Another week, another think-tank sounds off about education in Australia.
On Monday the Grattan Institute came down from the mountain bearing tablets which told us that:
- Further reductions in class sizes are not likely to improve educational performance from here.
- An increase of 10% in teacher effectiveness is required to raise our performance to best in the world.
The first claim is not news, and the second is imbued with the kind of naive positivism that imparts a plausible-sounding technocratic gloss to highly contestable claims. And both ignore the fact that the Australian education system already ranks among the best-performing in the world. Always has done.
It’s not clear why so many public commentators are hell-bent on sustaining our inferiority complex — education cringe — about the quality of Australian schooling when, as a former Prime Minister was fond of saying, we “punch above our weight” in so many ways.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask the Grattan Institute – pages 6 & 7 of their report explain that Australia’s aggregated PISA results are behind only 3 other countries at the level of statistical significance. That is, a statistically equal fourth in the world and in the excellent company of countries such as Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and Estonia. But why should that fact stop anyone from insinuating that Australian teachers are insufficiently effective?
Is the report’s author, Ben Jensen, writing in good faith and attempting a serious and constructive contribution to the education debate? Yes and yes.
Does Jensen acknowledge the complexities and nuances that make it so challenging to come up with a reliable method of measuring effectiveness in the classroom, and does Jensen steer clear of a “big dumb number” approach to performance measurement? Yes and yes.
But is the utility of Jensen’s report fatally compromised by a presumptive over-reliance on positivism and a framing error that overlooks critical considerations such as equity, welfare and political accountability? Again, yes and yes.
Regarding class sizes, the report is a non-story for anybody who has followed educational studies at any time in the last two decades. The empirical data from decades of studies began to converge as far back as the 1980s, and it’s a fairly reliable statistic that, all else being equal, a drop in class sizes from levels of 40-50 students to fewer than 30, and hopefully around 20-25, has a great impact on improving educational effectiveness — but from there you start to get into diminishing returns. Again, not news.
Then there is this beaut example of “education cringe”, from the same summary:
Past investments to improve school education have not yielded results (Jensen, 2010, p.4).
If that were so, then how the heck did Australia manage the result presented only two pages further into the report – a world-class performance behind only Finland, Hong Kong and Canada? I guess it must be the extraordinary quality of our think-tanks and education commentators, because apparently our teachers just aren’t effective enough.
(Eyeballing the figures, there also appears to be an inverse correlation between the number of think-tanks in a country, and its educational performance. But I digress.)
However, the problems with Jensen’s report go beyond a misplaced hope that positivism will lead us to the Promised Land. The more serious errors in the study come from a frame that simply omits to consider issues of welfare, equity and public accountability.
The report’s silence on these points renders its central claims at best inconclusive, at worst ignorant. The report’s chosen focus of “teacher effectiveness” is steeped in a paradigm of atomistic individualism that entrenches the notion of education as a private positional commodity rather than a public good. It feeds Australia’s education cringe with its grass-is-greener, keep-up-with-the-Jonses mentality. It does not lead to a celebration of the good and the humane in education.
Student Welfare
If Jensen had looked up from his studies long enough to visit some schools and teachers, he might have realised that what happens outside the classroom is at least as important, if not moreso, in raising the character and, yes, “effectiveness”, of Australian schooling.
If you visit your local school and listen in on teachers’ conversations, you won’t hear much murmuring about class sizes. But you will hear an awful lot of conversations about the personal difficulties that students are facing.
Vast numbers of Australian children lead truly chaotic lives. In many cases, their schooling is the one island of order in a beastly collection of circumstances. But so long as our public discourse in other realms aims to heap blame for disadvantage upon the disadvantaged, to punish and straighten welfare recipients, it will become ever more difficult for “effective teachers” to overcome the corrosive effects of a disordered home life.
This cross cannot be borne by teachers alone. The greater responsibility lies with the Australian people, who bear the collective blame if our prevailing public, industrial and economic settings create and sustain an underclass who can maintain only sporadic engagement with education.
Schools Equity
Jensen’s report doesn’t even mention that the three countries which outperformed Australia all have more equitable education systems, and many of the countries which lag behind us have less equitable systems.
The question of equity extends far beyond the well-worn “public v. private” controversies, as important as they are. The new problem is that public education too is becoming less equitable. There are Federal Partnership Programs that pour vast sums into some schools, while passing over others, on a competitive selection basis. Academic selective schools are streaming off the highest achievers and putting some of the best teachers in front of them. The result is that some students in the public system are receiving a great deal more resources than are others who have the same or greater levels of need. Such inequitable distribution of resources is far more likely to erode our overall performance than to raise it.
Meanwhile, many of our illustrious think-tanks expound that a strategy of “picking winners” is a no-no in public spending on infrastructure and industry — so why are we trying to “pick winners” in education?
Instead of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, state and federal governments decree “from each according to the standards and targets we set, to each according to how many hoops they are willing to jump through to get a grant”. The outcome of present policies is that literate middle-class people who can navigate the bureaucratic maze get the assistance, while the people who most need it — the semi-literate, the most disengaged — are marginalised and discriminated against, as they always have been.
