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To face many of the challenges of climate change or pandemic recovery, we need STEM workers in Australia to provide solutions to complex issues. How? Address skills shortages in primary school.
Reports about the shortage of a technically qualified workforce in engineering are not new, and have been reported in the media for decades. However, despite decades of research focused on national investment, education priorities, access to outreach programs and negative attitudes to STEM, Australia has not been able to turn this around.
Our research indicates that the focus for growing a skilled engineering workforce should be in our primary schools, where there is strong potential to harness interest exhibited in engineering-type activities. If this interest is sustained through secondary school by providing up-to-date advice to students, our efforts might lead to tertiary study options.
Falling STEM participation
In Australia, despite an overall increase in Year 12 enrolments, participation in the sciences (apart from earth sciences) and advanced maths dropped in the decade to 2012.
We believe young people’s negative views about engineering contribute to this, including the view that engineers are ‘geeks’, wear hard hats, and that engineering is a career better suited to men.
To unearth how these views are formed we surveyed more than 2,500 Australian students about their interests in, attitudes towards, and knowledge and understandings of engineering. We sought the views of primary school students (555 in Year 5), high school students (493 in Year 11), and tertiary students (1,517 university students in the first and fourth years of engineering degrees).
Primary students favour engineering
Broadly, we found that primary school aged students were more positively predisposed to engineering than secondary students; that careers advisors provided strong influences on high school students choices; and that university engineering students were motivated not only by the financial rewards associated with their potential careers but by a long-held interest in maths, science, and engineering-type activities.
This leads us to conclude that there is strong potential to harness and work with interest in engineering at an early age, and there is work needed to leverage advice and sustain interest at secondary school.
And this has important ramifications for directing efforts to promote careers in engineering.
Our research supports initiatives to target the early years; that early exposure and continuous development with science and engineering concepts can affect retention and sustain interest in STEM in later school careers and fields of study.
Tapping into an enjoyment of mathematics and science as early as possible in primary school, when the interest is very high, could potentially lead to greater interest in the engineering profession.
A need to break stereotypes
Our study revealed some other interesting findings that have policy ramifications.
Primary students were significantly more interested in engineering-type activities than high school students, and primary students were less inclined to think people who did science and engineering were ‘geeks’.
For primary students, maths was more interesting than science, but the reverse was true for secondary and university students.
Primary, secondary and university students all said gender equality was desirable, with only a tiny minority of students not supportive – less than half a percent in the Year 4 engineering sample. However, in both our university groups, males made up approximately 80% of the sample.
And while stereotyping by gender decreased as students became older, the tendency to associate engineering with ‘geekiness’ increased.
Year 11 students had lower perceptions of engineers than Year 5 students.
About 25% of school students did not find maths interesting and about 20% did not find science interesting.
For the Year 11 students, interest in computing was lower than for maths or science, and almost half of them did not find computing interesting.
Careers advisors were named as the main influence by the majority of secondary students interested in engineering, as opposed to information from their dad or brother, which was the major source for primary students.
For all school students, popular media (TV and internet) and teachers were seen as important sources of information.
An urge to invent
Most engineering students say their motivation to become engineers stems from a natural inclination towards maths and science or an ‘urge to invent’.
Among engineering students, 59% had no engineers in their family, 27% had one, and 9% had two; 7% had female engineers in their families.
A valuable finding from this study is that an interest in maths, science, engineering or an ‘urge to invent’ are the driving forces behind a career in engineering (not financial reward) and that this interest develops early.
The key seems to be to engage students when they are young and still receptive to STEM ways of thinking and sustain this interest with relevant career advice in secondary school.
Elena Prieto is an Associate Professor in Mathematics Education at the University of Newcastle. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science. From 2005, she has worked extensively in STEM education, including several Australia-wide research projects. She is currently engaged in projects focused on equity in STEM and teacher professional development.
Image of young boy in header from the Smithsonian Lemelson Center Greatest Invention Day and is used under a Creative Commons licence. It has been lightly cropped.
This research might be about students with added learning needs but could easily apply to all students.
The snap school lockdowns required to combat the Delta variant of Covid-19 disproportionately affect different cohorts of students and teachers.
When the first school lockdowns were implemented in NSW in 2020, a group of researchers undertook a study to explore teachers’ perspectives of the impact of the COVID-19 distance learning requirements on the education of students with additional educational needs. We asked teachers about: the issues they experienced in the education of children with a disability during COVID 19; how they viewed their students’ connections with their peers; and any changes they made to the ways they teach because their students missed school.
We now know that earning preferences, the strength of existing social networks, and access to digital technologies and WIFI can impact students’ ability to successfully navigate distance learning. Teachers may grapple with modes of delivery, pedagogical structures, and the need to establish effective systems of communication (Hood, 2020).
School connectedness and COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic may have served to exacerbate existing stressors faced by students with additional educational needs, those students with learning, physical or sensory needs that make it harder to learn than most children of the same age. Challenges at home for these students can include anxiety around sudden confinement, increased tension about the unpredictability of the future, and increased strain which some parents may experience to manage these students’ educational and social needs (Fontanesi et al. 2020).
School connectedness can be defined as incorporating a relationship with supportive adults, a sense of belonging, positive peer relationships, engagement with learning, and experiencing a safe and encouraging online climate (Cumming, Marsh, & Higgins 2017; García-Moya et al. 2019; Pate et al. 2017).
School connectedness can be seen as comprising four components: school bonding, school attachment, school engagement, and school climate. These components can be linked to the findings from the small qualitative study, which indicated four themes’ teachers found challenging when teaching students at home during COVID-19. These were access to materials, capacity and willingness to use technology, motivation and changes in routines, and risk of further isolation. This relationship is represented in Figure 1.
Figure 1. School connectedness paradigm and the relation to the four components of school connectedness during COVID19 for students with additional learning needs
Access to learning materials
Teachers commented that access was an issue for student learning when the schools shifted to an online model.
In addition to the principal delivering laptops to students who could not get to school to access them, the teachers went over and above what was required, visiting a home to provide technical support.
One family said, “we do not know how to use the internet thing”. So I had to drive out to their house. It was little bit stressful. They brought the computer out to the veranda so I set it up for them and that was great because I knew they had an internet connection.
Capacity and willingness to use technology
Distance education can be challenging for students with additional educational needs as they are disconnected from their school-based learning. For some students this was problematic as they either refused to participate in online learning or were precluded from access to technology due to their homelife. These students who are already at a disadvantage were seen to be at risk of slipping even further behind.
It is really concerning that kids could fall behind. We will find out the full brunt of it for the kids who did not engage online at all when they are back. They are already behind the 8 ball. I think we will see a bigger divide. We tried, despite our best efforts we had kids who did not engage at all. . . . I reckon it would be 20% – definitely. They just did nothing – just played. The parents said that they just would not do it . . ..I think we will see kids have gone backwards.
Motivation and changes in routines
Students who did not engage with learning in the classroom were also challenging to motivate when undertaking distance education.
The same students found learning at home challenging . . . They are very traumatised people here and those kids we are finding hard to engage are the ones with undiagnosed metal health and medical conditions. They are the same kids who are difficult to engage at home. We praise any effort – even logging on. I had in my google classroom question of the day. ‘What is the most awesome thing about not going to school today– just anything to get them to answer– cos then I made that connection and then try and lead them into a bit of work. It was the same kids. It was not a magic wand. It did not fix anybody. We gave it a go.
There can be difficulties connecting with school and learning when routines are changed. One of the teachers stated a concern in how students responded to the change in the learning context.
Some of my kids could not separate school and home and so I got them to put on their school uniform as if they were going to school still. Then they would take it off at the end of the day and school was finished.
