Curtin University

emotional experiences of teachers

Emotional experiences of teaching: Toxic positivity and cruel wellbeing

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Every school day, across the country, education professionals labour emotionally—in the classroom, in the staffroom, online. Yet the language available for talking about these experiences in public conversation has a history of being fragmented, inadequate and polarized as either overwhelmingly negative or unrealistically positive. 

Our new edited book from Palgrave Macmillan, Teachers’ Emotional Experiences, articulates emotional realities of the teaching profession. It introduces useful concepts for responding to them as teachers, teacher educators, school leaders and policy makers. Teachers want to have their emotional labour understood by the broader community. This is something that we have tried to honour in this book. Teachers want to be heard and seen by the public and recognised as professionals who labour under difficult conditions. 

Only very recently have we begun to publicly acknowledge teachers are struggling. They struggle under the weight of unrealistic expectations and mounting responsibilities of modern teaching. Teachers in Australia fulfil many vital roles alongside their obvious teaching roles. They are de facto security guards, counsellors, data administrators, co-parents, citizen makers and child minders for the economy. Based largely on interviews with 42 Australian teachers (from the NARRES research project) the book presents engaging stories of teachers who shared resonant emotional events with us and our fellow investigators*. Each chapter is focused on a teacher’s emotional story followed by an academic response from education researchers across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. Our book reveals how social and political pressures, intensifying workloads and lowered professional status are impacting teacher wellbeing and reshaping the profession. 

Emotional experiences: guilt, demoralisation, helplessness, alienation, anger

The teachers whose stories are included in the book experienced challenging and confronting emotions: guilt, demoralisation, helplessness, alienation and anger. The contributing authors show many of these feelings are generated from the systems, processes and structures of schooling, over which which teachers have little agency or autonomy. The book demonstrates that teachers strive to be ethical, empathic, passionate, and committed professionals. But at present this work is threatened by a range of issues including unnecessary administrative burdens, workload and time pressure, poor work-life balance, vicarious trauma and emotional burnout.

These threats are making it increasingly difficult for educators to make a meaningful difference to the communities that they serve. These themes are common fare for Australian educational research. But our book offers a fresh take by focusing on teachers’ emotional lives and foregrounding teachers’ own experiences. Each chapter begins with a narrative extract from the interviews. The authors in our book shine a light on the complexity and nuance of teacher emotions. These professionals now have a voice that does not have enough presence in public conversations.  

Foregrounding emotional experiences

One story in the book (co-authored by Saul Karnovsky and Susan Beltman) focuses on emotional labour in teaching. Alanna (a pseudonym) explains her thinking when confronted by a student who disclosed intentional self-harming behaviours in the classroom setting:

I guess I tried to put on a façade too as, in stay professional; I couldn’t cuddle her or say are you ok? I couldn’t go too deep into it, because I’m not trained in that area. So I was worried if I did say something, you may not think you are saying anything wrong but to them you have said something that is going to trigger them and they will do it again. So I didn’t want to do that, so I was like what do I say? Do I be nice? [Or] Do I just blow it off? Do I give her advice?

Emotional self-training

Alanna’s story describes a type of emotional self-training that teachers often undergo. She explains that she “tried to put on a façade” and “stay professional” during her encounter with the student. Karnovsky and Beltman explore how Alanna exerts substantial effort to modify her initial emotional response, that of feeling upset and helpless in the situation. Alanna enacts a deliberate process of feeling management to ensure her negative emotions will not be shown.

This form of emotional labour constitutes a vital element of teacher professional practice in modern school settings. Alanna’s experiences help sketch out the opaque contours of emotional rules in the teaching profession. These invisible boundaries delineate the difference between ‘appropriate’ allowable emotional expression and ‘inappropriate’ emotional expression that teachers learn to police. Teachers must navigate these tacit emotional borderlines. They must take care not to misstep, lest they be seen as “not right for the job”.

Profound emotional events

Like Alanna, many teachers experience profound emotional events in their working lives. As academics, we are able to provide insight into these events by bringing scholarly language, concepts and theories to interpret those experiences. Many teachers work in environments that do not support sharing the emotionally intense experiences that take place in their schools. ‘Solutions based’ leadership is in vogue within school management practice. But this approach can be an impediment that fails to connect with the complexity of context. The authors in our book discuss ‘teacher wellbeing’ as an inadequate lens through which to address teachers’ emotional experiences.

Many teachers are cynical of wellbeing programs and it can be cruel to expect overworked teachers to adopt these practices. They become a further load on top of all that was already present. The primary issue is that the ‘wellbeing’ approach typically places responsibility for positive emotional practice back upon the shoulders of individual teachers. A thread that runs throughout the book is that workplace emotions ought to be a shared responsibility. We suggest a more productive approach. That would be to focus upon reshaping the ways emotions are discussed, interpreted and communicated in the school context. 

Collaboration and collegiality

Sustained collaborative and collegial work is required to improve teachers’ working conditions and school climates. Leaders have positions of influence over school policy, climate and structures. They can cultivate trust and introduce practices that allow teachers time and space to decompress, take time away from the business of their work, find solitude when needed and come together in a spirit of honesty and of collective, localised strategic thinking. Policy makers must create the conditions for this important change to occur in schools by trusting our education professionals to create local solutions to issues present in their communities. 

Both in Australia and globally there is a turn towards a more critical and nuanced appraisal of teacher wellbeing. We are now recognising the problematic nature of toxic positivity and cruel wellbeing in schools, in which interventions made in the name of individual wellbeing and workplace positivity conversely lead to negative wellbeing outcomes.