Public Accountability
Reports like Jensen’s also sustain the present fashion to devolve accountability away from the spenders of public money, and on to the recipients. The pea-and-thimble trick is almost complete, as we now expect anybody in receipt of public funds to explain and justify and be answerable for what they “deliver”, rather than the politicians and policy-makers who distribute the money and write the rule-book. Much of the public imagination has been captured by this exercise in consensual masochism.
If our democracy is guided by a principle of “no taxation without representation”, then why is our education system not also guided by an equivalent principle of “no accountability without authorship”? If teachers have no meaningful say in the factors of production, such as…
- Global education budgets
- Specific education budgets
- What curriculum and syllabus they teach
- What classes they teach
- What students they teach
- How often those students are out of class
- What resources they have to deploy
- The design and facility of their classroom(s)
…then what ethical and practical grounds exist to construct a meaningful measurement of their effectiveness?
In summary, Jensen’s report is a tunnel-visioned technocratic masterpiece that advocates a technocratic solution to a humanistic problem. Its prescriptions will fail because they misunderstand the ailment.
—–
The report can be found at: Jensen, B., 2010, Investing in Our Teachers, Investing in Our Economy, Grattan Institute, Melbourne.
Further reading:
ABC Interview – World Today
“…then what ethical and practical grounds exist to construct a meaningful measurement of their effectiveness?”
.
Well speaking as the partner of an agriculture teacher I think the Hoof and Hook competitions are the way to go.
First a trot around the show ring where the beasts are judged – how well do they stand, what is the cut of the coat,any temperament faults?
Then off to the abbatoir for slaughter and butchering followed by the all important carcase assessment.
Get the feeding regime in place and before long you’ll be competing with those swanky schools which run their own in-school feedlots.
Takes cramming to a whole other level.
Good post. We see the same thing with health reporting, of course – ignoring the success of the Australian model and focussing on easy-to-digest-but-ultimately-meaningless metrics like hospital beds.
Great post.
I find it quite nauseating the way the media laps up these kind of reports with their critical facalties reduced to zero, as opposed to the hyperventilating carping criticism we see in other areas.
“…then what ethical and practical grounds exist to construct a meaningful measurement of their effectiveness?”
What if you have 3 classes of grade 5 or whatever in a school, and year after year one teacher’s class gets really good (test) results, one OK results, and one consistently gets poor results?
Is there not an obligation to be looking at these measurements to try and see where teacher effectiveness might be improved?
@ Well Russell, here’s the thing:
- Colleagues, students, teachers and parents already know who the effective teachers are.
- There’s a vast amount of annual expenditure on training and professional development for teachers, to keep everyone improving their practice to the best of their ability.
- Despite that, because every class is different, in a different room, with different pupils, and different results you still get different results, because teachers and students are human beings, not battery hens.
And the net result of all the above is that Australia is a statistical fourth placed in the world.
Good enough for you, or are you also suffering from the cringe?
“Colleagues, students, teachers and parents already know who the effective teachers are” …. and what then?
Russell, in a co-operative environment teachers tend to help each other and copy what works. But if the rewards go primarily to teachers who are better than their peers what idiot is going to share the secrets of their success?
Good post. I’ve nothing to add exempt endorsement, and my pleasure at seeing some thoughtful analysis returning to LP
But sadly not some thoughtful spelling in my case.
Couldn’t agree more.
Also cannot believe the burden of wlefare work now imposed on teachers in the state system.
Researchers don’t seem to comprehend that “improving” teachers has no impact on kids who routinely go to school without having had breakfast, with no lunch, in soiled clothes. At the end of the day they return to carers whose sole interest is in maintaining the drug and alcohol supplies with which to fuel their next DV bout.
Russell some bank tellers are more efficient than others. Some checkout operators in supermarkets give better service than others. And yes, some teachers get better results than others. So what? I can’t think of any other occupation where people are so obsessed with seeing individual differences as a problem. What other
Sensible employers set benchmarks for individual performance with guidelines for what is the minimum acceptable standard. They try to understand what distinguishes the best performers from the rest, and implement professional development programs to encourage constant incremental improvement. Teaching should be no different, and to my knowledge it is no different. The end.
Glad to see some discussion of Jensen’s report.
I tried to look up Grattan Institute in Sourewatch, it wasn’t there, so my understanding is that Grattan Institute is attached to Melbourne University.
Melbourne University is trialling Teach for Australia that controversial program where teachers get 6 weeks theory then 2 years teaching at being paid $40,000 per year instead of $58,000 per year for a graduate teacher with a Dip Ed. Remember Victorian school principals select their staff and get a bonus for staff savings achieved.
There is an oversupply of teachers in Victoria and Melbourne University might be trying to establish their academic supremacy in the principals minds. Year 12 students aren’t flocking to Melbourne University like they used to prior to the introduction of the “Melbourne Model”
I agree with Mercurius analysis
This gem from p 13 of the report illustrates how muddled the thinking is of the bloody economists who have appropriated teacher performance as their own little speciality in recent years:
Jensen is really setting himself a Sisyphean task if his ambition is to ensure that no teacher’s performance is below average.
Remember Victoria is the state that has just closed its School for the Blind so that blind students are now integrated into mainstream classrooms where they get upto 90 minutes specialist tuition a week to learn Braille – rendering the profoundly blind functionally illiterate
Ken won’t 50% of teachers be below average performers, just shows how maths education has slipped.