Risks of further isolation and falling behind
Students who are disconnected from peers can become more socially isolated. In the scramble to keep up with the educational needs of students, we can easily overlook that students experience loneliness, worry and sadness (Brodeur et al. 2020). The isolation experienced, as a result of lockdowns, can increase depression and anxiety (Guessoum et al., 2020).
Teachers expressed concern around the issue of social isolation for their students. Some of this concern was related to the erosion of the connectedness created by changes in routines that meant the students were less likely to want to be engaged in learning.
If you take Mandy, she can’t cope very well with any changes at school you know? And she doesn’t have a lot of kids that I would [say she could] socialise with at school, and so at home, I reckon it would be worse because when she gets stressed, she withdraws into her shell.
Despite the challenges, teachers overall held positive perceptions about how they supported students with additional educational needs at home. There was evidence of strong school leadership that was both supportive of staff and overtly visible for students and parents (e.g. regular Facebook postings). The teachers reported being committed to helping students who were at risk during this time.
Suggestions for connecting students with additional learning needs during snap lockdowns from our research: here are our top seven ways to stay connected with not only students with additional needs but ALL students.
Plan for and support peer connectedness. This may involve arranging informal fun activities to foster social relationships and pairing students strategically with a buddy.
Have a range of options for learning. There can be a challenge with access to online learning tools and materials, in particular for students with disabilities. Access to physical resources can be especially important for students with additional educational needs.
Strive to ensure that school routines are sustained at home (e.g. consistent timetables and the wearing of school uniform).
Keep in contact with parents where students are reluctant to communicate via online media. Strive to ensure that communication is consistent and frequent. Effective communication between school and home is a critical element in a successful response to remote schooling. Be mindful that in some circumstances overly frequent communication may overwhelm both students and their families.
Attempt alternative means to directly communicate with each student that might be specific to their needs (e.g. telephone calls).
Strive to maintain relationships for the well-being of students and teachers. This connection can address mental health.
There may be additional provision of specialist services warranted. This support may occur through supplementary planning meetings with parents and key service providers. Consider alternative mechanisms to ensure connection and collaboration with specialists. Students who are isolated at home are at risk of not being offered specialist services because of the separation between school and home.
Clockwise from top left: Dr Angela Page has worked as an educational psychologist in Australia and New Zealand. She currently lectures in Special and Inclusive Education at the University of Newcastle in NSW. Associate Professor Jennifer Charteris is an experienced researcher and teacher educator, with a background in providing professional learning for principals, middle leaders, and teachers in leadership, assessment, and culturally responsive practice. She has schooling experience in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Dr Joanna Anderson is an experienced teacher, school leader and academic. She is interested in inclusive practice and leadership and works to improve the educational experiences of students with disabilities. Dr Chris Boyle is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is an Associate Professor in Inclusive Education and Psychology at the University of Exeter.
Photo of Rona Joyner by Russell Shakespeare https://www.russellshakespeare.com/
The contemporary international rise of rightist politics is associated with anti-bureaucratic and anti-state ‘populist’ tendencies. Often, conservatives represent themselves as speaking for ‘the silent majority’ but yet on the outside of power. Indeed, even the Australian conservative commentary Sky News TV show is called The Outsiders, a retort to the ABC political affairs show Insiders. In education, both Kevin Donnelly and Mark Latham – leading conservative campaigners on education – pitch their politics as a ‘common sense’ that is under threat and sidelined by the so-called take-over of ‘political correctness’ and ‘cultural Marxism’ in public education.
In making sense of this, we suggest there is a need for a greater understanding of the history of conservatism in Australian education, and in particular the role of women in establishing a grassroots conservatism premised on an expression of ‘the people’ against the state.
In our recent research, which forms part of a broader Australian Research Council project on the history of participatory activism and education policy reform (with our colleague Susan Goodwin), we have sought to bring forward this history. We focus on one woman, credited for leading the successful campaign for banning two innovative new social studies curriculum packages in Queensland in the late 1970s, Rona Joyner. Joyner called for the ban on the grounds that they transgressed fundamental Australian Christian family values. The Queensland premier of the day, the Trumpian Joh Bjeleke Petersen not only personally actioned the ban in 1978, going over the head of his education minister, but also threatened to sack any public school teachers who used the curricula in their classrooms.
This was an important moment in the history of Australia’s ‘culture wars’. The 1970s and 1980s were foundational to the emergence of a new grassroots Christian conservatism that expressed itself as a presumed ‘Christian’ majority, maligned and sidelined by an immorally secular and ‘permissive’ state. Joyner was one of a number of conservative activists who launched themselves into the public sphere at this time and who, firstly, claimed to speak in the name of all Christians and secondly, described themselves as being the underdog, working against a dangerous collective of left-wing bureaucrats and teachers.
In the 1970s, Joyner (who was close to both Joh and his wife, Flo Bjelke Petersen) established two campaign groups – the Society to Outlaw Pornography (STOP) and the Campaign Against Regressive Education (CARE) – and the self-published newsletter Stop Press, a twenty year run of which is held by the Queensland State Library. Through Stop Press, Joyner aimed to provide like-minded conservative Christian parents with the intellectual, religious and political tools to take up the moral struggle against secular humanism, feminism, multiculturalism and homosexuality.
Joyner passionately argued that education bureaucrats and public school teachers were dangerously appropriating the rights of ‘Christian’ parents. Warning readers to be vigilant with regards to the teaching of sex education in schools in the first issue of Stop Press in 1972, Joyner writes, ‘No one has the right to usurp the parents’ position in the field of education, so be watchful’. Making the case even more forcefully a decade later – despite her success with the curriculum ban – Joyner declares in 1984, ‘State control of education is anti-family and anti-God’.
Rona Joyner was one of several international high-profile conservative women of her era including Mary Whitehouse, who advocated for increased censorship of television in Britain, and Phyllis Schlafly, who successfully campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment in the US. A self-attribution of being on the outside of power meant that these campaigners frequently practised their conservatism as a grassroots movement. They used techniques and language associated with participatory democracy movements of the left, such as home-published newsletters and a dispersed network of community-based supporter groups.
Vital to understanding the work and significance of ultraconservative women like Rona Joyner is their positioning as mothers. Joyner claimed that she became politicised through her alarm at the inclusion of a sexually explicit novel on her son’s first year university reading list in the 1960s. According to the logic of this anecdote, Rona Joyner’s public activism was an extension of her maternal duty beyond the immediate home and family and into the front line of a public moral fight.
Paradoxically, women conservatives like Rona Joyner are often not taken seriously and ridiculed for their appearance or for the way they speak. This treatment plays to a head nodding progressive audience, that in turn overlooks the importance of these women in building conservative moral campaigns centred on a claim of speaking for ‘the people’ (in this case, the ‘everyday’ Christian parent). For Joyner, the power of parental authority – in distinction from the state – was the location of the family and parents in God’s laws. She writes, ‘Remember Western civilization is based on the fact that the individual derives his freedoms and his rights from God’s laws, not from the State’.
Joyner’s activism, and the banning of the social studies curricula, lays bare tensions in the relationship between parents as citizens, politicians and expert-based bureaucracies, that extend well beyond the specificities of 1970s Queensland. In our examination of twenty years of Joyner’s newsletters, we show how her campaign work exposes fault lines in the relationship between the authority of the state and individual moral authority, one such repercussion of this being the expression of political populism against state authority. Joyner was central to the shaping and production of a grassroots conservative moral political culture premised on a concern that ‘progressives’ have overtaken the key institutions of modern democracy (schools, for instance) that has been renewed and rearticulated across the late twentieth-century into the present day.
