The fundamentals still apply

This was published 12 years ago

The fundamentals still apply

If you want better schools, work on the teaching. The State Government's education blueprint is as simple - and as difficult - as that.

TONY SIMPSON knows a thing or two about tackling disadvantage in schools. As the principal of Copperfield College, in Melbourne's west, he's spent years dealing with students who have done it tough in an often inequitable education system.

The school has 1900 students across three campuses in Kings Park, Sydenham, and Delahey. When it comes to disadvantage, it's ranked in the bottom 20% of the state on socio-economic benchmarks.


Ask Simpson what he thinks should be done to improve the lot of students like his, and his answer is simple: resource schools properly, improve the transition to primary school, and above all, lift teaching quality.

"There's absolutely no doubt that the teacher in front of the classroom is the factor that will have the greatest impact on the learning of their kids. So we need to engage our teachers, provide them with realistic pathways within teaching, and attracting them to stay in teaching in our system - and in our state," says Simpson, a 35-year schools veteran and a principal for the past 10 years.

But while most punters know there's room for much improvement in Victoria's education system, just how you achieve that goal is a moot point.

Yesterday, the Brumby Government set about trying find the answers, announcing plans for a massive shake-up in child care, kindergarten and schools.

Paving the way for the biggest education revamp in years, the proposed reforms are as contentious as they are ambitious. Bored teachers would be moved out of the classroom and encouraged to find jobs elsewhere. Parents would get unprecedented information on how their schools perform. Education Department bureaucrats could intervene in school councils if they're not governing properly. Anyone who works in child care would be required to get a proper qualification. And private schools would be made more accountable for their results.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike says the five-year "education blueprint" centres on three themes: creating a "culture of excellence" in the education system, overhaul the teaching workforce, and developing stronger links between schools and parents, who often feel that "the school is the enemy".

But the plan comes at a critical time for the Government, which for months has been at loggerheads with teachers over wages and working conditions. No sooner had Pike and Children's Minister Maxine Morand released a discussion paper on their five-year blueprint yesterday, when the criticism came flooding in.

"What people will see is simply another increase in their workloads," says Mick Butler, a teacher at the Heidelberg Teaching Unit, a school for children with behavioural problems who have failed in the mainstream education system.

"The intent is good, but the problem is, without increased resources, and without the idea of getting a workforce that believes it is valued by the Government that is asking them to implement these initiatives, it may be it very difficult."

The Government's proposed overhaul will build on its first schools blueprint, which was released in 2003 by the then education minister, Lynne Kosky. While that revamp set goals for primary and secondary education, the new wave of reforms - underpinned by Premier John Brumby's strongly-held view that early childhood is just as important when it comes to student achievement - will target all children from infants to year 12.

It's also a sign that Brumby and Pike are prepared to get tough on schools and make them more accountable for their results.

Parents will get unprecedented information to compare school performance and assess their child's progress. The proposed new reporting system will move beyond end-of-year VCE results and literacy or numeracy benchmarks to look at how schools actually "add value" for individual students, possibly using measures such as truancy figures, parent satisfaction surveys or new progress benchmarks.

Private schools have also come under the spotlight, with Pike raising concerns that some "don't necessarily provide the same level of information that the government sector does to the school community".

But Michelle Green, chief executive of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, disagrees.

"That's just ridiculous," an angry Green said yesterday. "Those schools provide as much information to their communities and to government as government schools do, so I just don't know what reality this minister is living in.

"Our schools report very well to their community, and unless I can see very good reasons why schools should change the way they report then I'm going to be quite concerned."

In the public education system, the thought of collecting more information on schools has also worried some educators that the Government is moving towards a system of "league tables" - comparative data that could be used to name and shame schools.

Pike, however, is quick to try to allay concerns. "League tables are a very crude way of evaluating school performance because they traditionally have just picked things like VCE results and literacy and numeracy tests, rather than identifying ways that you could measure progress," she says.

"But we do think parents do want to know and need to know (more), and they do need to be able to hold their schools into account. So it's finding that delicate balance between inappropriately stigmatising certain schools on the one hand, but putting, I guess, attention on schools to perform, on the other hand.

"It's about being a bit more sophisticated, and giving parents additional information that says: 'this is where your child is, this is where we expect they should or could be by this developmental stage, and how is your school progressing against that task'."

Another contentious feature of the blueprint is a plan to remove disengaged teachers from the classroom. For the Government, the message is simple: if you don't want to be there, leave - and make way for talented new blood to enter the profession.

Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman reckons the push for renewal is long overdue. Having spent many years working in schools, Ackerman knows all too well how disillusioned teachers can drag the system down.

"We have a disproportionate number of people who have been in the game a very long time, who started work in a different era in terms of the teaching and learning that was required," Ackerman says.

"Things have moved on for them, and some of those teachers are now disenfranchised and disillusioned. I don't mean that in a critical sense, it's just a fact of life. So there is a need to do something about providing firm pathways for those teachers to transition to other work, there's no doubt about that."

But Australian Education Union branch president Mary Bluett is not so convinced. She doesn't deny that there are some teachers who may be better off elsewhere, but adds that much of the reason why teachers become disengaged comes down to two things: pay and working conditions - the very issues the Government has refused to resolved despite months of enterprise bargaining negotiations with the union.

According to Bluett, the figures speak for themselves: Victorian teachers, who earn $65,414 at the top of the classroom scale, are the lowest-paid in the nation. The state's schools are funded $891 less per student than the Australian average. The number of teachers on contract employment is now almost at Kennett government levels. If the Government is serious about reforming the workforce, she says, then pay them more.

Bluett appears equally unimpressed by the Government's plan to give top teachers financial incentives to work in some of Victoria's toughest school. The idea would involve a form of performance pay for teachers to take on challenging jobs in underperforming schools, many of which are concentrated around the north and west of Melbourne where there are high numbers of disadvantaged families.

But she says it is "shallow" of the Government "to think that if you put a high-performing principal and a teacher in an underperforming school then they will be able to turn that school around.

"The reason those schools are underperforming is because they are underfunded and not able to provide the programs that are needed to support their cohort of students," she says.

To measure its own progress over the next five years, the Government has set a range of ambitious new targets it hopes to achieve during the life of the blueprint. These include reducing by 10% the number of children who have not met expected literacy and numeracy standards in year 3, increase by 5% the number of students performing well above expected reading and writing benchmarks, and reducing the number of children who enter schools with emotional and behavioural problems.

Early childhood services will also be improved, as the Government moves to boost participation and quality in child-care centres and kindergartens. At present, about 34% of child-care staff do not have a qualification because they are not required to get one. The number of children attending kindergarten is also an issue, with huge variations depending on what local government area you live in. Children's Minister Maxine Morand said her goal was to boost kindergarten participation to 95% across the state, and was also considering forcing child-care staff to get a minimum qualification.

"The blueprint is very much a recognition that learning starts from birth, it doesn't just start from the day you start school," Morand says.

"(Early childhood) is not just about child storage. Children don't get put into child care to be stored. Wherever they are, they're in a learning environment, and we want to make sure the opportunity is there for their development."

Farrah Tomzin is education editor.

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