I am suspicious of a report that quotes Florida research. Demographically I would pair Mebourne with Boston or Conneticut and Florida with Queensland. I am told that American schools consist of 3000 to 5000 students, a vastly different proposition to Australian schools with 600 to 1000 pupils although the new schools on the suburban fringe are 3000 pupil zoos.
“This gem from p 13 of the report illustrates how muddled the thinking is of the bloody economists who have appropriated teacher performance as their own little speciality in recent years”
Actually, the real problem is that most of the great economic solutions that have been trialed in different places (in fact all as far as I know), such as vouchers, have surprisingly small effects — indeed some have had weak negative effects. This suggests to me that schools and student performance don’t behave very much like the types of models economists like to use to understand them (evidently schools don’t behave like businesses, which I guess surprises no-one apart from economists), and so we get all these suggestions, some of which have been trialled for over a century now, that are bound to do nothing.
In my books, the free gains to be made which would have very large effects are all in curriculum development (as evidenced by the differences between states in Australia, despite the intelligence of the students and the standards of the teachers being presumably quite similar). Unfortunately, there are very few economists willing to try and understand developmental psychology and make suggestions like “we should change the curriculum in grade 1 and 2 so that we can emphasize the development of visual-spatial skills in tasks that require the processing of symbolic concepts….”, which clearly doesn’t sound very sexy compared to “vouchers cause competition between schools and this will cause the successful ones to prosper as parents move their children from the poor performing schools to the better ones”.
Some good points, Mercurius, especially that schools here do a damn good job in providing a structured learning environment – and I’ve been in a supervising/”teaching” role in the UK, so I can compare it to a much worse situation (and even there, schools and teachers deserve more credit). I’m more of opinion that parents pass on responsibility too readily to schools – but then, that’s reflected in the moral panics we suffer, and the demands for “someone [government] to do something”.
Having said that: where is the professional assessment and feedback for teachers, not just professional development in form of a couple of participatory courses? What performance accountability is there, apart from not getting a contract renewed?
“I can’t think of any other occupation where people are so obsessed with seeing individual differences as a problem”
I think health may be heading in the same direction. You’d wnat to know if two surgeons performing the same type of operation in a hospital were getting different results.
I don’t know how you get teachers to be constantly trying to improve their work, but it seems a worthwhile thing to be doing.
I’ve read that the entry score to teacher courses has declined to be about the lowest for any course and I’m concerned that if we have no focus on individual teacher performance, it will be easy to just let that slip even further. Surely we want people with high scores going into teaching, and into an environment of continuous improvement?
In Victoria, at least, there are systemic initiatives focussing on student engagement, collaborative learning and instructional coaching whereby all teaching staff participate in observing colleagues and providing constructive feedback (pretty much the old Action Research model). These initiatives are embedded in performance and development processes required of all teaching staff if they wish to receive their due incremental pay rises.
Too many schools struggle with dysfunctional students from chaotic family situations with inadequate in-house support services – we are talking about kids who are beyond any reasonable range of disciplinary processes and are capable of considerable disruption in any classroom, no matter how effective the teacher. We are constantly reminded that we need to focus on teaching and learning as our core business, yet we are bombarded with ever-growing box-ticking work to account for what we are doing. Victoria’s DEECD schools have one of the highest administrative overheads of any teachers anywhere. Still, DEECD schools are excellent by world standards.
It’s time politicians and tabloid commentators and opinionistas stopped bashing teachers for the perceived ills in public education. We live in a rapidly changing world.
Jensenitis sufferer?
Dr Darthvector prescribes 20cc of Illich Descholasticant to exfoliate the problem area, followed by a daily dose of 30cc Postman-Weingartner full spectrum detox to ensure an adequate curricular sterilization and subversion.
Illich, Deschooling Society.
Postman & Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
Here. Didn’t you know about it? No wonder you’re susceptible to the cringe.
What other accountability would you suggest? Tarring and feathering?
Already doing it.
Oh, and…you’re welcome.
We do have a focus on individual performance. We are in an environment of continuous improvement. The fact that you can’t recognise or perceive it is not a shortcoming of mine.
You choose to be alarmed by the cringers instead of understanding that the factors holding education in Australia back — welfare, equity and public accountability — are not the responsibility of teachers. Despite this, the performance of the system is 4th best in the world, with one hand tied behind our back. The improvement in effectiveness needs to come from the politicians, who need to start listening to teachers instead of listening to think-tanks, commentators and cringe-mongers.
“The report’s chosen focus of “teacher effectiveness” is steeped in a paradigm of atomistic individualism that entrenches the notion of education as a private positional commodity rather than a public good”
What does the research show? Does it show that teacher effectiveness is a crucial element in student learning? I guess all of us can remember the huge difference between a great teacher and the average ones.
I’m not so concerned where we rank, overall, on one test – 4th or 10th or 15th. But we need a culture of high standards in teaching. I’m sure we do have programs of professional development and that’s good. And I’m sure that all the problems you and the commenters have listed are all very real. My concern on reading your post was that you might advocate not focussing on teacher effectiveness.
