Mark's Learning Log

Last week I was invited to participate in the Government’s 2 day summit on the new Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Development.

The move to construct a seamless framework for early childhood education and care so that children can transition into schooling is long overdue and applauded. Some of this hit the news recently with headlines reading preschool children receiving reports.

Perhaps the more controversial parts of the Blueprint relate to schooling and three main thrusts:

• tackling underperformance at a school and teacher level
• attracting better teachers and incentives for schools do achieve better results
• providing more information about school performance to parents.

The last point is tied up with Federal Government policies again recently reported in the newspapers. My take on this is that both levels of government are committed to providing some data that will enable parents to gauge school performance and perhaps compare schools without league tables.

The issue of school underperformance is one that deserves attention. Recent international testing results [PISA – which I have posted a previous comment on] clearly indicate we have some work to do in this area. Not all underperformance occurs in lower socio – economic communities but there is a strong tie and solutions need to be found in greater levels of equity funding as well as providing greater incentives for high performing teachers and principals to work in these schools. This is problem around the world and here in Victoria as well.

When I define high performance for teachers I look at higher levels of instructional skills and strategies that improve student skills and more importantly transferable understandings, a demonstrated capacity to seek feedback and learn, a willingess to try new initiatives and research their effectiveness, a committment to differentiate instruction for the individuals in our classrooms, effective caring relationships with students and an ability to engage our youth in their own learning. High performance attracts different definitions and I wonder what final definition is adopted here.

Both Ministers, the senior executives of DEECD, representatives of schools, universities, students, parent and union groups  and the early childhood education sector were present at the summit. I was able to provide some feedback on the initiatives:

• develop data collection systems that have a simpy interface but enable teachers to drill down and look at a range of factors about students and their performance.
• see this Blueprint as an extension of the work that has gone on before – the next phase if you like – not something new or threatening.

Most teachers I know who entered the profession to make a difference with our youth are caring and committed people however the role has changed and demands greater things of us all. Most of all it the profession needs to be supported, acknowledged, valued [which includes paid at an appropriate salary] not only by the parents and students we serve but by the wider community that includes business and government. My hope is that the new blueprint which I commend people to read and provide comment on,  will not only tackle some of the underperformance and early childhood issues but provide an opportunity to engage the wider community in the bigger debate – education for the 21st century.  

Perhaps the final comments come from a student representative in one of the workshops and Sir Michael Barbar who gave a video linked presentation.

Sir Michael, who was a senior advisor to the Blair government on school reform, gave three lessons:

• The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.
• The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.
• High performance requires every child to succeed.

His presentation was inspiring and worth a post on its own.

The student with the final comment made a passionate plea for high quality teachers saying that “education is not done to us but with us – hear our voices.”

I recently enrolled in a webiner from The Leadership and Learning Centre which is located in Colardo, USA. I learnt several valuable lessons:

• In America most schools are called buildings and so the title refers to transforming school plans into student results and here I thought I was actually looking at physical buildings plans.
• That when I get an email saying the conference is starting tomorrow [USA time] it actually means I’ve got to be up at around 1.00 am to participate.

I did get the Powerpoint presented at the webinar and it makes several really good points worth noting that will inform my practice as a leader in a school. The last point has really challenged my practice.

• The number of goals is inversely related to gains in student achievement
• The “rule of six” – no more goals than you can monitor monthly – that is rarely more than six goals
• If you don’t monitor frequently, it doesn’t make any difference how “important” the goal is – people will ignore it