Jessica Gerrard is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne. She researches the changing formations and lived experiences of social inequalities in relation to education, activism, work and unemployment. She works across the disciplines of sociology, history and policy studies with an interest in critical methodologies and theories.
Helen Proctor is a professor of education at the University of Sydney, with a research interest in how schools shape social life beyond the school gate. She uses historical methods to examine the making of contemporary educational systems by focussing on the changing relationships between schools, families and ‘communities’.
A stop-start directive to return to schools has been going on for over a month and produced anxieties for teachers, students and their families.
How can we respond to the confusion this has produced, particularly regarding Year 12 students? The argument mounted here is that there really is only one way to respond and that is from an equity perspective.
Abandon this year’s HSC examination and – with universities, unions, curriculum associations, teachers and principal organizations – develop pathway responses that can take account of different assessment practices.
This means looking at the situation from the least empowered by addressing barriers through what might be called affirmative action. In this case that means acting in a way that responds to students who are disadvantaged. Even at a general level all students have experienced what no other has before: two years of interrupted learning. This is, after all, a once in a century pandemic. The HSC is not a set of exams at the end of one year, it is two years of assessments where the examination is but one element. Those two years for the current cohort have been tragically upended by last year’s lockdown and now this year’s lockdown. There is no issue with the lockdown, as we want everyone safe. The problem is the intransigence of the NSW government in not being flexible enough to think this through in other ways.
Sydney Catholic Schools executive director Tony Farley called for school-based assessments to replace exams. He argued from an equity perspective that disadvantaged students lacked access to adequate resources. This was rejected outright by the minister and NESA thus demolishing the first principle of democratic participation – the right to representation. Comparing the second year of COVID to what happened in Victoria or Britain last year is comparing apples and oranges. This is two years of disruption and may continue. The uncertainty is what needs to be ended.
In appealing for the HSC to proceed the Premier of NSW, Gladys Berejiklian, harnessed her migrant background and the importance of this exam in the trajectory of her success, and therefore other migrants. While there is some truth in this narrative, for many this just isn’t the case. Gone are the days when students chose to stay on for academic reasons. Most now must stay on and not all consider the HSC the golden pathway to their imagined futures. This argument also papers over the enormous differences within and across migrant communities. Evidence suggests that a lack of devices in refugee families has seriously interrupted schooling. Some teachers report teaching to two students jammed in front of one screen in the middle of a lounge room with other siblings present. Many reports of refugee and migrant families having difficulty with online learning are also documented.
Yet it is not migrants only that are impacted. Students who are neurologically and physically diverse have had less than their normal level of support. There is also the emotional and psychological impact of lockdowns on others, reported to have skyrocketed this lockdown. Whether it is the student or their family is irrelevant here given the close living and lack of escape from sometimes very close living quarters. This leads to a second failure of a democracy, and that is justice: every person has a right to just, fair and equitable treatment.
There are other questions about marking practical work such as music, drama, art and dance. Normally itinerant teachers travel but with restrictions out of Sydney on movement what is happening? Is video doing this? How equitable is the current arrangement? This leads to the other thorny question of vaccination. Are itinerant teachers vaccinated? In the middle of all this is another failure; to vaccinate frontline workers such as teachers. In other parts of the world, they were part of the first batch to be vaccinated but not here despite UNESCO calling for them to be prioritized globally. Not valued enough. Now, when the Delta variant has made schools “just perfect” as a vehicle for transmission, we are left wanting.
Who are the disadvantaged? This cannot be answered through simple categories based on ability, socio-economic status or ethnicity because we will find exceptions in all cases. Let’s turn the gaze and ask the question: who are advantaged? There seems to be some lack of decision-making around those who get vaccinated and those who don’t for one thing. As yet we won’t know what happens to those who aren’t vaccinated. Most of the rhetoric around keeping the HSC going has been from the perspective of the ‘ideal student’; one who is self-directed, prepared, committed, in control, and of course, in a home with emotional, social and technological support. We know some of these, such as the young men allowed to travel during a lockdown for their important camp experience.
What can be done?
As I argued earlier, we should abandon this year’s HSC examination and – with universities, unions, curriculum associations, teachers and principal organizations – develop pathway responses that can take account of different assessment practices. We really have no choice. We can’t send thousands of private and selective school students travelling all over Sydney in two weeks’ time and we don’t know if the students living in the heart of Sydney in hard lockdown will be able to move around at all.
There are countless pathways available to TAFE and universities already. These can be tweaked to incorporate short courses where knowledge and skills can be demonstrated leading to entry if school-based assessments have gaps. Universities such as my own have developed pathways based on Year 11 results as well as strong support systems for first year students so if they are in the wrong course or struggling, they are given support to know if they want to continue or not. Others moving to workplaces, apprenticeships and TAFE could also be accommodated with broad based representation involving consultation and some imagination. Who knows, we might even develop a new way forward that caters for a different world.
Everyone has been impacted so the support for this cohort has to be broad. Why not tap into community goodwill? We are all in the same boat. Teachers, as professionals, have not been given much space to demonstrate their capacities but have been providing what they can as they too struggle with lockdown, their own family’s needs and a lack of consultation. Let’s look after the least empowered and the collective goodwill flowing from this will serve us well. Business as usual just isn’t working.
Carol Reid is a sociologist of education in the Centre for Educational Research at Western Sydney University. Carol’s research explores processes of globalisation and mobilities on youth, ethnicity and race and the intersections of these social identities with the changing nature of teacher’s work. Current research is concerned with Settlement Outcomes of Syrian Conflict Refugees and cosmopolitan theory for education. Carol received her PhD and BA (Hons) from Macquarie University in Sociology and was a teacher prior to these studies for 13 years.
The announcement of the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review (QITER) and publication of the expert group’s discussion paper reminded some in the initial teacher education (ITE) and research communities of the continuing influence of England on Australian education policy as well as this country’s own unique history of a hundred and one damnations in teacher education reform. The QITER discussion paper refers to English innovations such as Now Teach as well as to policy documents like the 2015 Carter Review. And the QITER expert panel has met with their English equivalents, according to panel members at a recent Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE) event.
Since that ACDE event, the English panel, tasked with conducting a review of the ‘ITE market’, has published its report. The panel proposes dismantling much of England’s ITE infrastructure, forcing all providers to be reaccredited from scratch (to financially unviable criteria and unrealistic timelines); mandating 28 weeks’ placement in schools in all 38-week postgraduate ITE courses; and requiring absolute compliance with a government-prescribed curriculum – the Core Content Framework – under threat of dis-accreditation through inspections by the government’s schools inspectorate. Despite having demonstrated high quality ITE provision over at least the last ten years, according to the government’s own data, it is now possible for universities and school-based providers to fail inspections on the basis of what some of their staff believe and say in interviews with inspectors (there is no observation of training). Indeed, in the last few weeks, courses have started to fail because of what some people believe about teaching and programs have closed.
So, in these last few weeks, especially, I wasn’t surprised that colleagues in Australia, noticing what they describe as ‘similar voices’ here, have asked me, as a relatively recent arrival in Melbourne from London, whether what is happening in the UK could happen here?
My answer has been ‘no, at least not yet’ and this is why.
First, England is not the UK. Historically, Scotland has always had greater independence in education and, since political devolution in 1999, Wales has been developing its own distinctive education system that is largely autonomous. So, my summary of the current state of ITE pertains to England only. We are not talking about comparisons with ‘UK policy’ but considering Australia (crucially, a federation) in relation to one out of the four UK jurisdictions. And what has gone on in England, as I will explain, makes it an international outlier – or aberration, depending on your point of view.