Russell – the research shows that teacher effectiveness is the key to school improvement. But Mercurius is arguing that all these fine efforts are undermined by factors beyond the immediate influence of teachers and regulation-bound schools.
I didn’t, considering I’ve never lived in NSW. Surprise: NSW’s not the whole country, either.
Susceptible to what cringe, where? I’m not bleating about the system breaking down. I’ve stated my awareness of the actual standing of Australia’s education, and acknowledged your points after reading your entry. You seem to have completely ignored my first paragraph. Something LP typically loves having a go at others for.
What’s the point of anyone engaging, if you’re going to be like that? :-/
Billie,
Hate to puncture your rhetorical flourish there mate, but for any given numerical measure of performance 50% of teachers will score below the *median* (by definition) but the proportion below any particular mean will depend on the other moments of the distribution (skewness, kurtosis etc). Of course that proportion can’t be zero, as Ken points out.
I’ll refrain from further comment on the quality of current mathematical/statistical education….
Actually, I think you find that of the rather few studies that are really well controlled (i.e., use identical twins so you can get rid of biological effects rather than use a pile of covariates), the effect of teachers on the variation in students learning is surprisingly small. There are factors that explain vastly more variance, like SES.
@ 26 Serious question Chade — Beyond losing their job, “apart from not getting a contract renewed” — getting fired for incompetence is the ultimate sanction in employment — what further accountability do you suggest? You don’t do your job well enough, you lose it. What else is there, apart from tarring and feathering? Serious question.
Now, stay with me for a moment — riddle me this — according to the Opposition earlier this year, then-Minister Peter Garrett was responsible for every death, injury and hangnail that ever occured in the pink-batt-laying industry. But when it comes to School Education, that very same Minister Garrett gets to rely on think-tank reports by the Grattan Institute to talk about teacher effectiveness. Why isn’t he also responsible for every failing school student? Both sides of politics want to talk about teacher effectiveness, instead of ministerial responsibility, in schools. So how come all the shonky, OH&S-dodging roof insulation companies got a free pass, but teachers are in the gun for every neglected child, every substance-abusing parent, every broken home, every half-baked underfunded policy, and every leaking classroom??
Think about the political game that is being played here. Under normal conditions, politicians are ready to claim credit for everything they possibly can. They are there at the opening of an envelope. They are like pigs to any trough of good news. Yet they are all running as fast as they can away from the opportunity to claim credit for the world-class performance of our school system. Why? Why are they instead giving funding to think-tanks to talk about “teacher effectiveness”? Why are they so keen to erode public confidence in our education system and to delegitimise the authority of teachers? What is the real agenda?
Up until about 20 years ago, teachers held an industrial power-base that rivaled that of politicians. Even though it was (and remains) the responsibility of government to provide education (because that same government makes it compulsory to attend schools), those politicians found they couldn’t yoke teachers to their will. To people who live and die for power, that is an intolerable situation and they have, largely successfully, managed to break that industrial power-base. Now teachers are the playthings of the political masters, like any other public employee.
For a brief period in the mid-twentieth century, there was a general social accord that the payment of a salary could hire a worker’s time, labour and technical expertise — and no more than that. Now, after decades of public rhetoric about things like “teacher effectiveness”, the public seems generally amenable to the idea that the payment of a salary also legitimately purchases a person’s professional and human agency, their holidays, their leisure, and unlimited overtime. We have, through some exercise in consensual masochism and a fetishisation of the Protestant work-ethic, managed to place ourselves in a neo-feudal state that represents an unholy conjunction of medieval serfdom and industrial-era Taylorisation. And, true to the vision of feudalists everywhere, the general public — the peasants — perceive their own industrial oppression to be just terms within “the natural order”.
So, yeah, I’m tetchy about an uncritical recital of technocratic nostrums about “accountability” and “teacher effectiveness”. They are tiny phrases that hides a multitude of sins, and I don’t think it’s in the long term interest of our democratic polity for voters to get used to the idea that the recipients of public funds bear a greater responsibility than the people who actually make the spending decisions.
Great post! And at so many levels.
And as I understand it, Jensen simply reviewed the ‘literature’ using his POV to establish the ‘facts’ and then to attribute the ‘meanings’.
In Victoria, the opposition are running on a policy of handing control of schools back to the Principals and away from the regional network bureaucracy with a 50% reduction in paperwork and ready to negotiate the next Enterprise Agreement to raise teachers’ salaries. Kids will be able to be expelled and parents fined for allowing truancy. More welfare positions as well. Will make for an interesting changing of the guard should they attain government next weekend!
I’d say that’s on the money, wpd. He was writing to a brief. The political motive for that brief was “find a way to point the finger at teachers so the public won’t ask uncomfortable questions about our social order”.
Mercurius says “But don’t take my word for it. Ask the Grattan Institute – pages 6 & 7 of their report explain that Australia’s aggregated PISA results are behind only 3 other countries at the level of statistical significance. That is, a statistically equal fourth in the world and in the excellent company of countries such as Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and Estonia.”"Good enough for you, or are you also suffering from the cringe?”
Should we be happy to settle for fourth? Maybe thinking that is the best we can do is the real cringe? What are the TIMSS results like?
“There are Federal Partnership Programs that pour vast sums into some schools, while passing over others, on a competitive selection basis.”
