Transcript MUDS / TFA

Education Debates
Jen Ames
TFA Alumna (2011-2012),
Former MUDSian (2006-2010)
Today’s Class:
 Who am I?
 Unions – a quick recap
 School Autonom
 School Competition
 PPPP
 Shameless Plug
Who am I?
• I applied to TFA in September 2010 and was accepted into the program for 2011 as
part of Cohort 2.
• I was offered a place at Glenroy College, a public school in the northern suburbs
(next to Broadmeadows).
• I have taught Year 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 English, and Year 8 and 9 Humanities (SOSE),
have been debating coordinator since 2011 and am currently Year 9 Coordinator. I
am also running a pilot Literacy Intervention Program designed to improve the
reading skills of our lowest performing Year 7 and 8 students.
• For the first 6 months of 2013 I taught Year
7/8 English, SOSE and Maths in a remote
indigenous town: Halls Creek District High
School in northern WA.
Teachers’ Unions
Why I joined the AEU:
• Improved pay over decades of hard negotiations across the
globe (esp. since 1970s)
• Reduced face-to-face hours and limited after-school
meetings/extra-curricular involvement allows teachers to be
better prepared for classes and more involved in the school
community
• Protection against litigious parents and children in a potentially
dangerous workplace
• All of these combine to make teaching a more attractive
profession, which in turn makes it more likely that talented
individuals will consider becoming teachers
• In addition, the Australian Education Union (and its respective
state branches) campaign to make the public aware of
educational issues they may not know about, e.g. inequitable
school funding models and the terrible pay/conditions for
Education Support staff
Teachers’ Unions
Why I’m thinking about quitting the union:
- Generally opposed to new ideas/reforms (e.g. Teach
for Australia, performance pay)
- Their strongest weapons (strikes and bans) hurt
innocent students and turn public support away
from teachers
- The union wants the best for its members, which is
not always in the interests of students:
- Stopping principals from firing teachers (even if deserved)
- Pushing for all teachers to move up the pay scale (despite
poor performance by some)
- Fighting against 1-year contracts, which means schools
become stuck with poor teachers because you can’t “try
before you buy”
Autonomy: the “next big thing”
• FEDERAL: 2012 Labor introduced the Empowering Local Schools Initiative – use
financial incentives to encourage greater autonomy in three key areas: governance
arrangements, funding and infrastructure, and workforce
• FEDERAL: 2014 Pyne launched the $70 million Independent Public Schools Initiative
to turn at least 1500 more public schools into independent public schools by 2017
• VIC: 1993 (!) Kennett’s Schools of the Future policy devolved control of 93% of the
state’s education budget to individual schools
• WA: 2010 began implementing its own Independent Public Schools Initiative – 264
schools so far. They have ‘more freedom and flexibility to make decisions about…
the curriculum, student support, staff recruitment, financial management,
governance and accountability’
• SA: 2010 proposed legislation reform to ‘devolve relevant employment
responsibilities to principals, directors and other education leaders’
• ACT: 2011 framework for improving secondary schooling – key direction 11 is to
‘enhance local decision-making through increased school and school board
autonomy,’ particularly for ‘staffing and the allocation of school resources’
• NSW: 2012 introduced the Local Schools, Local Decisions reform – a pilot group of
229 schools have been granted ‘greater flexibility to make decisions about the best
mix of staff’. By 2016 the Department aims to have all NSW public schools
managing ‘more than 70% of the state public education budget’ – up from 10% in
2012
Autonomy: The Theory
• Increased autonomy allows schools to reform and
innovate according to their needs and the needs of
their students. SOME research has shown that
increased autonomy is connected with improved
school/students outcomes (e.g. Caldwell and Spinks
1992; 1998; 2008; Hargeaves 2010; 2012)
• In the US they have a growing Charter School
movement: autonomous, independently run but
publicly funded schools that are supposed to have
better student outcomes than traditional public
schools
Autonomy: The Reality
• Victoria is of the world’s most autonomous school systems.
NSW is Australia’s most centralised school system. If autonomy
is the key driver for school improvement, Victoria should
significantly outperform NSW on national and international
tests (e.g. NAPLAN, PISA, TIMMS). BUT – they don’t.
• Hong Kong (a high performer internationally) has a high level of
school autonomy, yet Finland and Korea do better and have less
autonomy.
• In the US some Charter Schools do wonderfully (e.g. KIPP),
many do no better or worse than traditional public schools, and
some perform much worse. (see: CREDO National Charter
School Study 2013)
SCHOOL COMPETITON – the theory
READ: ‘The Myth of Markets in School Education’ by Ben
Jensen (The Grattan Institute)
• Allowing schools to adapt, reform and innovate will
give them an edge over other schools, and thereby
increase competition.
• Increased competition should lead to better schools, as
schools will have to compete for students (and
therefore funding) by improving their results.
• The My School website allows parents to compare
nearby schools to choose the highest performing
school.
• SOME research has shown small positive effects from
school competition (e.g. Belfield and Levin 2002;
Forster 2011)
SCHOOL COMPETITON – the reality
• New Zealand’s attempts to increase competition actually
had a negative impact on many schools, especially those in
low SES areas
• Not everyone has choice when it comes to schools – some
issues include distance, cost (e.g. private/Catholic fees and
paying for new uniforms and books etc), capacity of
schools, concern about falling behind in new curriculum
• Despite My School there is little evidence of enrolment shift
based on school performance data – many poorly
performing schools have doubled, while some high
performers have reduced enrolments
• If we don’t shut down poorly performing schools (and we
don’t – TAS government recently floated the idea and it was
then immediately shelved due to backlash from all corners)
then competition doesn’t actually improve them, it just
labels them as “bad” and makes the community feel even
more negative about their educational prospects
Performance, Pay
and Performance Pay
What happens currently?
- 99.8% of teachers progress up the pay scale each year
- In the public sector it’s around 80%
- A 1st year graduate teacher salary is now $59,000
- Once you reach the top of the pay scale (around $80,000) you
can’t earn any more money without taking on less teaching and
more administrative roles
- We don’t currently have any form of bonus/incentive scheme
- 49 schools have been part of a trial of performance pay in
Victoria over the past 4 years, with most finding it a “significant
challenge” to implement the new schemes. There was
remarkably little interest from staff or schools to join the trials.
Performance, Pay
and Performance Pay
Why do people oppose performance pay?
• It’s hard to do fairly: who decides which teachers are
“good”? Which measures are used? What if my
principal hates me? What if I teach in a really tough
school? How do you measure progress in Art or PE?
• It might reduce collegiality and incentivise teacher
competition
• It might deter new teachers from joining the
profession, and push out those who may have
become great teachers in time
Performance, Pay
and Performance Pay
What can we do?
• We could allocate bonuses to teaching teams, thus increasing collegiality
• We can encourage teachers to seek out mentors and examples of best
practice in order to improve and thereby be rewarded
• We can use this model to attract hardworking new teachers, who will feel
rewarded
• Everyone in the school knows which teachers work hard and which ones are
genuinely “good teachers”
• The Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project (The Gates Foundation)
say that it is possible to identify great teaching by combining three types of
measures: classroom observations, student surveys, and student
achievement gains. BUT these measures take time to perform, require
trained/reliable observers, and don’t always predict test performance.
Shameless Plug
• In the UK Teach First has been shown to boost
GCSE results
• 100% of principals in the program say they would
take on more TFA Associates
• 71% of alumni teach beyond their 2 year
commitment
Applications for this round close on 13th April (this
Sunday!)
Visit http://www.teachforaustralia.org/