This degree of tight control over a national school system is fundamental to understanding ITE reforms in England and what is possible in Australia. To create the conditions for the English situation to be replicated here, a new constitutional settlement between the states and the Commonwealth would be essential so that Mr Tudge and his successors directly control all Australian government schools.
Control over schools in England – cleverly presented by Conservatives as an opportunity for a ‘school-led’ system – is critically important in explaining is the situation in England because when the state controls school funding, the curriculum and assessment, teachers’ professional standards, in-service professional development and qualifications, it is a comparatively small (if significant) step to then control how teachers are trained.
Secondly, the distinctive context for the English ‘ITE Market Review’ has been produced in part by the abolition of virtually all autonomous, non-governmental regulatory or deliberative bodies (known as ‘QUANGOS’) in education in England following the 2010 general election. Justified by austerity policies following the global financial crisis, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Training and Development Agency for Schools, the National College of Teaching and Leadership and others were all abolished by the education minister, Michael Gove, alongside then special advisor, Dominic Cummings, an architect of the Vote Leave (Brexit) campaign.
In the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE) project, my colleagues and I drew on the work of Jennifer Wolch to describe the abolition of these agencies as ‘selective dismantling’ of key institutions that provide democratic oversight and scrutiny. As we pointed out, such selective dismantling ‘reduces opportunities for public deliberation and accountability while strengthening the decision-making powers of policymakers’. Governance structures, professional regulation and accreditation, curriculum and assessment policies, funding – are all now owned by the ministry – the Department for Education – right across England, with few exceptions. One exception is Ofsted (the schools inspectorate) that also inspects all ITE providers. However, in addition to being seen less as an independent agency than a tool of enforcement for party-political purposes, Ofsted has also been empowered to conduct ‘research’ that becomes an integral part of justifying policy. Concerns over the quality of Ofsted’s ‘research’ reached a peak recently concerning its review of Mathematics teaching when authors of several studies cited asked for the review to be withdrawn over misappropriations of their research.
So, beyond a single national government school system controlled by the minister, for similar conditions for ITE reform to exist in Australia, all Commonwealth and state regulatory and deliberative bodies would have to be abolished – goodbye AITSL, ACARA, the teacher regulatory authorities, etc – and their powers redirected to the federal minister in Canberra.
In addition to these structural differences, the cultural, political and economic contexts for education in England have also developed along highly distinctive lines, something we identified in the PETE project as a new political economy of teacher development, In 2016, Verger, Fontdevila & Zancajo characterised English education policy as ‘privatisation as state reform’ where ‘public sector monopolies’ had to be marketised to be made more efficient and radical policy interventions were justified by ‘crisis frames’. In our early work in the PETE project we aligned ITE policy reforms in England with the loose coalition of interests known as the GERM – the Global Education Reform Movement. Under this analysis – and consistent with Wolch’s research on outsourcing public services to the private sector – a market of new entrepreneurial, private providers would emerge that would challenge ‘vested interest’ legacy institutions such as universities.
Innovation would come through market disruption.
However, what has happened in England – or, at least, has become more obvious – is that successive governments have not primarily intended to create a market of any kind; there has been no genuine interest in new forms of enterprise and competition. Their intention has not been merely to create what Wolch called a ‘shadow state’ – an assemblage of multiple non-state providers functioning in a (quasi-) market ‘administered outside of traditional democratic politics’.
Rather, for these Conservative governments, the ‘market model’, asWendy Brown observed, is just familiar narrative cover for increasing state control.
Since 2010, reaching its apex in the recommendations of the latest report on ITE, England has experienced the heightening of the fundamental ‘free market/strong state’ contradiction in modern British conservatism where an absolute commitment to restoring/sustaining (often regressive) cultural traditions and traditional forms of authority has trumped free market principles and libertarian instincts and has done so in increasingly authoritarian ways.
Distinctively, too, English education ministers have relied on a very small number of individuals (a few teachers, current and former, often with very limited classroom time, usually active on Twitter, and one with unsuccessful experience as a nightclub bouncer; some chief execs of those multi-academy trusts; and always, always the same professor) upon whom they have bestowed political patronage, a sub-set of whom have also been funded to compete with legacy providers like universities or traditional education entrepreneurs. In the PETE project, we characterised these types of organisations as ‘co-created shadow state structures’ as they arose out of the meeting of the needs of an authoritarian state with the entrepreneurial instincts of some of those in receipt of political patronage. In our analysis of one policy intervention in 2017, for example, we found one organisation had won the largest proportion of the available funding for teacher CPL despite the fact that it didn’t exist at the time of the tender and had no track record.
Again, for similar conditions for ITE reform to exist in Australia, a different kind of conservatism would have to be dominant in policy-making, similar to the variety that has taken control of education in England. My limited experience of Australian politics suggests that while cultural restorationism and authoritarianism are not entirely absent from politics here, what tends to dominate are more classical liberal models that value ideals of small government, free markets and personal liberty.
That’s not to say that traditionalism and authoritarian statist instincts, in the way that Poulantzas conceptualised them, do not have influence but they are not determining education policy in quite the comprehensive and urgent way that they are in England.
Finally and crucially, ITE providers in England – including, perhaps especially, the universities – lost the arguments about teacher education a long time ago, largely because they were not present in them.
The organisation representing universities involved in ITE in England went along with the general direction of reforms and only recently seems to have woken up to the fact thatit is now ‘do or die’ for the sector.
Additionally, sector leaders in England, often in the research intensive universities, prioritised research performance and league tables and were prepared to proletarianise teacher educators (and I use that word technically) in pursuit of ‘research excellence’, as Jane McNicholl and I showed. What has been missing in the years leading up to the current crisis in England are confident, non-defensive voices arguing the case both for genuine diversity of provision and innovation in ITE and for building strong research programmes in teacher education, just as would be the aspiration in any other area of research. Universities, especially, if they believed they had a strong contribution to make to ITE and that, as universities, that contribution was partly in the form of research and innovation, failed to make it happen in England.
In discussing what might happen in ITE in Australia, I have met a few people who have argued vigorously for a more ‘joined-up’ education system here. I have heard frustration that good ideas emerging from the Commonwealth government are not picked up by states and that children and young people do not always get the education they deserve. One or two have even said to me they wished Australia was following the example of England in both the direction, coherence and pace of reform. My response has been ‘be careful of what you wish for’. Australia needs to aim a lot higher than England when looking for good ideas to influence innovation here. There are excellent examples of evidence-based interventions elsewhere in the world that can improve the quality of teaching. We need to look up, not down, we can’t be complacent, and we shouldn’t let the empire strike back.
Viv Ellis is Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His latest book (with Lauren Gatti and Warwick Mansell), The New Political Economy of Teacher Education: The Enterprise Narrative and the Shadow State, will be published by Policy Press in 2022.
I am waiting for my daughter on the playground, amid the chaos of three o’clock, enormous backpacks hurtling over tiny shoulders, tenni balls are flying through the air and kids are running to their mums, Dads and baby brothers and sisters. Finally the one I am looking for is bounding towards me. Her arms go about my waist and her head plants straight into my chest. I know immediately something is wrong and resist the urge to ask. I wait. Once we are a safe distance from the playground, out of the school, across the road and down the street my 7-year-old daughter begins to share with me an incident in school. How a group of girls, including her best friend, playing a seemingly innocent game in which the rules involve finding something of a certain colour, ended up with her friend, telling the other three girls, after a whisper to, “touch something brown”. Laughing, they ran to touch my Rosie’s face.
Rosie is African American.