The Low SES School Communities National Partnership funds were allocated on a methodology that took into account SES, it wasn’t competitively based.
“And yes, some teachers get better results than others. So what?”
It’s not just a so what if your child has learning difficulties and needs one of teachers who gets better results than others. It shouldn’t be a lucky draw as to who gets the best teachers.
I don’t know Marlin. I mean, where’s the harm in constantly impugning the professional standing and authority of teachers, if it will make us feel like we’re better able to keep up with the Joneses? It’s not as though having students raised in an environment where there is constant undermining of teachers by media and politicians and parents could possibly harm our ability to be effective in the classroom, could it?
Not gonna do your homework for you on my weekend. Last time I checked, pretty healthy. But by all means, fuel your anxiety and cringe and keep looking for that greener grass on the other side of the fence.
A few weeks ago, the OECD declared Australia’s standard of living to be second only to Norway in the entire world. Should we be happy to settle for that? One thing’s for sure, Australians are an unchallengeable first place for whingeing.
And yet, there are quite a few schools around my region with equal need, who could sorely use that money, but who didn’t get a cent, while other schools got the lot. As I said, the public system is becoming less equitable.
There are huge amounts of resources available in learning support for students who need it. Special needs units are mainstreamed in NSW schools. Lots of students get extra attention as required including literacy and numeracy support in high schools.
It isn’t — schools manage classrooms and students carefully and assign as best they are able to raise outcomes. A lot of deliberation goes into the way classes and teachers are organised.
Your statements convey an odd impression of the way you suppose schools to be organised. We don’t just ‘set and forget’, you know.
So its becoming less equitable while at the same time there are huge amounts of resources available in learning support for students who need it. Special needs units are mainstreamed in NSW schools. Lots of students get extra attention as required including literacy and numeracy support in high schools??
“A lot of deliberation goes into the way classes and teachers are organised.” As a former timetabling deputy I can vouch for the fact that this is often untrue. The Year 9 class of remedial students is a class no-one wants to teach. In many schools the timetabler has to pressure Heads of Department into taking those classes in order to set an example to the rest of the staff. Too often the newest teachers are given those classes until they prove themselves and they are then given more favourable classes with fewer behaviour difficulties.
Yes. Those propositions are not mutually contradictory. It is possible for there to be more resources available in the system, but an inequitable distribution of them. “As a former timetabling deputy”, that level of complexity should not be beyond your comprehension.
Sounds like the best teachers are getting in front of the students who need them to me.
“As a former timetabling deputy”, can you please tell us which class you could put the least experienced teachers in front of, and not receive complaints? There would be hell to pay if you put the green wood in front of the ‘gifted and talented’ class, now, wouldn’t there? Or if you put them in front of the middle-stream.
Tell you what, why don’t we keep the inexperienced teachers in a cupboard, until they become really, you know, “effective”, and then we can give them a class.
For someone who clearly once had a hectic and important job organising classes and teachers, I’m floored that you could think schools don’t put a heckuva lot of effort into trying to get it right, and usually managing to do a respectable job of it, too.
Class sizes do not matter if you are running production lines testing stations for the collection of data. But if you believe that the quality of personal relationships between peers and colleagues matter for better educational outcomes then class sizes do matter.
Different schools deploy graduate teachers in different ways.
I have heard that sometimes new graduates get year 12 classes because they are more up to date with the material, with their newly minted degree, and the classes are easier to handle.
Schools also try to hire teachers that fit in with the school ethos, that can mean that ethnic teachers with strong accents are not hired because the children won’t tolerate them.
Thanks again for your analysis Mercurius
Please can we have a moratorium on “punish and straighten”?
I can’t recall reading a criticism of welfare policies that has managed to avoid it.
You can howl me down if you like, but just pay teachers more. Now. And give them holidays. People think teachers have too many holidays, but in Victoria many of them are simply fired in December and re hired in February. Teachers are ipso facto intelligent people. Many of them love teaching but are forced to walk away because they are just working for, comparatively, small incomes and less security.
Make a career as a teacher as lucrative as those meaningless and shallow but well-paying mba jobs in business. You won’t get an adequate supply of decent teachers if people size up the conditions and walk away. And you won’t get decent teachers if you try to address this problem with ever lower TER requirements for teaching courses.
That is a very clarifying comparison.
Australia’s educational systems are far more rule-bound, bureaucratised and centrally administered than any other profession or trade. Professional discretion has been largely removed from classroom practitioners. Perceived shortcomings, whether valid or not, serve as a rationale for increased surveillance and increased managerialism.
Educational authorities don’t trust teachers. And to a large degree this lack of trust is shared by the community.
How did this happen?
Historically, Australian education systems have always been highly centralised by world standards. This was an inevitable consequence of the fact that school certification has been the single criterion for entry into higher education. Vast bureaucracies rose to regulate this nexus.
However, until the 1960s, classroom teachers and their school-based departments were largely left alone to do their job of teaching within the confines of the highly prescriptive curricula. Teaching was not perceived as a political act.
That all changed in the late 1960s. Graduate teachers of that era insisted that teaching was a political act. They set about to change all the important relationships between teachers, administrations, students, the government, parents, and community. And they attempted to raise the status of teachers as cadres of social change.
