been given special consideration due to personal circumstances (such as the death of a parent) if their low ATAR doesn’t reflect prior academic performance
• The student is a member of a disadvantaged group, and has been granted access to a pathway course during which they have proven they’re capable of undertaking teacher education.

This does not just happen with students entering teacher education courses. Many university courses take students with lower than the published cut-off ATAR (or with no ATARs) for the above, and other, reasons.

The damage uniformed public debate can inflict

Every outburst of public ATAR outrage further deters potential teachers for applying. This is at a time when applications for teacher education enrolments are plummeting as school student numbers are rising.

In 2018, there was a 7.8% national decline in undergraduate applications for teacher education courses and a national 8.9% drop in undergraduate offers for teacher education courses.

In Victoria, which introduced a minimum Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of 65 in 2018, 22% fewer undergraduate offers were made in the first round – a situation that is likely to be further impacted as the Victorian minimum ATAR levels for teacher education rise to 70 this year.

This scenario is occurring when it is estimated that another 1612 primary and secondary schools will be required in Australia by 2028 ( based on average school size by sector for 2017 derived from ABS data). In NSW alone the prediction is there will be a 21% increase in student numbers by 2031, which means an extra 269,000 students needing teachers.

This is the conversation we should be having

We should be encouraging more potential teachers if we are to avoid a disastrous situation in the future. This means stemming the drop in teacher student applications and curtailing teacher shortages beyond traditionally hard-to-fill places areas.

We all want to attract and retain the best to teach this nation’s future. Instead of confrontational comments to media, let’s sit down and work out ways we can do this together.

Tania Aspland is a Professor in Teacher Education at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney and Dean, Education Policy and Strategy. She provides high-level advice on teacher education, governance and policy. Tania is President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education and sits on a number of boards for the Australian government. She also works closely with directors and leaders of school education in government, Catholic and the independent sectors. Tania’s research focuses on educational policy, leadership and reform, higher education curriculum and teacher education.

This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article.