Conversations about safety

Conversations about teacher safety, teacher workload and policy conditions shaping the retention crisis are reaching traditional and social media outlets. Community attitude is often on the side of teachers, and the inherent challenges posed by the modern structures of schooling have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever education research can provide a roadmap for the profession to reconstitute what is of value and what we hope to achieve through schooling systems. There are certainly models around the world to look to, where policy makers trust and value teachers as professionals, allowing them space, time and resources to focus on what matters most. There is a need for a shared discourse about teachers’ emotional concerns and the book aims to articulate some clear concepts for use by teachers and teacher educators alike.

* We wish to acknowledge Karen Peel, Debbie Mulligan, Bobby Harreveld, Nick Kelly and Patrick A. Danaher as Chief Investigators of the NARRES Australian research team who contributed the 42 teacher interviews.

Saul Karnovsky is a senior teacher educator and course coordinator at Curtin University, Perth which is located on Noongar Country. He is an active researcher in teacher wellbeing, attrition and retention taking an ethical and critical perspective on the profession.

Nick Kelly is an associate professor of design science in the School of Design, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, QUT. His research investigates the foundations of design expertise and applies design science to educational contexts including design for learning, design pedagogy, and design of school environments.

enabling education

What’s in a name? Enabling education in Australia  

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The Australian Government announced significant changes last year to programs that enable students from non-high school pathways to transition into university. These programs began in Australia 50 years ago and are broadly referred to as  enabling education. There are 48 programs now operated by universities across Australia. Enabling education is  defined legislatively as a course “provided to a person for the purpose of enabling that person to undertake a course leading to a higher education award”.

Enabling education operates free-of-cost to domestic students who don’t meet current entry requirements to enter an undergraduate level program. These programs are key to widening educational participation, especially for students from recognised equity backgrounds.   

The government renamed those programs “FEE-FREE Uni Ready”, including $350 million in increased funding and increased student places. It also committed to work with providers to “professionalise and increase the quality and consistency of courses” and improve their “portability”. 

Same goal, different names

In the course of this short announcement, the terms ‘enabling’, ‘pathway’ and ‘preparatory’ were used alongside FEE-FREE Uni Ready, and other terms are also associated with this field of education including ‘foundation studies’, ‘bridging programs’ and ‘access courses’. Different programs also utilise program names that incorporate these terms or others such as ‘steps’, ‘track’, and ‘link’. Ostensibly, these courses share the same goal.

Recent benchmarking by the National Association of Enabling Educators highlights these programs usually include explicit teaching of study preparation. They also usually include communication skills, academic literacies and/or numeracies. But providers do not use the same language to refer to the programs they offer. Even when they use the same naming conventions they are not necessarily referring to the same program types. There is variation throughout the sector over length of study time, use of fees and program entry requirements, for example. The variation in terms, and whether the same program name even means the same thing between providers, is mind boggling!  

Current benchmarking exercises seek to make sense of the various naming conventions around enabling education. They rely upon a shared understanding of what enabling education is: a pre-Bachelor course of study enabling university entry. However, we know that this is not the only way that enabling education can be constructed. The government’s advice to university providers says this: “A provider’s purpose in enrolling a student in a course of instruction determines whether it is an enabling course. Therefore, a course of instruction may be an enabling course for only some students undertaking it.”

It continues that even courses that bear credit can constitute an enabling course, though credit bearing courses cannot constitute the majority of the program of study.

The eye of the beholder

It seems, then, that what constitutes enabling lies in the eye of the beholder. It is likely that enabling funding is used diversely. For example, it may be used for programs sitting within or alongside undergraduate level study. It may also be used within high school outreach programs that assist students to transition out of secondary education and into a further enabling program or directly into undergraduate study. As this is not commonly understood as ‘enabling’, it is not necessarily captured in national typologies of enabling education or in benchmarking.

Importantly, it is not captured in our conversations about whether enabling education is best understood as a field of education that assists students not only into higher education but also through an often-non-linear educational journey that continues beyond the entry point of undergraduate study. 

Our nomenclature shouldn’t limit our understanding of where enabling should ‘sit’ as a mechanism for supporting students and improving outcomes.  

The term ‘enabling education’ is not commonly used outside Australia. And other terms do not adequately translate into an international context. For example, “preparatory” is the term proposed by the Australian Universities Accord to replace enabling education. However, this can create a problematic and false equivalency to American preparatory schools, whose function is entirely different to ‘preparation’ in an Australian enabling context. 

Within Australia, the use of distinct naming conventions for different programs impacts the legitimacy of enabling education as a particular field of education, taught by those with distinct and recognisable expertise. If we accept that enabling programs represent a particular branch of knowledge with expertise required to teach it, it deserves a consistent name that represents it as a field of education. It is questionable whether ‘enabling education’ is adequate for this purpose. 

What we call these courses matters

The conflation of terms like FEE-FREE Uni Ready (a name reserved for particular programs) with a field of education or discipline being taught does not help with efforts to form a meaningful and invariable name. It also inhibits our ability to understand what it is about enabling education as a field that is distinct, and what exists in parallel with other transition pedagogies, or preparatory practices. If these courses are simply about ‘enabling’ students to enter undergraduate study, what exactly do they even need to cover to prepare students and who determines this?  

What we call these courses matters. In practical terms the diverse naming conventions of enabling programs presents a barrier to finding and accessing these programs. These programs are particularly aimed at students often marginalised from higher education – so this naming problem may exacerbate this  marginalisation. Naming conventions matter too. They tell students how they are viewed by the university. They also tell students how they should think about themselves. In a NSW context, for example, ‘pathway’ is often used to refer to enabling programs. However, it is often preceded by the word ‘alternative’ – an alternate pathway to the completion of the Higher School Certificate. It implies that enabling education is secondary. 

And is enabling the right word? It has the loaded and problematic inference that students are not already ‘able’. Our terminology matters in framing enabling education, particularly for students who have experienced educational disadvantage.   

We still don’t know what’s going to happen

The FEE-FREE Uni Ready proposal was slated for implementation from 2025. But at the time of writing (February 2025) no further substantive clarification has been provided by government. That leaves much of the government-led work in formalising sector-wide benchmarks and shared (read: portable) understandings, curricula, and expectations unfinished. 