Naturally, this insurgency terrified, horrified and infuriated many powerful interests. Instead of being perceived as professionals seeking to broaden the definition of education, these educational revolutionaries were perceived and denigrated as wreckers.
The cosy, narrow world of the pre-cultural revolution school was torn asunder. Governments retaliated by deprofessionalising teachers. More and more decisions were removed from the school. Prescription and proscription reigned. Managerialism triumphed.
And here we are.
@Helen
Yep. Make teaching a truly attractive career proposition (like it used to be 40 years ago) and you’ll be inundated with high quality applicants competing with each other for teaching positions.
If you don’t, you won’t.
Well that sort of argument works both ways. Whenever’s there’s a push for higher funding for schools whats wrong with saying – hey we’re the 4th best in the world with the funding we currently have – maybe things are ok as they are and we can better spend the money elsewhere….
Lovely post, Mercurius, thanks. My reading of the research around class sizes agrees with yours – the law of diminishing returns definitely kicks in.
Thanks also for your contributions, Ken.
My understanding of the research is that school (including teacher) quality accounts for only 10% of student performance when equalised for class, income etc. (I have trawled for the reference for long enough that I have given up. If you want to disagree with this figure, please do). This confirms Mercurius’s point that what makes the most difference, namely society-wide equity issues, are what will truly make a difference to our education system. Perhaps we need Possum to do some statistical analysis on our schools’ performance vs percentage of children in lowest 20% SES?!?
As a teacher I would make the following comments.
1. I have taught classes of between 10 – 12 kids through to 28 kids. Small classes make happy kids. Social interaction is better, bullying is reduced amd there is a far more relaxed and gentle feel. Student enjoyment of school is a major factor. I don’t care what the statistics say in terms of academic achievement – kids in small classes are far happier and this stands for a lot.
2. The Australian education system is failing. Our curriculum is dumbed down and there is little classical education about real thinking and knowledge. If you think analysing Big Brother in Film and TV studies is education then it shows how far we have sunk. I would never send my kids to most state or private schools. Some of the Grammars provide a real education and this is what most schools should be like. Unfortunatley they are dumbed down child minding facilities run on a budget.
3. As a teacher who received an OP 3 I despair at the low levels of educational achievement some teachers entering the system have. There are some teachers who are simply not academic enough to do the job. OP entry should be cut off at say 8 or 9.
4. Most of the public have no idea what goes in in terms of student behaviour. Chair throwing, room trashing, foul language, bullying, smashed windows, fires, kids on rooves… We have incredibly weak stabdards, Kids should be given a waring and then moved on so they don’t destrot other kid’s education and lives. At the moment many decent kids in tough schools have their education wrecked by a minority of revolting behaved kids who we are too scared to kick out. Middle class experts tell us schools have to save every kid from themselves (because parebnts won’t) and in the process wreck the school and the lives of decent kids. Crazy
The answer lies in higher OP cut offs, increased teacher salaries, zero tolerance on misbehaviour and a classical curriculum, not dumbed down entertainment.
Teacher,
The point about class sizes is not whether really small classes are better for children – I agree with you. The question is are they enough better to justify the doubling in salary costs that your comment implies. At some point with our education we have to make a good-enough judgement relative to cost, and to me that is at about the 25 kids in a class level. I’d like less, but I can live with that.
I can see that we come from quite different approaches to teaching, so I won’t try and debate with you on all your points. I disagree with ‘zero tolerance’ approaches mostly in a philosophical sense – I don’t put up with bad behaviour but I describe this approach as having high expectations. In my experience those who advocate ‘zero tolerance’ see to think this justifies intolerance and a lack of understanding, and a ‘this classroom is a battle that I am going to win’ approach. None of these approaches actually seem to work in practice, except to teach children that education is a punishment.
Ah, an undergraduate’s literature review… Or is that too mean of me?
I love the way ‘teacher effectiveness’ is left undefined in this report. While undefined it is nevertheless quantifiable (measures suggested on p.5), even though a cost-benefit analysis of quantifying teacher effectiveness isn’t covered!
By contrast, there is plenty of space given to the CBA for class size reductions in Florida. Why IS so much space devoted to this study? Given that the USA isn’t within coo-ee of Australia in education outcomes, we should ask whether the poorer education system there might cause a lower responsiveness to class size change. When education is drill-’n'-kill, class size reduction is probably less important than it is when education means research, discussion, argument, demonstration, public speaking etc.
“Between 1964 and 2003, real per child spending in school education increased 258%, while numeracy test results significantly fell…” And of course the numeracy results were due to lower class sizes, not to the integration of children with intellectual and other disabilities, which also occurred in that period?
But this is not my field. Had someone already worked out that curricula and teaching methods don’t vary much between ourselves and Finland, Canada et al? Because Ben Jensen doesn’t mention this area at all.
“……a drop in class sizes from levels of 40-50 students to fewer than 30, and hopefully around 20-25, has a great impact on improving educational effectiveness — but from there you start to get into diminishing returns. Again, not news”.
Diminishing returns from smaller class sizes isn’t old news to everybody:
Victorian Greens http://vic.greens.org.au/policies/education
NSW Teachers Federation http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/teachers-insists-small-classes-are-better-20101115-17szq.html
Would you also consider a moratorium on “moratorium”?
