Opinion & Commentary
Principal is the means of elevation
Somewhere between one in five and one in six students are barely literate and numerate, according to recent national literacy and numeracy results. These children are not spread evenly across the population. Poor literacy and numeracy outcomes are concentrated in particular schools and in particular areas, especially where there are high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage.
While the relationship between socioeconomic status and school performance is undeniable, it is not inevitable. As the Australian education expert Ken Rowe showed, family background may establish where children start in life but it doesn't have to determine where they end up. There are too many schools where educational failure is expected and accepted as a product of social disadvantage.
Aristotle said one can demonstrate the possible by studying the actual. Bellfield Primary School is a public school in one of the most disadvantaged urban areas in Australia. Yet in the space of 10 years, during which time social disadvantage intensified, Melbourne educator John Fleming transformed the school's performance from chronic failure to one of the best in Victoria.
These extraordinary results were not achieved through increased spending. There was no increase in teacher pay. There were no major capital works or new technologies. Fleming attributes the success of the school to three changes in school policy: implementing a research-based pedagogy; introducing performance-based accountability for students and teachers; and changing the school culture to reflect traditional values and discipline.
The same tough-love strategy was applied at Djarragun College, Gordonvale, in far north Queensland, once a crumbling school with low attendance. Educator Jean Illingworth oversaw its incredible transformation into a well-maintained, high-functioning school where children from indigenous communities in Cape York and the Torres Strait achieve outstanding results.
What Bellfield Primary School and Djarragun College have in common is visionary and committed school leaders with the freedom to select their staff, use the budget wisely and make decisions about governance. Unfortunately, this is not a common situation across Australia. The operation of many public schools is tightly regulated and controlled, but accountability for outcomes has been loosely defined and benchmark standards are often low.
This equation is the wrong way around. International research, including work by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Australian researchers at Educational Transformations, shows effective schools have a high level of autonomy within a framework of accountability. This doesn't mean giving schools a licence to do whatever they want, regardless of the outcomes for students. It means giving schools the freedom to choose the best methods of educating their students and holding them responsible for the results.
The moral of the story is that with good teaching and a school environment conducive to learning, almost all students can achieve standards that surpass the minimum benchmarks.
Literacy and numeracy are not everything, but they are almost everything. The trouble is that both Fleming and Illingworth say that after four years of study, including at least one year of teacher education, new graduates still have to be taught how to teach. Extensive reviews of teacher education over the last decade have found that teacher education degrees and diplomas are not producing graduates with the right skills and abilities, particularly in the teaching of reading. If universities are unwilling and unable to change, alternative ways of training teachers need to be seriously considered, including school-based training.
It must be recognised that it is possible for some schools to succeed where others have failed. State and territory governments must be more open to the possibility of allowing more choice and freedom, both within and outside the government system, especially where failure is entrenched.
An example of this in action is provided by charter schools in the US. Charter schools are public schools run by non-government organisations under contract to a government authority. They receive public funding close to the equivalent of public school funding and have to comply with a charter of standards, including open enrolment and a no-fee policy.
Analyses of charter schools show that many achieve amazing results, particularly with children in disadvantaged circumstances. Not every charter school is reaching these heights, but a growing number are providing a model of schooling that is closing the gap for minority students and the poor. Significantly, the most successful charter schools share the educational approach adopted by Bellfield Primary School and Djarragun College.
For many Australian students, social disadvantage is being translated ineluctably into educational disadvantage. The evidence from Australia and the US is that this need not be the case.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and editor of the essay collection Educating the Disadvantaged.
