Changing role of senior school

Senior school, years 10,11,12 have traditionally been the home of the most experienced teachers. These teachers generally have a vast amount of experience that is tapped from time to time by other teachers when need arises, either in behaviour management, content knowledge and generally are aware of how things work, what has been tried before and how to get things done. They have the experience to guide our students through to TEE, university entry or into VET pathways where necessary.

Now I say this as an observer (as I am neither experienced, nor the most capable in senior school). I have no ambitions for a HoD role and actively promote the idea that the HoD should teach the most capable class and other senior school teachers should do an apprenticeship of sorts with mid range classes to hone technique and pedagogy first. ... and I enjoy classroom teaching too much to get involved with the admin required to do the job properly.

Somewhere along the line I think we have lost track of what senior school teachers bring to the school. We have lost our heads of department in Mathematics/English/SoSE/Science to other areas such as literacy experts and careers guidance, L3 adminstrative roles. Responsibility now for the performance of learning areas has fallen to those incapable of measuring success or failure as they may not have ever taught the subject.

An issue that is currently rising is the lack of time to complete yr 12 COS in time for the TEE exams. With 1 term lost to the exam process, it leaves only 16 weeks per semester to complete the course. A possible way to increase the amount of teaching time for COS is to use term 4 year 10 to start the COS process and to start the year 12 course a term early.

Staffing of this is a real issue because if a unit starts in term four, few teachers are willing to take on an overloaded teaching schedule to make this happen. At this time of year the temptation arises to utilise senior school staff to fulfil this role as in many cases they will be teaching these students in the following years anyway.

I think we need to resist this happening especially for our HoD's. If our best and most capable are not given unallocated time to identify and remedy issues within learning areas it is only likely that over time things will get worse. The time that they put into improving staff ability and student output is clearly underestimated and is not being adequately nurtured. It would be good to see the complete opposite occur and HoD's given the time, recognition, responsibility and pay to make things happen.

Class size & the concept of 'Intervention Time'

I have heard many times that reduced class size is not a factor in learning or that it has minimal effect. Reduced class sizes is not the panacea to improved student learning but it is a handy tool when used correctly. To have an early intervention strategy there must be adequate class time for intervention.

If you have a high performing class of motivated students (with 3 levels between the top and bottom performing students), class sizes of around thirty in year ten can be managed. You would need to use a fair amount of skill to keep them motivated as after instruction and settling time (say 30 mins per class, two blocks of instruction, h/w and pack up) it would be hard to get to every student every class to identify issues, correct them (say 1 minute of intervention time per student per class) and maintain their learning inertia. You would more reliant on picking up issues during the homework, quiz, revision, assessment and corrections teaching cycle and complete more marking out of class.

In a mid performing class (with four levels between the top and bottom performing students) with around 20 students and 20 minutes of instruction and settling time you could get to each student twice (eg. average of 2 mins of intervention time per lesson). This seems feasible.

If you have a low performing student group in mathematics (with five levels between the top and bottom performing students), I would say that a class of 30 is lunacy (there are usually valid and disparate reasons why students are this far behind) and would send the best teachers barmy. Under normal circumstances in these types of classes there are not enough corners in the room to separate disruptive students. Each student in a class of that type requires constant attention to fully enjoy and appreciate mathematics. For example in my class, one student required behavioural attention once every 3 minutes (I timed him), each time requiring further attention to settle him. In a class of thirty that would make teaching nigh near impossible. For a class of this type it is preferable to have intervention time around 3-4 minutes per student, limiting class sizes to 13-16 students. This size of class would also promote more collaborative work, especially if other teachers are willing to assist during their DOTT or if a T/A is available.

In practice each student does not need (or get) an individual minute of your time and is normally able to do their work without individual intervention through the teacher identifying classwide issues and modifying instructional techniques (eg. more modelling), by using peer assistance, having effective instructional notes, by increasing participation in after class discussion or by bringing groups of students back to the board. What the intervention time model does is provide a benchmark of performance and can help identify structural issues vs teaching issues with classes that are clearly not working.

Using a model of this nature we could measure the learning capacity of student groups (by creating class sizes and monitoring teaching/intervention/disruption time) and the approximate class sizes required to teach them optimally. This has the potential to greatly assist in designing and justifying appropriate class sizes for our students.

Measuring Teacher Performance

I stumbled upon this article from 1999 stating clearly issues raised by teachers regarding student performance in primary and secondary schools. It is just as relevant today as it was then. This shows a number of areas of difficulty measuring teacher performance. I have highlighted some of the areas of student performance impacted by teachers. Many carry through to high school from primary.