This variability limits the portability of certificates for students. It also limits of awareness of these programs, even within a program’s own institution. That, in turn, impacts the critical and evaluative interest of educational researchers both within and, importantly, outside of enabling education.  

Enabling education represents a real space for changing individual fortunes and helping students to develop fulfilling careers. But it is also as an opportunity for powerful knowledge and recognition of why access to education matters. It should also provide a space for deeper and critical understandings of higher education and its distributive role in society.

A public good

Enabling education is a public good, a true legacy of Whitlam-era policies that assert that higher education is for everyone. How we refer to this field of study matters. It dictates what enabling education does, how and when across a student’s journey. 

Naming matters in how we continue to “professionalise” this form of education as a set of practices and pedagogies, and operationalise it for educators and researchers who work within it and the students who seek to benefit from it. It matters to the public, who fund it.  

Emma Hamilton is a senior lecturer of history and convenor of the Open Foundation (Online) Program at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her work relates to history on film, and to widening participation in higher education. Matthew Bunn is a seniorl lecturer in academic pathways at James Cook University. His research is grounded in the sociology of equity and widening participation in higher education. Kieran Balloo is joining Curtin University and is a visiting senior research fellow in the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK. His research has a focus on student transitions, equity, and wellbeing, and it emphasises the importance of innovative and inclusive educational practices to support diverse student populations. Sally Baker is an associate professor of Migration and Education in POLIS at ANU. Her work centres on policy and practice related to equity in higher education, particularly with students with forced migration backgrounds.

Learning to talk

The right time to talk is now: Phonology before phonics

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Early years teachers are identifying a worrying cultural trend affecting children’s spoken language development – their ability to talk – which has implications for early literacy learning. 

Teachers report that on entry to school, many young children lack the verbal skills of previous generations. The cause is parents’ incessant use of mobile phones which inhibits verbal interaction with their children. Teachers also noted children’s poorer core body strength, gross and fine motor coordination. Whilst the latter deficiencies support the argument for more physical activity in the early years the former suggests a strong need for a focus on spoken language in early schooling. 

These findings will come as no surprise to early years practitioners. They have extensive knowledge of the importance of active play and talk as fundamental elements of early learning.  Before children learn to read and write, they need to have a comprehensive foundation of phonological skills which includes a good awareness of discrete sounds in words. This should be an imperative prior to the introduction of formal instruction in reading and writing. 

The transition is complicated

The transition from phonological awareness to reading is complicated by the fact English is not a phonetic language. Here’s the complication: there is no comprehensive one-to-one relationship between individual letters and sounds. Although there are 26 letters in the alphabet, English has 44 sounds or phonemes. This means a single letter may map to several different sounds.  For example, the letter ‘a’ is not always a short vowel sound, as in ‘apple’. Nor does it have only one variation, as in the split digraph, ‘late’, where the ‘silent e’ changes the medial ‘a’ to a long vowel. Other phonological variations of ‘a’ can be found in the following words: 

  • short vowel ‘i’ as in ‘women’
  • ‘ar’ as in ‘fast’ and ‘father’
  • the schwa as in ‘about’ and ‘around’
  • the short vowel ‘o’ as in ‘was’ and ‘what’
  • the short vowel ‘e’ as in ‘many’
  • and finally, ‘or’ as is ‘call’ and ‘ball

So, the single letter, ‘a’, which is often considered to be one of the simplest letter-sound correspondences in English, has nine different sounds. That makes it more complex than ‘a’ for ‘apple’ suggests. Unless children have extensive experience of hearing and uttering words in which letters that have phonological variations, they are unlikely to have sufficient command of the range of sounds to know which one to apply when they see the word in print.  

One sound, many letters

What further complicates learning to read in English is that a single sound (phoneme) can be represented by letter combinations. For example, the ‘f’ sound can be represented in the following ways – ‘f’ – ‘ff’ –‘ph’ – ‘gh’. In addition, there are longer letter strings that represent a single sound, e.g.  ‘igh’, ‘aye’, ‘eau’. The representation of sounds in print are called ‘graphemes’. The exact number of graphemes in English is a matter of debate. One estimate suggests the figure is as high as 284. One means by which children learn to read is through combining their visual memory of letters and letter combinations and their auditory memory of corresponding sounds. The process of linking letters to sounds is known as phonics, of which there are two main types: synthetic and analytic. 

Early years practitioners have a wealth of knowledge. They have ways to give children repeated opportunities to hear these variations, as well as have opportunities to say them. They know that regularly reading aloud to children, as well as story-circles, story-telling, singing songs, reciting rhymes and provoking talk through play all contribute to the development of strong phonological awareness. If we are developing a culture in which children are not getting these phonological experiences before they start school, it is essential they are emphasised in early schooling.   

What children really need

However, evidence from England, where the teaching of synthetic phonics was made statutory in 2010 suggests this professional knowledge has been displaced by commercial programs and policy directives. These have resulted in the ‘streaming’ of young children on the basis of their ‘ability’ to make letter-sound correspondences using synthetic phonics. It is likely, therefore, that children with the least developed phonological abilities will be placed in ‘low ability’ groups where they will be coached in phonics. But what they really need is varied opportunities to hear and use spoken language. In addition, recent articles by UK academics report children in England are having fewer or no books read to them. They have fewer opportunities to hear and use naturalistic language. These important aspects of early years education have all been replaced. They’ve been replaced by streams of powerpoints, simplistic worksheets, decodable books and the choral chanting of letter-sound correspondences. 

However, the UK Labour Party has made speaking and listening a key component of its Education Manifesto. Australian teachers already know the importance of talk as a tool for learning. Policy makers here need to heed the imminent change in Britain, and follow suit. The evidence from teachers in Western Australia suggests the mobile phone is killing talk in the home. This is why it is even more important children have extensive opportunities to hear and use spoken language in school.  