I can’t recall reading a whine about cliches that has managed to avoid it.
Chookie, that was my take on it at a quick glance. I tend to agree with Mercurius – the outcome was given to the writer who has done a reasonable job of justifying it.
The argument that it’s an impartial review designed to tease out opportunities for further improvements becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as you read more of the report.
But what would I know, I’m just an engineer who’s never been paid even half a million dollars in a year. Clearly not qualified.
Most of the public have no idea what goes in in terms of student behaviour. Chair throwing, room trashing, foul language, bullying, smashed windows, fires, kids on rooves…
A good caning on an as-required basis used to work fine.
Just counted the number of students in my fifth class school photo from 1961. 49 were there that day. Anyone beat that?
I’d flog any student who expressed an inclination to vote Liberal.
*/end mockery
Well, PeterTB, like you I had most of my education thrashed into me. Fifty years on, I’m still not convinced it’s the best approach …
RSA Animate – The Secret Powers of Time
The other issue, which is never really discussed in relation to education is what it prepares people for:
Do we need highly educated people? How is this related to the political ideology of full-employment? Is there really enough work available for everyone to be in full-time employment?
There’s a very strong correlation between criminality and dropping out of school? How important is school for socializing people? Why should schools have to socialize children, even when their parents are unable to?
Education needs to be returned to the responsibility of the individual and the incentive needs to be the prospect of a better life. Other than that it really is just entertainment and game playing.
Good/ better/ best teachers are not the answer. Schools aren’t research institutes(, whatever else they might be.) The content of math lessons, for example, is about teaching kids basic techniques– mostly from a few hundred years ago– so that they can cope with the abstract world they live in. Some children will go on to study math seriously. What do we do with children, who don’t want to learn anything in an age, where we no longer have child labor? Send them to jail? Make real-estate agents and insurance-salespeople out of them?
Yes, that’s kind of my point, Chris. The drags on the system now have more to do with welfare issues, equity issues (uneven distribution of money to people who have the same levels of need) and a public appetite to devolve responsibility ever-downwards onto front line staff instead of policy decision-makers. Deal with those issues, and I think you’ll see an even better performance out of the current system and budgets. Until you deal with those, it’s not clear to me how extra money to make smaller classes or more “effective teachers”, or even paying teachers more, will make a great deal of difference.
Although Helen and Tigtog’s call to pay teachers a *lot* more does have the virtue of being the one thing that no government has ever tried before
But seriously, if you look at global education budgets compared to OECD countries, Australia is certainly not guilty of under-spending on our school students. At the global level, were probably spending about the right amount. But the equity of the spending is one seriously corrosive factor on the effectiveness of the overall system.
Current average class sizes in high schools are just a nudge under 25. One way that governments could afford to pay teachers significantly more within the current budgets is to let that average creep up by two or three students: then you can afford to have more expensive teachers in front of slightly larger classes. Heresy I know, but the totality of empirical research does not predict a crash in performance if there is increase in the average from a present average of 25 to, say 27 or 28. Clearly these are global settings: there is a huge degree of individual variation that individual schools are in a better position to manage at the ground level.
If I were in a position to negotiate, I would be taking such a position: a relaxation of class-size targets to 28 (approximately a one-eighth increase) in return for an immediate one-eighth salary increase, plus inflation. The global budget shouldn’t be affected, since the per-student spend remains the same in real terms. Anyways, just spit-ballin’ here.
I bet you could beat that yourself, Peter, but 6 of your classmates were in hospital after “a good caning”, and the rest were busy down in the coal mines after they’d finished their shift at the bleach factory, got done with the chimney-sweeping, completed their national service and scrubbed up from their bath in the sheep-dip. Never did me any harm.
I agree with you insofar as public schools have so far allowed me and my children to earn more than decent marks and university places. (I realise that uni places are not the be all and end all; this is a blog comment, not an essay.) As a parent “on the ground” or “the coalface” or whatever is the cliche du jour, I’m alarmed at the scramble for a “positional education” in the form of private or selective public which means a middle-class flight from the public sector. This is turning into a vicious circle which if not broken will turn our public system into a “safety net” for “the others” (aka the people society find too hard), a holding pen where disengaged kids do time. Gillard and Brumby (I’m in Victoria) are doing nothing to break this vicious circle. Brumby has just promised the “independent” (!) and church school sector $200m extra, FFS.
Kenneth Davidson has a great article in the AGE today which is a very cogent overview of how the system is working in Victoria today.
Mercurious @29,you have eloquently said everything that I think about the craze for teacher bashing in this country. I can only admire them for going to work weekdays and spending a very large part of their weekends and evenings preparing lessons and tests, marking work and going to those interminable improvement courses.
And their thanks is to cop the gratuitous abuse of politicians, the press and the general public because they can’t perform miracles to the standards of their critics, none of whom would have the guts to do what teachers do everyday of their working lives.
This coupled with ever increasing class sizes, providing food for their neglected and abused pupils, and having to teach special needs pupils despite not having the training to do so! Grrr!
It’s much the same in NSW, Helen. Private and selective public schools leaching the life and vitality from most comprehensive schools in the city, less so in the country. Successive (mostly Labor) governments have created this vicious cycle which they would find it almost impossible to extricate themselves from even if they wanted to, which they don’t.