Through silent tears as we make our way home, Rosie tells me she knows that I tell her to be “black and proud” . . . …”But I want to be white.”
I emailed her teacher, something I rarely do, and she called me straight away and then went to discuss the matter with the school deputy. She phoned me again to inform me of the school response, which involved a meeting between the girl and the deputy. She mentioned she ‘might’ follow up with a book and some additional discussion about ‘difference’.
“I don’t want to hear about ‘difference’ ,” said Rosie. “Every time they talk about it I am reminded of being different and I don’t want to think about it anymore. I thought we are all different”.
Valuing Difference: The concept of bullying in the early years.
We are all different, but the moment above is not really about “difference” it is about power and the perception that those who are “different” are less because of their difference. It is about bullying. Schools and early childhood programs are critical spaces for children to learn about social relationships, to explore their identity and value the identities of others. It is natural for children to explore their own power and bullying behaviours may be part of this process. It is also essential that adults support them in this exploration.
A recent study of 95 early childhood educators showed that many were able to define the characteristics of bullying, yet unsure how to distinguish it from other childhood behaviour. When educators do respond, the focus is typically on addressing the actions of the child or children involved in bullying at the individual level. I think we need to do more and consider the learning communities we want to establish for every student.
As with children in other studies, my daughter did not want to be the focus of a discussion about bullying, she did not want ‘help’ from the teachers. This response makes her the problem and also problematizes the actions of the other children, her friends. The reluctance of children to report bullying is highlighted in recent research. My daughter did not want to “be a snitch” this would only have added to her low feelings of self worth as well as her value in the eyes of her peers. She was exercising her power perhaps not to disclose. Yet understanding what took place on the playground, how she felt about it and the other children’s feelings are essential to address bullying.
The Problem of Bullying
It is important for educators and parents to listen to children share their experiences of being bullied and to talk about bullying. It is here that we can learn to identify bullying and understand its causes in each context as well as prevent children from engaging in bullying behaviors and developing their social selves in a way that respects others.
It is particularly important right now, as many of our children are learning online and we have seen a sharp rise in cyberbullying. The impact of Covid 19 on young people has made the need to consider all forms of bullying even more important.
I argue that as educators and parents, we need to explore these concepts early and throughout schooling. To engage children in social justice education and prepare teachers to understand, identify and respond to bullying as part of their professional development. My recent research included the use of puppetry to expand the play behaviors of a group of 4 year old boys. The boys were described by their teachers as engaging in bullying-like behaviours, with repetitive acts of aggression and exclusion of other children during outside play. A series of puppet workshops opened up the space to learn about the boys’ perception of their actions, to support their understanding about the concept of bullying and provide them with the support they needed to expand their repertoire of play.
Bullying is about exclusion, it is about power. Educators are in a unique position to model caring behaviours and devote time to supporting children to value their own difference and the difference in others. This should include the classroom, when learning online and on the playground. It is here that we can understand and support children in learning how to interact and respect one another, to explore the factors that influence their behaviour and their intentions. While the evidence on the impact of anti-bullying interventions is mixed, some actions by educators have been shown to be beneficial for creating a positive learning environment. These include using pedagogical strategies that help children and young people to collaborate, learn from each other and work independently. In many cases, teachers may need to guide children and young people by creating spaces in which children can ask questions and feel equipped to take responsibility for their own learning.
All of which takes time, time for teachers to spend with students, time for schools to work with families and time for schools to work together in creating spaces that welcome and value all. This asks us to do much more than just respond to bullying after an incident, it requires us to cultivate relationships that are caring, thoughtful and a reflection of the classrooms we wish to build in schools and online.
Olivia Karaolis teaches across the School of Education and Social Work at Sydney University. She completed her research at USYD after working in the United States in the field of Early Childhood Education and Special Education. Her focus has been on creating inclusive communities through the framework of the creative arts.
National policy reform initiatives, in Australia and the US for example, have aimed to combat the seeming decline of their nation’s educational achievement as measured through scores on international achievement tests (e.g., PISA, TIMSS). This decline signals a loss of international competitiveness, contributing to a failure narrative which continues to haunt many education systems around the world. In Australia, concerns have been raised that a decline in national and international test scores signals a problem with the quality, or performativity, of its education system. Given that it is widely assumed that good teachers are inextricably linked to their students’ achievements, many educational policies have been underpinned by the assumption that quality in education can be quantified. In other words, the idea that teacher quality can be quantified and measured through the same measures we use to measure student achievement—standardised tests. However, the limitation of such an approach ignores the importance of context when determining what counts as quality in education.
The Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE)
My research colleague, Russell Cross, and I were intrigued when the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) was introduced in 2016. LANTITE was part of a suite of educational reforms introduced and which aimed to ensure that we selected the best and brightest into teaching. While we both agree that teachers should have strong literacy and numeracy skills, we are also aware that standardised tests can be powerful gatekeepers—determining who enters the profession and who does not. To better understand the impact of this policy on teacher education and the teaching profession more broadly, we endeavoured to critically interrogate LANTITE as policy. We wanted to problematise the assumptions that underpinned the policy and consider the (un)intended consequences of such an approach. We drew upon Cochran-Smith and colleagues’ four-dimensional framework which examined:
The discourses and influences which shape policy formulations
Constructions of the problem and solutions of teacher education
Policy enactment or how policies are interpreted into practice
The outcomes of the policy
As I outline below, this framework allowed us to explore the power relations involved and examine the relationships between key actors (e.g., teacher candidates, initial teacher education programs, TEMAG, etc.). Given that policy is described as a web, cycle and enactment, with policy being created, directed, translated, and interpreted within different contexts, policies are not transactional and/or one-dimensional but are a complex web of compromises and settlements among policy actors.
Addressing the teacher quality problem with policy solutions
In countries like the US and Australia, a discourse of outcomes has shaped discussions about quality within teacher education. This entails a focus on quantifiable and measurable outcomes, such as student test scores, retention rates and job placements, which then become measures for determining the quality of teachers and teacher education programs more broadly. However, recently in Australia, there has increasingly been a focus on inputs, in addition to outcomes. We observe this in regards to how the LANTITE, a federal initiative, is positioned as a policy solution to the perceived teacher quality problem. The LANTITE as a policy solution suggests that the problem lies within initial teacher education programs—in how they select teacher candidates into their programs and whom they allow to graduate. Initial teacher education programs have been criticised for being ‘cash cows,’ establishing minimum entry criteria so that universities can meet financial targets. This suggests that the teacher quality problem is due to the selection of low quality teacher candidates. Therefore, LANTITE is offered as a cost-effective solution (not for teacher candidates who pay for it but for the education system more broadly) to filter out those who should not be in teaching.
We also argue that LANTITE as a policy solution—a standardised literacy and numeracy test for teachers—attempts to directly respond to the decline in Australian students’ literacy and numeracy test scores on national and international standardised tests. This suggests that the decline in Australian students’ standardised testing scores in literacy and numeracy skills is directly related to the literacy and numeracy skills of their teachers. Therefore, one might assume that if we ensure that teacher candidates score well on a standardised literacy and numeracy test, so too should their students on similar tests. While, again, we argue that teachers should have strong literacy and numeracy skills, we argue that this might be too simplistic and care should be taken in thinking that a standardised literacy and numeracy test can (or should) 1) ensure that those teachers passing this test will ensure strong student scores in national and international test scores and 2) act as a valid measure of teacher quality in such as wide range of Australian school contexts.
Reforming teacher education?