Biographies

Paul Gardner is a senior lecturer in English in the School of Education at Curtin University. He has been a Secondary teacher of Drama and English, a primary teacher and an educational leader in early learning. His published works cover the themes of: creativity, socially inclusive education, writer identity and compositional processes. He advocates for critical pedagogy and social justice.   

Sonja Kuzich is a senior lecturer and Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Education, Curtin University. Her research interests and publications encompass social justice and equity, literacy practices in schools, educational policy development and implementation particularly through a sustainability agenda, EfS curriculum and pedagogy and the impact of nature on children’s affective and cognitive outcomes.

  

BUDGET 2024: Why is the money for public schools still missing?

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This is first in a series of posts on the 2024 Budget. Today: school funding by Curtin University’s Matthew P. Sinclair, a lecturer in education policy. Tomorrow: early childhood care and education by the University of New England’s Marg Rogers, postdoctoral fellow at the Manna Institute Monday: higher education by the University of Melbourne’s Abigail Payne, director of the Melbourne Institute.

This is beginning to feel like the “Gonski 3.0” phase of school funding policy reform that will yet again fall short for public schools

We’ve seen this movie before. This time the actors are different but the plot remains the same. 

Analysing Tuesday night’s federal budget was a timely reminder that fully funding the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) for all Australian public schools has been an unattainable goal since at least 2012—when the Review of Funding for Schooling’s final report [the Gonski Review] was publicly released. 

There’s nothing put aside

An analysis of the forward estimates for public schools beyond 2025 shows there’s nothing put aside by the federal ALP for New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria to help reach 100% of the SRS any time soon. 

Nor does the money appear for Western Australia (WA) or the Northern Territory (NT). Earlier this year they signed Statements of Intent to deliver an agreement to fully fund the SRS of public schools in the coming years—2026 for the former and 2029 for the latter—in a deal worth an additional $785.4 million and $737 million in federal money respectively over five years.

Regarding the signing on of WA and the NT, as Elisa Di Gregorio, Professor Jane Kenway and I pointed out earlier this year, WA was low hanging fruit given they funded more than 100% of the SRS in 2018, and the robust state of its economy— it delivered its sixth straight budget surplus last week. While the Northern Territory, in terms of its population of under 300,000, is much smaller than the eastern states who are yet to sign on.

Ongoing budget negotiations – but does that matter?

Of course, Minister for Education Jason Clare would point to the ongoing negotiations between the federal government and the unsigned states on coming to an agreement for public schools to begin a path to reaching 100% of the SRS. And the fact that the next set of bilateral agreements are set to be signed at the end of the year as part of the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA), and that the money is there and available.

In response, I would point out that the Gonski Review, which first recommended the SRS as a needs based funding framework, was commissioned in 2010 and delivered its final report to the federal government in December 2011. Furthermore, the previous set of national school funding bilateral agreements between the federal government and the states and territories expired at the end of 2023, and required a 12-month extension.

Almost 5 months later we still don’t have five states signed on for the next agreement that we’ve been promised will get all public schools to 100% of the SRS sooner rather than later. 

Memories of Gillard past

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this trajectory in school funding policy for public schools before. The Gillard government in 2013 put together a six-year funding deal that promised to get public schools to 100% of the SRS. The problem was that two thirds of the funding was to come in the fifth and sixth years of the deal, and had not been budgeted for in the forward estimates. 

At the time of the deal, the Gillard government was in a precarious political position and unlikely to win the two elections needed to deliver on the promise. Thus, when the Abbott government won power in 2013, they either had to find two thirds of all the funding promised by the ALP in two years, or take a new direction. 

As we know, they chose the latter, and this led to the ALP being able to use school funding policy as a political weapon against the Coalition, arguing they were cutting funding for public schools when in fact that money was only promised, and never budgeted for. The ALP made similar arguments during the Gonski 2.0 phase of school funding reform where they presented their unfulfilled promises as hard policy.

The ALP’s slim majority

This storyline came back to me Tuesday evening looking at the federal budget papers and thinking about the 12 month extension to the current funding agreements. After listening to Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers’ speech, and looking at the forward estimates, my first reaction was to check the next election date. It is May 2025, at the latest, and the federal ALP sits on a slim majority of 77 of 151 seats in the lower house of parliament. 

Under the current extended bilateral agreements, the states and territories are meant to provide 80% of the SRS for public schools and 20% for non-government schools. While the federal government provides 20% to public schools and 80% to non-government schools. 

Well short of the budget mark

The reason public schools outside of the Australian Capital Territory are not consistently funded at 100% of the SRS is the states and the NT do not fully fund the 80% and in some cases are well short of that mark. 

Minister Clare knows this well and is proposing lifting the federal share of public funding from 20% to 22.5% in a deal worth an extra $6bn over five years, while the unsigned states want the federal government to lift its share to 25%, in order for them to contribute 75%. 

Minister Clare also wants funding tied to new reporting obligations that he argues will lift student outcomes; the states who are yet to sign on are arguing this is yet another level of compliance for schools and teachers. 

Meanwhile, the Australian Greens want more urgency from the federal government on reaching 100% of the SRS. 

History repeated

All of this feels like history repeated. The ALP makes promises about fully funding the SRS for public schools, the Greens call for fully funding public education, the money isn’t budgeted for across the forward estimates, and then political winds change, and the money never lands.

Is this the Gonski 3.0 phase of school funding policy? It is beginning to feel that way and the current trajectory suggests it may well end the same way as 1.0 and 2.0. 

Although, there is still a possibility that Minister Clare and the remaining states will come to an agreement and sign on to finally fully fund the SRS of all public schools during the next set of bilateral agreements, which provides hope. 

