Method can beat disadvantage

After years of inquiries by governments and academic experts into Australia’s struggling education system, one of the most telling studies was published this week. The Centre for Independent Studies examined 18 disadvantaged but high-performing primary schools, identifying six common policies and practices that have fostered their good results.

Funding matters. But additional money on top of the billions of dollars already provided by taxpayers — the sector’s preferred panacea for underperformance — was not one of the solutions identified. These were: stable, long-term leadership by principals; a disciplined culture of high expectations; direct and explicit teaching; comprehensive early reading instruction; the effective use of student data; and teachers’ professional development. The study was especially significant because in focusing on schools in the lowest quartile of disadvantage, the students’ success in NAPLAN cannot be attributed to privileged socio-economic status.

During the past 12 years, tens of billions of extra dollars in recurrent and capital spending by the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull governments, as well as by states and territories, have failed to reverse educational decline. Overall, student results have flatlined or, on some measures, declined. In the interests of students, their families, employers and taxpayers, school authorities have good reason to switch their focus from seeking more money to concentrating on how resources should be spent and how much autonomy schools should be allowed.

The clear-cut findings of the CIS study, by research fellow Blaise Joseph, confirmed what concerned parents and teachers have realised for years. Readers’ responses to Rebecca Urban’s story on Tuesday summed up their experiences: “These were the key attributes of our successful schooling of the 60s and 70s and before. It’s really not rocket science”; “Oh the joy of discovery of the bleeding obvious”; “Any experienced teacher knows this. If only the teaching courses taught it explicitly and the bureaucrats supported it in practice with competent principals and executive staff.”

The clearest common factor in the schools, Joseph wrote yesterday, was good discipline. As one principal said, “to be able to teach, you need to have an orderly and safe classroom and learning environment”. That confirmed an OECD study of discipline in secondary schools five years ago that found a third of Australian students admitted their classmates often ignored what teachers said, 40 per cent said classrooms were noisy and disorderly, and 20 per cent said conditions were so disruptive they made it difficult to work.

Such conditions would make it difficult to reverse the current decline in secondary students’ study of science and advanced maths. Doing so would require classroom environments geared to concentrated learning as well as a better grounding for students in primary school science and maths.

The CIS report notes the benefits of “direct and explicit” instruction, by which students are taught in “in sequenced and structured lessons”. These involve clear objectives, feedback, reviews of previous lessons, frequent checking of student understanding, demonstration of the knowledge or skill to be learnt, and students practising skills with teacher guidance. In contrast with postmodern inquiry-based learning, which allows students a lot of leeway, direct instruction is geared to providing students with the building blocks they need to tackle a range of subjects.

Despite the insights of this and similar reports, the spendathon continues. In NSW, Labor leader Michael Daley has promised another $2.7 billion to make the state the first to fund public education to “100 per cent of the Gonski standard”. Premier Gladys Berejiklian has promised $2bn to hire another 4600 teachers and $500 million for airconditioning 1000 schools. Funding also will feature in the federal election. The key question, though, is not how much more should be spent but how the vast investment in schools can be better spent.