Educational reforms are a natural part of a progressive society—the desire to improve what we are currently doing and how we are doing it. However, we wanted to examine whether or not the LANTITE, as a policy solution, was creating substantive reform within teacher education. Given the financial burden placed on teacher candidates to take the test, we wanted to know how many students were being excluded from the profession of teaching and how this test influenced the perspectives of teacher candidates. Our quantitative analysis on 2,013 LANTITE scores from a large metropolitan university were consistent with the national LANTITE pass rate of 90-95%. However, our analysis found that when students failed an attempt, they had a 50% chance of passing the test on their subsequent re-sit. Therefore, the 5-10% who failed the test, in our sample, did not reflect the number of teacher candidates who failed the maximum number of attempts but who had failed at that particular point in time. This suggests that many of the 5-10% would later go on to pass a subsequent attempt. Given that most students receive up to four opportunities to sit the test and the overwhelming majority of students who sit the test pass it, LANTITE does not appear to be a very effective policy measure in clearly discerning who should enter teaching and who should not. With this said, however, there is still more research needed to investigate who is failing the maximum number of attempts and the reasons why. Some teacher candidates have argued that LANTITE discriminates against those with learning disabilities, those who suffer from test anxiety and those who are mature-aged. This calls into question how test accommodations are (or whether they should be) made and whether a standardised test is the most fair and balanced way to measure literacy and numeracy skills. The teacher candidates in our study argued that the test was just one of many hurdles that they have had to endure and will continue to endure as they must incessantly fight to prove that they are capable of being a good teacher.
While LANTITE may not appear to have made a substantive impact on who is entering the teaching profession statistically (I acknowledge that it can have a significant impact for teacher candidates at a personal level), our research findings suggest that it is shaping how society, through discourses in the media, and how teacher candidates themselves view the profession. Unfortunately, the LANTITE policy positions the profession, teacher education, and teachers at a deficit. There is an assumption that the profession attracts those who are seemingly not very capable and therefore the best solution is a consistent, national approach to regain some semblance of quality. I, as an educator and researcher, wholeheartedly want to attract (and keep) the right people into the teaching profession but I am unsure as to whether the LANTITE is the most effective way to do so.
Dr Melissa Barnes is a senior lecturer in Monash University’s Faculty of Education, working within the fields of teacher education, assessment, policy and TESOL. She teaches and leads research initiatives that focus on policy construction, interpretation and enactment, with a focus on how policies, including structures such as curriculum and assessments, impact and shape teaching and learning.
Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 appeared in Australia in late-January 2020, the country has been through various waves of community infections. Each cresting period has brought with it significant disruptions to the everyday lives of people through movement restrictions, workplace closures, and – not least – school shutdowns. Amidst the ongoing peaks and troughs of the pandemic, it is unsurprising that many young people are feeling anxious. And with good reasons: With tests and exams, family expectations, social pressures, and limited decision-making power, it’s tough enough being a young person without an apocalyptic sci-fi scenario playing out IRL – not to mention being stuck at home through it all! A range of services have thus sprung up to support young people’s wellbeing in these difficult times, many sponsored by Federal and State Government departments of education. And the practice of mindfulness meditation taught through online videos and popular apps like Smiling Mind are among these.
But what about teachers?
Well, aren’t teachers adults who can “fend for themselves”? They have some income (though not enough for the work they do) and some decision-making autonomy to, say, pick up an online fitness class, have their favourite comfort food delivered, or pick up some (18+) drinks to tide them over their woes. Ok, sure. But this fact should not preclude them from consideration and resourcing when it comes to wellbeing initiatives, including mindfulness practices that are tailored to their needs.
Many wellbeing trends that make their way into educational spaces tend to be focused on students. As I’ve mentioned, this is a vital thing given the pressures that they face. However, teachers have often been overlooked in wellbeing plans, except as the ones who will be responsible for the delivery of whatever program is decided to be of use to students (usually by someone who is not a teacher). Until recently, mindfulness in education has not been different. Of the numerous studies done to gauge its uses for enhancing wellbeing in educational contexts – and there have been plenty in the past two decades – only a small fraction has been dedicated to studying its effects on teachers. Thankfully, that is changing.
So then, in a nutshell, what’s mindfulness supposed to do for teachers?
Perhaps I am being a stereotypical academic here, but I find it very difficult to do nutshells. “It depends” is my usual go to. I know this is highly unsatisfying, especially from someone who has recently completed a small book supposedly addressing this very question. But to me, it depends on what teachers feel is at issue in their work and lives, or more specifically, how they frame the problems they face.
For instance, let’s say teachers were to name the main problem they face as stress. Apart from its everyday uses (e.g. “Ikea instructions stress me out”), “stress” is also a clinical term used in health circles to denote the “physiological or psychological response to internal or external stressors”. By looking specifically at the ways the body, the brain, and the psyche respond to external pressures, clinically inclined researchers explore treatments that can intervene at these levels to help lessen internal stress responses, hence improving health outcomes. Mindfulness as popularly promoted today tends to draw from research along these lines. For teachers, the relatively small amount of research focusing on how mindfulness practices like meditation can have positive effects on their perceived work-related stress does appear promising.
Yet the question arises: what about those “external stressors”? Sitting still and focusing on my breathing for 10 minutes a day may well reduce cortisol levels in my body and stop unhelpful rumination, but won’t these come up again when the next pile of marking and paperwork floods in, or when I turn up to work at my understaffed childcare centre ravaged by low remuneration rates, or when teachers get hauled up yet again by politicians and the media as scapegoats? Yes, these are likely to bring back the stress. That’s why there is also an emerging tendency in mindfulness research to look at how practices like meditation can not only help to relax stress responses, but also heighten our awareness of social connectedness and the broader forces that try to tear us apart. Often written from the first-person perspectives of teachers themselves – many of whom are women, people of colour, and engaged in social causes – this newer type of writing on mindfulness looks not only at how it helps with personal coping, but also how it could facilitate broader social change to eliminate some of those “external stressors”.
Of course, even with significant personal and social changes, some things will continue to stress us out. Uncertainty, illness, ageing, death, decay, loss – these things loom over us, even without a global pandemic exposing the frailties of our social order to remind us. Life is precarious, try as we might to use power and privilege to temporarily shield ourselves from this fact. And it is to this deeper existential unease that Buddhist thought proposes mindfulness. It is an open secret that Buddhist thought represents the longest running body of work on mindfulness and how to cultivate it through meditative practices, much as clinically oriented mindfulness researchers and promoters may try to dissociate from this history. No doubt such “secularising” efforts have made mindfulness practices more appealing to wider audiences beyond any requirement to subscribe to Buddhism. This isn’t a bad thing per se. But it would be a shame for teachers (and people in general) to lose sight of how mindfulness can help unknot the suffering tied up with those unavoidable aspects of life – plus offer guidelines on how not to be a jerk while we work things out mindfully.
What is mindfulness supposed to do for teachers? It it depends on what you think the problem is. Perhaps an easier question might be: can mindfulness help teachers to work and live better? In different ways, I believe it can.
Remy Y.S. Low is Lecturer in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is also a recipient of the University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Early Career Teaching for his use of contemplative pedagogies (including mindfulness) in teacher education.
New South Wales, Day 1, Term 1. A whole staff meeting to begin the school year. At some point after the Principal’s address, the Leader of Learning (or similar) starts their Powerpoint to go through the previous year’s HSC results subject by subject, particularly the number of Band 6s. In non-selective high schools, invariably the English, Humanities, Visual Arts, Music, PDHPE and even Maths teachers are patting themselves on the back and being lauded by the school leadership. This is in complete contrast to the responses from and directed towards the science teachers. Equally, when principals have their HSC performance review meetings with their own superiors, quite often it’s a tricky conversation regarding the ‘performance’ of the sciences.