Indeed, Minister Clare has achieved positive results so far including much needed money for public school infrastructure (although much more capital works funding is required), putting together a national plan to address the teacher shortage, and paid school placements for some university students, and more.

We need a positive ending

However, he has a lot more work to do to deliver on his commitment to getting all public schools on a path to 100% of the SRS.   For our less advantaged students, for a change, we need a positive ending to this school funding policy story. 

Matthew P. Sinclair is a lecturer of education policy at Curtin University’s School of Education in Western Australia. His first book titled Equity and Influence in the Funding of Schools is on track to be published by Bloomsbury later this year.

School funding: Is this Australia’s most important moment for reform?

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School funding policy burst back onto the national agenda last Tuesday. Federal Education Minister Jason Clare announced a ‘statement of intent’ had been signed with Western Australia to fully fund the state’s public schools by 2026.

This language is important. A statement of intent is not  a signed, five-year, bilateral funding agreement. There is still much water to go under the bridge.

Yet, on face value, the announcement is good news. It signals the federal government’s intention to boost overall funding for public schools in WA by an extra $777.4 million over five years. In doing so, lifting its share of public school funding from 20 percent to 22.5 percent. Importantly, priority is also given to the state’s most disadvantaged public schools to ensure they are the first to receive the new funding.

As part of the deal, the WA government committed to providing at least an equivalent amount over this period, or 77.5% of the SRS, bringing total additional investment in public schools to $1.6 billion.

In theory at least, this will bring all WA schools regardless of sector up to 100% of the Student Resource Standard by 2026, in school funding policy terms, a quick turnaround.

So why was WA the first cab off the rank?

A review of the annual reporting of states and territories concerning their bilateral funding agreements shows that in 2018, WA actually funded schools at 104% of the SRS, with the WA state government providing 84.43% of the SRS in addition to the federal government’s 20% contribution. From 2019, each year, WA has incrementally dropped its funding to the plateau in 2021, 2022 and 2023 of 75%.

In short, for the federal government to achieve a much needed political and public victory concerning school funding, WA was low hanging fruit. It was sitting on 95% of the SRS in 2023, and only years before schools had been funded in excess of 100%.

WA is also in strong budgetary position vis a vis the other states and territories with a $3.7 billion net operating budget surplus now forecast for 2023‑24.

Perhaps in a sign of things to come, included in the signed statement of intent was a no-disadvantage clause. This means the WA will net hundreds of millions more for education if the Eastern states secure a higher share.

Judging from the initial reaction from some eastern seaboard states, who rejected outright the federal government’s 2.5% increase in funding, Minster Clare faces a rocky negotiation path ahead.

Don’t get too excited

There’s a lot we don’t know. And a lot to worry about if history repeats itself. Our school funding history in relation to equity and needs-based funding is not reassuring.

Minister Clare obviously hopes that the WA agreement will set the scene for other state and territory agreements. He wants all parties to negotiate in good faith and with noble purpose.

But the much-travelled path of federal/state school funding negotiations is littered with disagreements —protracted and fierce. Their results have seldom been fair let alone noble. 

At this stage Victoria and Queensland are not agreeing to 22.5. In equally good faith they are pushing for 25% funding from the federal government.

The Australian Education Union concurs. Its Every school. Every child campaign has long made this clear. It also asks for 40% for the NT where public schools are in dire straits.

Funding war?

Some observers are foreshadowing another ‘funding war’. The exact strategies and tactics of the combatants remain to be seen. Or not. Wider publics are seldom privy to manoeuvres behind-the-scenes. 

The usual funding wars also involve the private schools. Independents, Catholics, the federal government and the states/territories all go into battle for self-interest.

These current negotiations are focused on  the needs-based funding of public schools. Yet Private schools may still enter the funding fray. They always have. 

Currently, for all schools, the SRS is topped up with ‘equity loadings’. We don’t yet know how these will be built into these new funding arrangements. 

There is also the 4% depreciation and other costs loophole that allows the states and territories to reduce their funding in real times. Without its removal, WA Public schools will receive 96% of the SRS rather than the suggested 100%. 

Will disadvantaged schools, with time poor teachers, be given additional support to claim such loadings.  

This federal money is to be tied to various ‘practical reforms’. The Improving Outcomes for All review is the touchstone. These reforms will, in the Minister’s words, ‘help children to keep up, catch up and finish school’.  

But we don’t yet know how these reforms will be rolled out. We don’t know how they will be devised and evaluated, or the assessment and accountability mechanisms involved. 

It is not clear if the Commonwealth has any claw back mechanisms if the states/territories don’t measure up.

Commonwealth accountability mechanisms are notoriously complex, obscure and unhelpful. Danger lurks here.  

Matters to keep in mind

These recent WA developments are an important starting point for the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) and the new bilateral funding agreements to be negotiated this year.

But, while the haggling over the percentage of government contributions toward the SRS continues, we urge all parties to keep in mind that the SRS represents the minimum standard of funding needed to meet the educational needs of students. 

The WA negotiations have also signalled the federal government’s capacity to move beyond the arbitrarily imposed 80/20% funding split that has shaped federal funding reform since 2017.

This is an important development. It demonstrates there is no constitutional or legislative reason why it can’t move beyond the 22.5% it agreed to on Tuesday, toward the 25% sought by other states.  

We also suggest that substantially strengthened transparency measures be built into the new NSRA and bilateral funding agreements.

Invisibility of funding data

At present, publicly available and easily comprehensible information on how money is spent by governments, and then allocated by schooling sectors is limited. Gaps exist in the visibility of funding data. This is especially problematic given that SRS funding from the federal government is not directly sent to all schools, but redistributed in line with state and sector-based funding models.

These gaps are even more worrisome when considered in relation to the additional government money allocated to priority equity groups (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students with disability, students with socio-educational disadvantage, students with low English proficiency, small schools and schools in regional and remote locations).

