STATE OF THE NATIONS REPORTS APPA AND NZPF PRESIDENTS PRESENT . . .
In keeping with tradition, both the Australian Primary Principals’ Association (APPA) and New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF) presidents addressed the 2012 conference in Melbourne with their ‘state of the nation reports’. As we would expect when Australians and Kiwis get together, speeches opened with some good natured banter. NZPF president Paul Drummond said he would not be competitive in the company of his Australian colleagues and pledged not to mention any of the string of sporting events in which New Zealand had whipped their Australian rivals. In turn Norm Hart of APPA pledged not to mention all the other sporting events in which Australia had comprehensively thrashed New Zealand. But what the packed audience had come to hear was a summary of just where each country stood in respect of their countries’ education policies and how they could learn from each other’s experiences. Paul Drummond began with the overarching statement that in New Zealand the dominant Government agenda is economic and education policies are moving away from delivering quality public education to privatising it. He said whilst it is acknowledged that for the majority the current system works well, the Government’s stated intention for reform is to lift the achievement of those not currently succeeding. The policies include moving from a high trust model to a low trust high accountability model, introducing a standardised measure of achievement (national standards in literacy and numeracy), making school assessment data public, introducing league tables, using national standards data for performance pay, introducing Charter schools and increasing public funding to private schools. He then took his audience on an historic journey entitled ‘Back to the Future’. In a series of slides he demonstrated that ‘standards’ had first been introduced in NZ in 1878 but had failed to achieve any educational advantages. Rather they had resulted in mechanical learning, a narrowing of curriculum, marginalising of children who could not perform at the level of their peers, competition between schools and teachers and in at least one province, performance pay was introduced. It was staggering how the system of 140 years ago, which had long been rejected for its shortcomings mirrored the policies of today. Clearly, he said, this is a backward step and not the right direction for enhancing children’s learning in the twenty-first century, where confidence, entrepreneurship, creativity, problem solving and critical thinking were the most important skills for success in life. What was needed he said was autonomy for schools to work with their communities to develop shared values and a curriculum that was broad and inclusive. Rather than standardisation, celebrating diversity was the key to success and
teachers needed to have the freedom to respond to individual needs rather than be driven by arbitrary targets set outside of the school. He noted that the New Zealand system with its self-managed schools governed by local boards of trustees, close relationships with the community, rich curriculum and strong collaborative culture allowed the profession to respond quickly and this served the vast majority of Kiwi kids well. He acknowledged the unacceptable disparities in NZ society, including the very large gaps between those who achieve well educationally and those who achieve poorly. Those disparities most certainly need addressing, he told his audience, but dismantling a world class system and replacing it with a nineteenth century failed system was not the answer. He told his audience that principals had an ethical and professional obligation to advocate for what is right for kids and it was time to collectively stand up and speak up. Norm Hart opened his address with an upbeat statement telling his audience that in Australia things were not as bad as the media and politicians portrayed. He reminded the gathering that three million Australian kids went to school every day and the overwhelming majority of them found something about school they liked every day. He suggested that none of them wasted a second worrying about how their literacy or numeracy achievements compared with children in Singapore, Finland or New Zealand.
Paul Drummond, NZPF President delivers his state of the nation address to the conference
Norm Hart, APPA President addresses the delegates at the opening ceremony
He rejected his own Prime Minister’s goal for Australia to be ranked in the top five countries of the OECD in literacy, numeracy and science by 2025 because such a narrow focus, he said, would limit learning opportunities in other important areas. He did however agree with the goal to ‘provide children with a high quality and high equity education system, to put children at the centre of the funding system and apply principles of equity to funding allocations.’ He noted that APPA had published a model for primary education provision which would ensure appropriate levels of curriculum and pedagogical leadership in every school, early and sustained intervention programmes for learning and wellbeing, professional development for every educator and a twenty-first learning environment for every student. This model he said would require additional funding but had the potential to reduce later gaps in performance. Norm then proceeded to report new Government requirements including lifting teacher quality through more classroom experience before graduation and higher entry levels; more power for principals over budget and staff selection and more information for parents through MySchool website. He noted too that a performance pay scheme which had been floated by Government had been rejected by APPA and was subsequently scrapped. What he did support however was paying teachers more, particularly if higher entry requirements were enacted. Whilst supporting greater autonomy for schools he punctuated his enthusiasm with a word of caution saying that he would prefer it was optional so that those schools in challenging areas could continue to access support from central systems. His major criticisms he saved for MySchool and its inability to provide transparency. Making school comparisons on NAPLAN data is limited to making superficial statistical comparisons, he said and he rejected the high stakes environment that publication of the data created, making it easy for the media to construct league tables. He also reported on a variety of research studies that showed NAPLAN testing had negative impacts on student wellbeing because it was such high stakes. The plan to administer NAPLAN tests on-line has been met with greater acceptance by APPA since the test taking would not be confined to a particular week and this would lower the media interest. Using aggregated data from NAPLAN to measure the effectiveness of Australian schools has never been supported by APPA, Norm told us. In his view only samples should ever be used.
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In conclusion he endorsed his New Zealand counterpart’s plea ‘to pull together and do what we know is right.’ He then called on the entire audience to raise their hand to vote for a resolution which read: ‘The 1460 delegates at the APPA NZPF Trans-Tasman Conference in Melbourne today call upon Governments, School Systems and Funding Authorities involved in Education Reforms in Australia and New Zealand to ensure all of their decisions are in the best interests of schools and students, to ensure the very best educational outcomes for students and made in full consultation with the profession,’ There was not a single dissenter in the audience and the resolution passed unanimously.