What is the obsession with Band 6s? Band 6s sound elite, the very best. But the facts are that a Band 4 or 5 in a difficult subject such as Physics or Chemistry may make as big – or even bigger – contribution to ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) (more on that later) than a Band 6 in say, Music. Also, Band 6s are the only metric made publicly available and shared with the media.
Band 6s and exam results (raw and moderated, see Raw Results and Band 6s discussed later) from NESA are not to be confused (but are so often confused) with ATAR scores which are calculated by the Universities Admissions Centre (UAC). The ATAR is a rank, not a mark, indicating a student’s position relative to all the students in their age group in their state. Calculating the ATAR is based on an aggregate of ‘scaled’ marks of a student’s courses. This is totally different from ‘moderating’ by NESA in NSW (see later). Importantly (and often detrimentally) for teachers, only students are measured by ATARs; teachers are measured by Number of Band 6s. So students in subjects that scale well such as Physics will receive a good ATAR contribution if they perform reasonably well in that subject. But ‘reasonably well’, say high Band 4 to Band 5, doesn’t cut it for teachers measured by their Number of Band 6s. It is also interesting to note that last year a Band 1 (a fail!) in Physics could rank higher than a Band 4 in Visual Arts and Band 3 in Legal Studies, Ancient History, Business Studies and PDHPE.
Last millenium in the UK, I was fortunate enough to achieve two thirds of my A-Level Physics class attaining ‘A’ grades in a non-selective Government school. In NSW, it took me 4 years just to achieve just one Band 6 in two non-selective schools. For the past few years in my work supporting schools in all sectors in the sciences, I regularly spend much of Term 1 advocating for science teachers, coordinators and principals who are feeling the heat for “poor Band 6 results”. I am constantly witnessing (and have suffered first-hand) the negative impacts of these judgements on teacher and principal morale and well-being. Student well-being is also being detrimentally impacted by similar unfair judgements and subject comparisons in Year 11 and HSC Trial (raw) exam results.
And what is the cause of all of this anxiety? The completely flawed metric of comparison that is the ‘Number of Band 6s’. So why is this overly blunt measure, that appears in all school marketing literature, on school billboards, in the Sydney Morning Herald, and is part of NSW vernacular, so flawed as a point of comparison? The answer is that, importantly, it was never intended to be a point of comparison in the first place, particularly between subjects.
Standards-based Assessment
The NSW HSC is a standards-based assessment. The whole construct of NSW HSC standards-based assessment was devised by Dr John Bennett, former Chief Executive of the Office of the Board of Studies NSW (now NESA), as part of his PhD thesis. Dr Bennett’s supervisor was Professor Jim Tognolini, now Director of the Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment at The University of Sydney, who has been senior advisor on educational measurement issues for every state and territory education department and examination board including NESA. The whole premise of the standards-based model is to maintain the integrity and consistency of measuring standards year on year for an individual subject i.e. that a Band 6 in Chemistry in 2021 is comparable with a Band 6 in Chemistry in 2020; with no mandate or mechanism to say that Band 6 is comparable between subjects.
In this standards-based model, each subject had its own set of ‘Band Descriptors’ (now called Band Descriptions) providing descriptions of typical student performance for each of Bands 2-6. These respective Band Descriptors were devised by respective subject experts. They provide guidance for marking school based assessments (although this raises an issue discussed later), but most importantly, the Band Descriptors provide the standards for subject-specific ‘Judge Markers’ to measure student HSC examination responses against. This means that the Band Descriptors for say PDHPE were devised by experienced PDHPE teachers and judged annually by experienced PDHPE teachers. Similarly, the same can be said for Physics, or any subject. What this means is that the standards are different for each subject. If the Band Descriptors are different for each and every subject, and they are interpreted/judged differently in each subject, then we cannot use ‘Number of Band 6s’ by way of comparison between subjects. It stands to logic – it is simply comparing apples with oranges.
“we’ve never convinced the community that a band 6 in physics was not designed to be the same as a band 6 in biology or a band 6 in chemistry” .
(This example is somewhat ironic since in the new science syllabuses every science subject has the same Band Descriptions, but the general point is being made by one of the original designers of the HSC itself). In the same article, Dr Timothy Wright, former Headmaster of Shore stated:
“it is really hard to get a Band 6 in say Chemistry and easier in say Business Studies”.
“demonstrates an extensive knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts, including complex and abstract ideas”
Again, there is much greater rigour in the supposed equivalent Band Description in the sciences compared to the non-science.
Band 5
Perhaps most telling of all is where the Band Description for a typical Band 5 student in any of the 2 unit science subjects is:
“applies knowledge and information to unfamiliar situations…”.
Applying to ‘unfamiliar’ situations doesn’t appear in any other subject apart from Mathematics (and that is only for Band 6). If a student merely learns all of the content of a science, they cannot get above a Band 4 unless they can also apply their skills to unfamiliar situations. Whereas this is not the case in any other subject.
Equity of Access to Band 6s?
In 2017, I attempted to publish an article in The Conversation entitled Battle of the Bands: HSC Physics and Chemistry bottom of the Band 6 charts (co-authored with my PhD supervisor and co-supervisor). The article was refined, approved by editors and ready to go, only to be pulled at the 11th hour for external reasons. The article looked at data for 25% of the State to determine the rate of access to Band 6s among all HSC subjects in high schools in NSW. What was important about our analysis was that rather than compare blunt total numbers of Band 6s (which are readily available on the NESA website), we made a ‘common-cohort comparison’ i.e. what was the relative access to Band 6s of individual students in one subject when compared with themselves in the same other subjects?
The findings were staggering. Students in Physics and Chemistry (in non-selective schools) were only only 26% and 27% as likely to achieve a Band 6 respectively as they were in the average of their other subjects. By way of comparison, students in PDHPE, Community & Family Studies and Society & Culture were twice (200%) as likely, and Music 1 and Design & Technology were two-and-a-half (250%) as likely to achieve a Band 6 than in the average of their other subjects. In extremis, this was a tenfold or one order of magnitude difference! That is hardly equitable access to Band 6s. Our findings confirmed what science teachers have been reporting for years, that even though the most able students often studied Physics and Chemistry, with relatively low numbers of Band 6s awarded for the State in total, combined with the over-representation of selective schools in these subjects, non-selective schools were left fighting over scraps in terms of access to Band 6s. Even in a school where say the performance of Physics is well above the State average, it is still destined to be below average compared to the other subjects in the same school (by definition, some subjects (usually about half) have to be below average when compared against each other in the same school, yet we still persist with this type of in-house comparison).
Gaming the System
So if you can’t compare Band 6s, and it is more difficult to get Band 6s in some subjects than others, yet schools are still being measured by their numbers of Band 6s, what can be done?
A genuine, yet morally wrong, short-term solution to maximise Band 6s is to guide students away from subjects with a low frequency of Band 6s. We know this happens already with subjects like English Standard: even though many students are better suited to English Standard, many schools push them into the higher Band 6 frequency English Advanced course. If this strategy is applied to the sciences, then schools simply stop offering the sciences. This is happening already in some quarters, not least with the compounding issue of the shortage of science teachers, let alone science-trained teachers. In the short term, this could genuinely address some of the shortfall of Band 6s in a school, but it is only a short-term solution. If a school stops offering any of the sciences, particularly the traditionally ‘rigorous’ ones such as Chemistry and Physics, then the school will ‘residualise’ as aspirational families reject such a school and attend elsewhere offering the full complement of sciences.