On this, a 2023 Productivity Commission report established that there is ‘no publicly available data on school-level spending on students’ from these cohorts.

Bolster accountability

Enhanced transparency mechanisms would serve to curtail any potential ‘accounting loopholes’ or cost shifting that have historically beset funding agreements. They would also bolster accountability and enforceability in line with the needs-based principles of the SRS which should remain a central focus of any future funding reform.

There is much at stake for public schools and their students, teachers, and leaders around Australia in the coming months as the school funding negotiations ramp up.

Jane Kenway is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia, Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research expertise is in educational sociology.  

Matthew P. Sinclair is a lecturer of education policy at Curtin University’s School of Education in Western Australia. His research and teaching focuses on education policy, school funding, globalisation, education futures, and equity in schooling.

Jason Clare, Federal Minister for Education

Elisa Di Gregorio is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Her research focus is the sociology of education policy, with a particular interest in articulations of equity in school funding policy.

Disability: Let’s adjust learning design now for everyone

learning design, students with disability, Universal design for learning (UDL), , , , , ,

Bob Dylan’s classic Subterranean Homesick Blues goes:  “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” Anyone teaching or working in higher education knows the number of students with disabilities is growing. The number and proportion of students disclosing disability has grown every year since data was first reported nationally in 1996.

The surge in the number of students disclosing their disabilities is the result of many influences. Reporting of disability status in student systems is on the rise for reasons including improved processes and a greater willingness of students to disclose. We also know that both incidences and reporting of some forms of disability – notably mental health conditions – are on the increase in broader society.

Are students with disabilities overrepresented in higher education?

The Universities Accord discussion paper presented data showing students with disabilities are now overrepresented in higher education. The reality is more complex and goes to the heart of how students with disability are defined and counted in higher education. 

We recently explored this in our article ‘Three decades of misrecognition: Defining people with disability in Australian higher education policy”. We want to use this blog to highlight opportunities to improve the learning environment and graduate outcomes for university students with disability.

First-year retention and success rates, and degree-completion rates for students with disabilities, remain well below those of other students. Almost two out of every three students complete their degree within six years, compared to around one out of every two students with disability.

Recognition-redistribution paradox

Universities are aware of this and have worked for many years to provide support to these students. But one unintended consequence of their efforts has been the creation of what has elsewhere been called the ‘recognition-redistribution’ paradox. In the context of disability, recognition means positively highlighting, or celebrating, what it means to be disabled. Redistribution, on the other hand, means acknowledging the disadvantage experienced by persons with disabilities when they encounter social and structural barriers, or even outright discrimination.

Consequently, this leads universities simultaneously saying to students with disabilities “we don’t define you by your disability” and “we can offer you support – but only if we define you by your disability”.

One reason for this paradox is, perversely, located in an important key protection for persons with disability that is found in both the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) and the Disability Standards for Education (2005). This is the notion of the ‘reasonable adjustment’.

What is a reasonable adjustment?

A reasonable adjustment is an action taken by an institution to ensure that a student with disability can participate in education free from direct or indirect discrimination. 

These adjustments may include extra exam time, modifying the curriculum or presenting information in different formats. But to gain access to a reasonable adjustment, the student must a) identify as disabled, b) acknowledge a ‘deficiency’ and c) have their disability medicalised by a health professional.

One recommendation arising from the recent Disability Royal Commission is to remove the word “reasonable” from reasonable adjustment. This would be an important step, as it would effectively reverse the burden of proof from the student to the institution.Yet the paradox would remain. In addition, legal entitlement to a reasonable adjustment is restricted. Students who do not identify with disability, but who need some form of flexibility for health-related reasons, are thus ‘disabled’ by institutional processes if they request or are granted a reasonable adjustment.

In the future, support provision for students with disabilities will be thrust into the spotlight, for several reasons. As discussed above, general awareness around disability cultures is improving and with it, improved commitments to affirming the rights of persons with disabilities.

Universities must improve their outreach

Yet if we want higher education to achieve the ambitious growth targets proposed in the recent Australian Universities Accord Interim Report, universities will need to improve their outreach and engagement with groups of students historically under-represented in higher education. 

This includes students with disabilities.

How universities support these students need to shift – dramatically. It cannot put greater pressure on universities’ disability support offices.

A universal design for learning

The fundamental approach to disability support needs to move from the primacy of the reasonable adjustment to inaccessible curriculum to principles of universal design for learning (UDL) that reduces the need for adjustments by design.

UDL is an approach to teaching and learning that uses a variety of methods and approaches to teaching to remove unnecessary barriers to learning. Rather than just offering one way of students engaging with the curriculum, and demonstrating their understanding, UDL is about flexibility and adjustment to suit a variety of learners.

System wide implementation of UDL will reduce the burden on students disclosing and substantiating their disability to be eligible for negotiated changes to inaccessible curriculum.

This is a key issue at the heart of our recent paper where we argue current reporting mechanisms may not be fit for purpose. Personal information such as disability status should only be collected if there is a direct benefit to the student and/or a wider benefit in terms of institutional understanding and support for these students.

Ultimately, UDL challenges a university to reconsider almost every aspect of their operation, including:

·         Attitudes of all staff towards students with disabilities.

·         The development and promotion of polices to support students with disabilities.

·         Creation of a fully inclusive physical/built environment.

·         How information – both academic and non-academic – is communicated within the institution.

·         What software and hardware technologies are provided for students, and what types brought by students can be supported.

·         Wider social inclusion, including extra-curricular activities.

This is not to say that systemic adoption of UDL will completely replace the use of reasonable adjustments. It cannot fully resolve the recognition-redistribution paradox. 

But it can significantly improve the quality of the educational experience for literally thousands of students, both with and without disability.