Add an over-reliance on restrictive testing, a inequitable Federal funding formular and the comman perception of education as a commodity, and it’s amazing that our school system performs as well as it does.
Mercurius @ 55 – I think I generally agree with what you’ve said – especially about most factors being outside of the control of schools. If you’re an education minister however you don’t have a lot of control over those other matters so you fiddle with what you do control…
Also I’m wondering how much a once off 10-15% pay increase really would have on attracting new people into the profession. Its also probably a 15-30 year plan. From what you’ve said in the original post is it really more autonomy for schools and teachers that you are looking for? Control over what they do to match their responsibilities?
I don’t see whats wrong with some elitism in public education though – eg gathering together the very academically capable students together and allocate them some very good teachers. Society has a lot to gain from stretching the very brightest and as I’ve mentioned before critical mass can be very important. Its something we do for sports with little protest.
Chris,
Don’t get me started on sports funding… (smile)
Indeed, adrian. The idea that education is a commodity really angers me as well. I think it suits the powers that be to encourage that attitude rather than admitting that education is possibly our most valuable infrastructure.
Perhaps they can get away with the idea of education as a commodity because most people don’t see it as a vital part of the country’s infrastructure. Worse still, maybe those in charge of education policy also see it as a commodity.
adrian: a[n] inequitable Federal funding formular(sic)
Fully supported adrian. If only the state governments put even 75% (per student) of what they give to state schools towards those students in non-government schools, justice might be served.
I’m sorry Peter, but can you please tell us which principle of justice is being injured by the present arrangements of free, compulsory and secular public education?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Mercurius @55 noted:
This article in the Herald today indicates that poverty and poor educational achievement correlate even on a rough measure like ICSEA/Naplan. I know we are all saying “Duh!” but it’s nice to see the Herald swinging for public education.
The NBN will keep our countries finest young minds up to date with the latest tutorials on all subjects in this current and future technical age.
To be at a disadvantage by simply NOT HAVING the available tools would be a disgrace for a country with massive mineral wealth!
They call us the economic miracle from down under yet we have an internet that struggles with youtube depending on what suburb you live in!
HOWARD AND COSTELLO WILL NOT BE REMEMBERED FOR WATCHING THE MONEY PILE!
Holey moley! I’m blown away by all your blogs. I did an internet search for classical education in Australia and this blog came up. I’ve been living/working in different countries for the past seven years and I have found, at times my lack of knowledge (especially in English) and other subjects compared to Europeans almost an embarrassment.
I found it wasn’t until I went to university that I actually started my education, and I went to one of the best private schools in QLD. It is not only me, but the majority of friends who have also widely travelled agree. And I am not sure who wrote ‘the dumb-ing down of our curriculum’ but honestly, that is how I felt.
I have always known teachers get a raw deal, very much like in the health field, and I am not blaming you. But I feel something needs to be done with curriculum because the fact that such a large majority of the public believe the accusing political fingers & an alleged poorly researched study shows that our education system/curriculum (not teachers) needs to be more diverse. Not that a classical one is the answer, I was just researching due to a book titled ‘The brain that changes itself’ Norman Doige (I highly recommended it to all teachers and parents alike) which suggests that the ‘apparent boring, ridged and not relevant’ classical education was possibly the grounds for a far better functioning brain that gives us fluency & grace with symbols, and that the disappearance may have contributed to the general decline of eloquence which requires memory and a level of auditory brain-power unfamiliar to us now.
But with all of the social factors going on like you suggested, how do you get certain kids to sit down, let alone listen or study? How do you stop it from disrupting the others? And how do you do it without the responsibility landing on your shoulders personally? Governments have long liked to pass the buck and let the responsibility land on individuals’ shoulders. Thank god some of us do ‘go the extra mile/s’ but sounds like the resolution for teachers really lies in family life? Which makes sense…
I don’t know enough about what is going on in education Australia but recently returning has made me appreciate our clean and functioning country, but also finds me associating us to America where our politicians/media are doing more brainwashing – cough – sorry educating than our schools. Our coming generations need more exposure to a variety of education so they can make informed decisions on their higher education, careers & lives (AND WHO GOVERNS OUR COUNRTY!). This lies with the parents too, but if you only have parents who have good intentions and not necessarily good educations themselves, then the only thing left is school! I’m not sure what’s on offer now, but I know that I didn’t get it, that I was an above average student and my parents used their retirement funds to ensure I had the best education. Something needs to be done, because the fact that such a large majority of the public believe the accusing political fingers & media shows that our education system (not teachers) is not equipping them to distinguish for themselves.
My personal point of view, you all deserve medals/raises/allowances for shrinks etc the list is too long. Keep up the good work.
Another week, another report about education in Australia.
According to the SMH’s reading of the report from Program for International Student Assessment the importance of socio-economic status to educational outcomes in Australia is increasing:
So what is the headline that The Australian concots?
That’s right, according to unnamed “international research”:
Yes, its the teachers fault again.
great debate going here. Wish I had located it before I laboured on a rather extensive response to Jensen myself. For those interested it can be found on Australian Policy Online webiste at http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/jensens-class-size-claims-need-be-unpacked.
Would value feedback ……