Raw Results and Band 6s
Further confusion and anxiety reign with many schools, students and parents misunderstanding raw exam results and any correlation with performance bands. In every HSC exam, a student’s raw exam mark is internally moderated by NESA by subject, based on the Judges’ interpretation of that year’s exam inline with that subject’s Band Descriptors. For example, in one particular subject, a raw HSC exam mark of 76% might be moderated up to a 90 i.e. Band 6, and a raw exam mark of only 18% might be moderated up to a 50 i.e. a Band 2. Another subject might have 93% moderated to 90 (Band 6) and 52% moderated to 50 (Band 2). However as mentioned, many people, particularly students, parents and sometimes school leadership, don’t understand this. They think that a raw exam mark directly and equally translates to a band i.e. that a raw exam mark of 90+ is needed for a Band 6 in any subject. Following the example above, a Band 6 performing student in the first subject, with a raw mark of 76 in their Y11 exams or Y12 Trials, may incorrectly think they are only operating at Band 4, and the adults around them may equally think so. A statistically more commonplace example might be a student only achieving a 46% raw mark in the first subject in a school exam and interpreting that as a fail, whereas the same score may scrape a Band 4 when moderated in the HSC. This misunderstanding can lead to undue anxiety, misplaced self-deprecation and self-efficacy, students dropping the wrong subjects, and yet again, flawed comparisons between subjects.
Where to from here with ‘Number of Band 6s’?
So comparing the ‘Number of Band 6s’ between subjects is completely untenable. Does this knowledge help principals? Right now, not in the slightest. They don’t need me telling them the pressure they are under for Band 6s. What we need is for all stakeholders to spell this out publicly and abide by no longer comparing subjects (and ideally schools) by the numbers of Band 6s. This has to start with media outlets who are responsible for publishing such league tables and contributing to this statewide obsession and very parochial NSW vernacular in the form of ‘Number of Band 6s’. Along with the media, we need NESA (not just anonymous spokespersons), all school sectors, principals’ associations, parent bodies, teacher associations and universities to formally declare and abide by not publicly publishing, advertising or comparing between subjects (and schools) using Number of Band 6s. Only by formally denigrating ‘Number of Band 6s’ can we get to a point where we have “convinced the community”. Discussing this with journalists associated with this blog, “it’s the only metric we have. We’ve asked many times for this to change. More diverse data would stop the league tables.”
Performance Measurement
However, schools and school systems still need to measure performance. Moving beyond Number of Band 6s should not be a problem. During these COVID times, we have finessed our metrics from blunt, not so useful ‘Number of Cases’ to more pertinent measurements such as ‘Cases in the Community’. With 75,000+ students annually sitting HSC exams, there is more than enough data to measure statistically significant ‘value add’ performance of every school, subject and even teacher (if class sizes are large enough). Mathematically, this is achieved by ‘multiple regression analysis’, controlling for all other variables such as gender, socioeconomic status, school type etc. (see an example of multiple regression analysis here). Such in-house data sets are already in use: in the Department of Education with Scout, in Catholic schools with the CSNSW HSC Analysis Project, and in independent schools with various analysts. In Victoria, there has been a long established effort to celebrate value-add through the Schools that Excel lists, though what is suggested above would be far more finessed.
If the expectation is there for public comparison of all, the data is there if all schools are willing to share. But there’s the catch. With privacy of individual student information laws, and copyright of data, no detailed comparison as suggested above of the whole state i.e. all three sectors, can be published publicly unless everyone signs up to it, which is unlikely. But does that really matter?
Publishable Performance Metrics
Stakeholders need to decide, are they willing to share all of their data so that true ‘value add’ measurements (with error margins) can be reported fairly? Or is everyone happy to have league tables of school rank only by subject, taking into account all bands (Number of Band 6s alone is no longer an option)? Or do we even need public ranking/comparison? The first option as mentioned is unlikely to be agreed to, plus would require a level of statistical numeracy across society that doesn’t exist, as evident in dealing with COVID. The second option is completely achievable, schools could be ranked within individual subjects. This would eradicate the current inaccurate comparison between subjects, but would continue to perpetuate the anxiety induced by comparison between schools. So ultimately, do we even need to publicly publish relative performance metrics at all if they are essentially meaningless and harmful, or can we just keep these in-house to help monitor progress and improve our individual education of students? Either way, we must stop comparing subjects using the Number of Band 6s.
Dr Simon Crook is director of CrookED Science, a STEM education consultancy, and Honorary Associate at the School of Physics, The University of Sydney. He works with primary and high school teachers and students around many aspects of science and STEM education, and assists the Sydney University Physics Education Research (SUPER) group with their work, including liaising with NESA regarding science syllabuses. His PhD research evaluated the impact of technology on student attainment in the sciences. Previously, Simon was a high school physics teacher for 15 years.
Designing a research project that engages well with stakeholders is held up as the gold star when applying for funding. And we all know how competitive it is to get funding, so getting it right is key.
If we don’t engage well with stakeholders, we risk having a project that doesn’t meet the needs of the people, organisations or communities we are trying to serve. Also, the success of a project is often measured by how well the project team have engaged with stakeholders. So, how do we engage in a meaningful way?
Our research project has been exploring a variety of ways to engage with different groups of stakeholders in our 3-year online community education project. Our research team is learning a lot about stakeholder engagement along the way and adapting our methods. We are keen to share what we have learnt.
Who did we engage with stakeholders?
We surveyed parents from defence families, educators and family workers to ask them what should be included in our funded project and what types of resources they thought would work best. We also engaged with experts in the field, such as Legacy staff and volunteers, psychology and social work academics, experienced educators and veteran parents.
who are close to the project (geographically or through shared interests).
How do you work with stakeholders?
The key to the success of a project is how well the project team can identify and gather all the different interests of the stakeholders and manage through them.
Who are our stakeholders?
Knowing who your stakeholders are is a key starting point for engaging effectively. Stakeholders can be:
the end users of the program (in our project, children from military families and their educators, parents and family workers), and
communicate effectively and often (using a variety of methods)
consult with stakeholders early in the project (start when planning the project)
identify stakeholders’ limitations (What will hold them back? How can we help them to interact?)
have a plan for engagement (the research team should discuss and plan)
work on our relationships (take an active interest in stakeholders and let them know how much you value their input and support)
How do we engage well?
Engaging well with stakeholders will look different for every project. In our Early Childhood Defence Programs (ECDP) project, we have focussed on the areas shown in this diagram.
There are many ways to engage well with stakeholders. The ECDP project uses a variety of methods, including:
social media posts 1) Facebook: linking project progress with current events (e.g. Children’s Week, Anzac Day) 2) Twitter: highlighting academic publications related to the project
media engagement (in publications that our stakeholders might read)
surveys to get ideas for our programs and resources (targeting parents, educators and family workers)
Due to a very limited project budget, we have chosen to use a very low-cost website and manage all social media engagement. This takes a lot of time and energy.
Engaging well with our stakeholders in all the ways we do takes stamina. Overall, we have found it to be well worth the effort. Our social media following is growing steadily, and this might help us recruit participants for our control trials.
‘When you open up the door to let the wind in, the dust follows’ according to the Vietnamese proverb. We have found this to be true when we have had to deal with spam, bots and bizarre online comments. Luckily, this has been rare.
Our research team doesn’t think the ECDP project would ever be immune to irrelevance, but we think our efforts are helping us avoid meaningless outcomes. Making sure our project stays relevant to our stakeholders is a work in progress and one we really enjoy. We also believe it gives our project strength, direction and purpose.
Marg Rogers is a Lecturer in the Early Childhood Education and Care at the University of New England. Marg’s current research interests are about programming and resourcing parents and educators to build resilience and understanding in 2-5-year-olds from Australian Defence Force (ADF) families, professionalism, and narratives.