From left to right: Tim Pitman is an associate professor at Curtin University, researching higher education policy and widening access and participation for groups of students historically under-represented in higher education, including those from low-socio economic backgrounds, Indigenous persons, people with disability, people from non-English speaking backgrounds and people from regional and remote parts of Australia. Matt Brett is Director of Academic Governance and Standards at Deakin University where he has oversight for academic governance, academic policy, course approvals, equity reporting, institutional research and surveys, quality assurance, and quality reviews. He is a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA)  and began his career in higher education as a sign language interpreter. He has a sustained and multi-dimensional impact on student equity.  Katie Ellis is a professor and director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University  where she conducts disability led research into socially just digital futures. She also co-chairs Universities Enable.

So wrong: Inspirational campaigns will never work. Here’s why

teacher attrition, teacher recruitment, teacher retention, , , ,

The Federal government recently launched two high profile campaigns to attract people into the teaching profession. 

The first seeks to raise the status of teaching through a series of rather saccharine videos showcasing inspirational classroom teacher stories as “Be That Teacher” “Be That Teacher”. Costing a whopping $10 million this glossy marketing strategy aims to elevate the positive, that teachers are important and they can make a meaningful difference in the lives of young people. The second campaign provides significant scholarships for those undertaking teaching degrees, a response to the fact that university admissions for teaching degrees have slumped by 20 per cent this year. Only 50 per cent see the degree though.   

Both these initiatives are admirable. These campaigns are misplaced. I believe this both as a teacher educator in Western Australia and as an active researcher in the field of teacher wellbeing and retention.

These campaigns fail to address the specific issues which have led to the teacher shortage in Australia, of which the federal Education Department are conservatively projecting the country will be short an estimated 4,100 teachers by 2025. 

Stressed, demoralised, leaving the job

The facts are clear – teachers are feeling stressed, demoralised and many are leaving the job because their workloads are unmanageable. Teachers work excessively long hours and their overall health and wellbeing has hit rock bottom. Most teachers would tell you they have pretty poor work-life balance. Over the last two years I have noticed a substantial shift in the public discourse of teachers work. Both policymakers and media now acknowledge teachers struggle under the weight of unrealistic expectations and mounting responsibilities of modern teaching.

This shift in public perception about the work of teaching has been triggered by a labor force crisis in the school sector, with teacher well-being (or more commonly ill-being) becoming an important issue that needs addressing. What’s noticeable in both ministerial pronouncements and the media cycle is an acknowledgement that when teachers are persistently stressed and emotionally burnt out by their work, they leave. Consistent evidence about teachers’ feelings towards their work collected by education researchers, teacher unions and independent organizations are agreed — teaching is currently one of the most emotionally difficult professions and mirrors much of the service care sector, such as social workers and nurses.  

Our teachers are toiling away as security guards, counselors, data administrators, co-parents, citizen makers and babysitters for the economy. Teachers are at the material face of increasingly diverse communities, weaving learning conversations with an ever-expanding array of neurological, linguistic, cultural, gendered, social and behaviorally diverse young people. 

At risk of violence

At worst teachers and school leaders appear to be more at risk of becoming victims of – or intimidated by –  violence. A newly published report into the state of public education in WA by the SSTUWA, WA’s teacher union, reveals that in 2022, school based violent events are occurring once every forty-five minutes, or 11 times per day. These highly stressful events can involve assaults with weapons, and many require medical assistance or the police. These issues are exacerbated in schools that are socially and economically disadvantaged or in regional and remote locations. 

No wonder so many teachers describe their work as emotionally ‘fatiguing’, ‘draining’ or ‘exhausting’ and walk away from the profession. In Western Australia, the SSTUWA reports that as many as 86% of teachers are seriously considering leaving the profession. Policy makers have been slow to recognize that persistent schooling reforms focused on audit, accountability and data performance regimes have created the conditions for an unprecedent wave of teacher demoralization, burn out, attrition and psychological distress. Teachers feel untrusted by parents, leaders, and policy makers. Teachers’ professional autonomy has been eroded. This is why the “Be That Teacher” campaign has landed with a dull thud amongst some practicing teachers. 

What teachers say

One area of my research is examining the discussions of teachers on Reddit, specifically an online forum where Australian teachers can discuss issues related to their work. On the r/AustralianTeachers forum their comments demonstrate cynicism and derision at the campaign. One teacher comments:

“Oh look, teachers are so special, and they watched Dead Poets Society once, and now come to work everyday for just the love of children, so there’s obviously no need to pay them a decent wage and working conditions”

Another writes:

“Yeah, the whole thing feels like an event in the Martyrdom Olympics. Go for Gold! We don’t need better conditions and less admin, just stories that hit you in the feels”

And a third:

“Pay teachers more. Bring in nationally approved behaviour management systems. Reduce workload. Stick the smoltzy ad campaigns up the govt’s butt”

Fed-up and want reform

These comments show that teachers are clearly fed up and want tangible reforms in their sector. I read these comments as a powerful signal of professionals who are in a state of emotional crisis and we should pause to deeply listen to these people who perform a vital service in our communities. Overall, our public-school teachers are doing an amazing job in very challenging conditions. Despite these issues, they remain committed and caring professionals who desperately want education reform to ensure they can deliver high quality learning experiences to their communities and provide a strong foundation for the future of Australia’s young people.

In order to stem the tide the tide of teacher attrition, policy reforms must focus less on attracting newcomers to the profession and more on retaining those currently teaching. They can do this by radically rethinking teacher workload. As a starting point they must unburden teachers from unnecessary administration.  If we do not address the root causes of why teachers are leaving, even newcomers will not stay long in the job and the funds from these expensive government campaigns will be wasted. 

Dr Saul Karnovsky is a senior teacher educator and course coordinator at Curtin University, Perth which is located on Noongar Country. He is an active researcher in teacher wellbeing, attrition and retention taking an ethical and critical perspective on the profession.