I grouped the results into behavioural (primarily learned behaviours brought to the classroom), genetics, environmental (factors with limited control by the teacher), structural (constraints imposed on a classroom) and societal factors to isolate factors solely controlled by teachers within the classroom. Pedagogy(teaching methods), content knowledge are the two major factors teachers contributing to teaching students.

Primary

• students who are not doing well tend to give up, refuse to try, and this makes the problem worse - this behaviour gets worse as they get older and they start to compare their work with those of other students (behavioural)
• high achieving students can taunt low achievers and this makes the problems worse
  students with psychological problems (eg, trauma experienced in the home) have trouble learning (behavioural)
• sometimes teachers can’t work out why students can’t learn - it can be the problem of the teacher who hasn’t worked out how to engage students (getting inside the walnut) (pedagogy)
• parents refuse to have their children placed in classes for students who have intellectual disabilities (structural)
• students lack academic ability (genetics/environmental)
• teachers don’t explain concepts clearly (pedagogy/content knowledge)
• parents indulge their children so they won’t pay attention in class (societal)
• parents don’t take an interest in children’s school work (societal)
• students are transient and so miss a lot of school (societal)
• it’s more difficult these days to get students placed in classes for students with intellectual disabilities there are children with attention deficit disorder who have difficulty concentrating in class (structural)

Secondary

• students haven’t been well taught in earlier years at school (historical)
• students don’t value school work (behavioural/societal)
• parents don’t value their children’s school work (societal)
• students lack ability (genetics/environmental)
• the system allows students to progress through grades without passing subjects (structural)
• maturational level - students mature at different rates - they may not be able to grasp concepts now but they could in a couple of years’ time (genetic/environmental)
• poor teaching (pedagogy/content knowledge)
• teachers blame the students for poor performance when it’s the teachers’ fault (pedagogy)
• students have psychological problems because of unhappy home lives (environmental)
• teachers don’t have a good mathematics background (pedagogy/content knowledge/structural)
• students’ poor behaviour in class means they don’t pay attention to the work - discipline problems in schools are on the rise - it’s part of wider societal problems (behavioural/structural/societal)
• students lack self discipline - they’re not prepared to work (behavioural)

It is clear to see that student performance is a poor measure of teaching ability as many other factors exist to influence this criteria. To blame teachers for poor performance of students based purely on teacher pedagogy (teaching methods) or lack of knowledge of content ignores a host of other possible reasons.

Creating an 'unAustralian' education system

An article in the Australian discusses the challenge of improving schooling in Australia. Another article with opinion and without supporting facts to back them up. What has happened to our media? Why can they not develop a position and then report with supporting or refuting evidence!

The main points were:

1. Development of a national curriculum (supported).
2. Minimising or even abandoning plans for national testing programs (supported).
3. Funding private and public schools on the same basis (?).
4. Auditing the intellectual capital -- that is, teacher quality -- in all schools (?).
5. Greater autonomy for schools and principals (?).
6. Creating a federation of schools, in line with the British model (?).
7. Refurbishing or replacing most school buildings constructed in the 20th century (supported).
8. Increasing the business sector's involvement in education, including private funding of schools through foundations and trusts (supported with reservations).

Part three: By doing this we are accepting that we will have a two+ tier society. Those that can afford private schooling and those that can't. Public schools cannot compete with schools that have equal funding with private schools and are supplemented through school fees. Those students that cannot pay fees in private schools will be disadvantaged (students in private schools schools already have the advantage of rapid exit of undesirable students, this is their USP). Public schooling should be given more of the public purse than private schools. Our disadvantaged kids need our support. How is further disadvantaging them going to prepare them to compete equally in the workforce - it just creates an underclass. The funding ethos put forward is grossly capitalist and American. It is decidedly unAustralian.

Part four: Sure, let's audit teachers, how and who shall do it? What makes a good teacher? What happens if a teacher fails the audit? How do we re-educate them? Who plans and pays for the implementation? Who is to blame for poorly performing students - the teacher, past teachers? It's nonsense.

Part five: Where is the research that greater autonomy for schools leads to better student outcomes? The idea is counter intuitive. Surely re-inventing administration currently centralised cannot be cheaper, as flexible to change or as easily monitored than decentralised at a school level. All decentralisation does is decentralise blame for a system that isn't working very efficiently. Today is a time of centralisation as information technology closes the efficiency gains once found through decentralisation. Analysis and change coordinated at one location is far more efficient than directing responsibility to islands of learning.

Part six: I have no idea yet what this idea is of federated schools in the UK but I haven't heard the UK system as a model system for eons. I must investigate this further.