The seven crucial ways university students think about getting a job

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Now more than ever, success in the Australian labour market requires a post-compulsory education – either at university or TAFE – with the National Skills Commission estimating that nine in ten jobs created over the five years to 2026 will require a post-compulsory qualification. Increasingly, this entry level qualification is a bachelor degree, with 50 per cent of women and 39 per cent of men aged 25 to 44 years holding a qualification at this level or above in 2022. 

For this reason, the focus in higher education equity policy has shifted from widening participation, student retention and academic success, and towards student employability and eventual employment outcomes. However, while Australia collects official data on learning and student progress via the Student Experience Survey (SES) and employment outcomes via the Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), very little data is collected on “employability thinking” among students, that amalgam of aspiration and expectation that shapes university student perceptions and decision-making in relation to their studies and thinking about future employment. 

Getting inside the black box of student employability thinking is important, both in addressing issues across the general student population and in specific discipline and vocational areas, but also in identifying differences between students in similar learning contexts and specifically in relation to equity status and academic background. 

What this study did   

Our study examined data on employability thinking among first-year domestic students at an Australian university. It used data collected using the online employ-ability measure (Bennett and Ananthram, 2022), a self-assessment tool grounded in social cognitive careers theory with which students self-assess their career- and study- confidence. Seven employability dimensions were analysed:

  • Self-awareness and programme awareness: Self-awareness is a metacognitive aspect of employability and impacts the extent to which students understand the relationship between their studies and their future careers. 
  • Career identity and commitment: Career identity and commitment in the pre-professional context relates to students’ identification with their discipline relative to career. 
  • Reconsideration with commitment: Reconsideration of commitment in the preprofessional context relates to the extent to which students would change their study choices if they could do so.
  • Self-esteem: Self-esteem is an inner-value capital and reflects a ratio of realisations to expectations. A realistic assessment of self-esteem is known to influence perseverance and resilience.
  • Academic self-efficacy: Academic self-efficacy refers to students’ perception of how well they expect to perform academic tasks and understand their subjects and whether they expect to succeed in their studies. 
  • Career exploration: Career exploration relates to decisional self-efficacy and encapsulates exploration and awareness of career. 
  • Occupational mobility: In the pre-professional context, occupational mobility relates to students’ ability to manage disappointment and generate alternative career pathways.     

These dimensions are measured using a Likert scale (1 to 5 or 1 to 7), with higher rankings associated with more positive outcomes in relation to employability. 

In addition to the collection of student responses on the employability dimensions, the study also linked student response sets to individual university records, including information on gender, age, field of study, mode of study (on-campus or online), enrolment (full- or part-time) and weighted average marks. Official measures of equity status were included, including low socioeconomic status (low SES), regional or remote location, disability status, and non-English speaking background (NESB) status. The study also used an identifier for first-in-family (to attend university) students. Although data for Indigenous status were available, the relatively small group of Indigenous students precluded an analysis of Indigeneity.    

A sample of 5,909 first-year students at a single Australian university was obtained and separated into sub-samples for school leavers (n=4,465) and non-school leavers (n=1,444). Data were largely collected in the years immediately leading up to the COVID pandemic year of 2020. The analysis used these three samples to explain student responses in relation to the seven employability dimensions, with a specific focus on the influence of equity group status

How did equity status affect employability thinking?

The broad findings of the study indicated quite consistent age and gender effects, with more confident responses across the employability dimensions seen among older respondents, with female respondents also tending to be more confident except in relation to Self-esteem and Occupational mobility, where negative effects were observed. Positive effects associated with better academic outcomes, as measured by weighted average marks, were observed, but these tended to be of lower magnitude and were overshadowed by specific effects associated with field of study. Other effects were intuitively explainable. For instance, part-time status was associated with strong negative effects on Programme awareness and Reconsideration of commitment, reflecting the impact of study and life responsibilities on part-time students’ immediate connectedness to study. 

In relation to equity group effects, the most striking finding of the study was the lack of any distinctive influence – positive or negative – of low SES or regional and remote status on responses across all employability dimensions. In contrast, disability status was associated with a statistically significant negative influence in relation to four dimensions – Self-awareness, Self-esteem, Academic self-efficacy and Occupational mobility (with disability affecting the last in the most pronounced way anywhere in the study). NESB status was associated with negative effects across six dimensions – Self-awareness, Identification with commitment, Reconsideration of commitment, Self-esteem, Academic self-efficacy, and Career exploration. In addition, first-in-family status was associated with negative effects across Self-esteem, Academic self-efficacy and Occupational mobility. 

The sub-sample analysis demonstrated that the NESB and first-in-family effects were largely confined to the school leaver sub-sample, while the effects associated with disability status were strongest in the non-school leaver sub-sample.  

What issues does this work raise?

The use of the employ-ability instrument enables academic teachers, administrators and researchers to gauge student thinking across important employability dimensions and key predictors of post-study success, but also provide measures for assessing the extent to which educational disadvantage impacts on study and eventual employment performance. 

Although this study was confined to one Australian institution, it has findings that are broadly applicable to the entire Australian higher education sector and which accord with other study findings. It confirms that support for students with disability is critical in ensuring they are able to study in a supportive and responsive environment. It also provides further evidence on the reduced post-study outcomes for students with disability and NESB students, and that these in part need to be addressed by specific interventions for these groups. 

Finally, the study points to the potential benefits of a nationwide use of the employ-ability measure and associated resources to generate more evidence on the role of disadvantage in relation to employability thinking, the link between employability thinking and graduate outcomes, the identification of field of study and institution effects, and the impact of initiatives to ameliorate disadvantage.  

Dawn Bennett is a professor and assistant provost with Bond University and is an expert on developing graduate employability. Paul Koshy is a research fellow at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE), based at Curtin University. Ian Li is a professor and director of research at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, Curtin University. Lizzie Knight is honorary senior research fellow at the Mitchell Institute, Victoria University.