Outside looking in: IES, A research perspective - New Zealand Principal Magazine

IES, a research perspective Dr Patty Towl PhD

I was relieved to hear the concern raised by the primary its home environment. Finally there is no obvious, rigorous school sector about the proposed Investing in Education Success research evidence that IES actually raises student achievement; Initiative. I am a retired high school principal and special not even in Singapore or Hong Kong. Essentially, therefore, education needs coordinator. I have recently completed a PhD what is the actual evidence and what still needs to be done to on school exclusion and, currently, work as an independent ensure that IES is likely to result in continuous improvement researcher and writer. My position, therefore, is as an outsider in student achievement especially for priority students? If the looking in. From this perspective IES looks like a student’s draft Minister’s mind is dead set on IES, I would like to see a delay assignment; something that needs a lot more work before you until the beginning of 2016. This delay could assure teachers can give it a mark. Yet here it is; coming ready or not. From and families that the strategy is ready, a quality management the start of 2015, IES will begin to unpick the self-managing system in place and any obvious problems have been worked schools model we have worked with for the last 25 years. The through and resolved. sudden appearance of IES on the education scene, however, presents a more important dilemma than whether we are Improving achievement for priority children Recently there has been a decline in ready to move from competition to New Zealand’s educational outcomes in collaboration. IES raises a question From the start of 2015, international comparisons like PISA. While of process. Should the Minister of our high achieving students continue do Education cherry pick strategies from IES will begin to as well as children anywhere else in the overseas or should robust research unpick the selfworld Māori, Pasifika, low income and method and best practice construct special education needs students continue New Zealand solutions to the problems managing schools to fare poorly. The IES initiative appears that hobble quality service delivery. An to be targeted specifically to improve the informed and planned answer to this model we have worked education outcomes for these priority groups dilemma is never more important than with for the last 25 of students. The problem of embedded when we are seeking solutions for our bias against these priority learners is also most vulnerable children. years. as evident in school exclusion statistics Late in 2013 Minister Parata sent eight representatives from the education sector to Singapore (MOE, 2013) as it is for other measures of poor outcomes for and Hong Kong to; “to investigate the characteristics of these young people in education. These uncomfortable statistics are top performing systems, and report on what can be learned common to other education systems with similar diverse social [ . . . ] in anticipation of hosting the 4th International Summit on and cultural mixes. We need to address this disparity and this the Teaching Profession in 2014” (Parata, 2013). The outcome allocated funding provides an opportunity. How do we know, of this visit was the IES initiative. It has a generous price tag though, that removing ‘high performing’ teachers from the of $359 million and claims to be a strategy that will raise classroom to work with ‘other’ teachers will be an effective use achievement for priority children in Aotearoa. To achieve this of this money? New Zealand based research evidence, even that supported our ‘best’ teachers and principals will leave their classrooms and offices two days a week to lead collaborative professional by the Ministry of Education, suggests improving outcomes development in clusters of schools. I can see a number of for children comes through enhancing the most basic teaching problems inherent to the plan even if the initiative is ready in unit: the child and the teacher in the classroom with the time. One is the existing research evidence that priority learners support of the family (Bull, Brooking & Campbell, 2008). The may be disadvantaged by the strategy. Another problem is that, Tomorrow’s Schools model is predicated on this philosophy while there are difficulties in extracting any strategy from one of partnership yet where are the family and the student in the place and expecting it to work elsewhere, in funding IES, the IES initiative? Children at risk of poor education outcomes and government has ignored two factors critical to its success in early exit benefit from stable, warm, productive teacher-student

relationships (Towl, 2012). At points of crisis, like stand-down, the deciding factor in an enduring return to school is not the demographic but the robustness of the working relationship between home and school (Towl, 2012). Children who begin their progression towards exclusion and early exit at primary are those most at risk (Towl, 2012) and, therefore, most in need of teachers having time to build and sustain these warm relationships. The IES initiative takes identified highly competent teachers out of the classroom for two days a week. While this may not be such a problem in high school, at primary school these priority students may have to cope with two teachers and, at crisis points, two principals as well. I believe this could seriously disadvantage our most at risk children. What is the whole picture of all existing roles tasked with improving student achievement as they interact, intersect and overlap with IES? Over the past three years there have been a number of initiatives which have a specific focus in raising achievement for priority students. There are the SAF practitioners, for example, and a number of new positions at the Ministry of Education which also have a specific emphasis in this area. From outside it is hard both to evaluate the effectiveness of these appointments and to understand how they either overlap with or complement the IES initiative. Is there a plan? Is it rooted in robust research method and evidence of best practice from New Zealand and overseas? How are these positions/ initiatives evaluated and how do their outcomes contribute to our knowledge of what actually works to improve the lives of children? How do already existing roles like SCT and RTLB complement IES? The SCT role appears similar to that of the

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lead teacher and RTLB have a valuable and established role and reputation for improving learning outcomes for priority students. I believe there are still too many unanswered questions about the role of IES in raising achievement in New Zealand to make it a valid starter for the beginning of 2015. IES and teacher workload One of the factors critical to the success of the strategy in Singapore is the generous provision of non-contact time for teachers. In Singapore basic scale teachers have 14 hours a week class contact with the balance as professional learning time (MOE, 2013a). Teachers, therefore, would not have to leave their classes for professional development. In New Zealand basic scale teachers have on average around 20 hours a week class contact and IES specifically states that teachers will be taken out of their classes for IES. From the outside it appears unfair that our teachers will be expected to perform well without a reasonable allocation of non-contact time. Hattie’s (1999) report on quality outcomes for NZ children in education emphasises the importance of quality classroom time as one of the key determinants of student achievement. Evidence based research identifies an intricate relationship between teacher work load and teacher performance (Jepson & Forrest, 2006). The last few years have seen a number of initiatives from the Ministry of Education without a commensurate allocation of time to compensate teachers’ workload. National standards and PB4L, for example, require extra administration and meeting time. The casualty of this is preparation time and teachers say that this has an impact on the quality of their classroom delivery (Towl, 2012). Principals, for obvious reasons, tend to place their most vulnerable students with their most competent teachers. These teachers, especially in primary schools, report being overstretched and under resourced already (Towl, 2012). Despite the compensation of ‘inquiry time’ there are only a set number of hours in a day and inevitably the time teachers have available to do their core business may be affected by the imposition of yet another Ministry initiative. I would like to see a workload impact report that assesses teacher workload currently and extrapolates the potential impact on teacher preparation and classroom time of the IES initiative. Collaboration? Coming ready or not. The second factor critical to the success of IES overseas is the centralised nature of service delivery in Singapore and Hong Kong. In New Zealand our self-managing schools are competitive and our service delivery decentralised. The management structures and philosophies of competition and collaboration are significantly different yet the stated purpose of the IES initiative is to introduce a collaborative model into what has been a competitive model for 25 years. From the outside there doesn’t appear to have been any consideration either of the use of change models or that the personnel selected to work with communities of schools will be experienced and supported in facilitating and managing very complex and difficult change. According to the Minister (Parata, 2014) many schools already team teach and many schools are already working collaboratively. These assertions also prompt questions. Where is the research evidence of team teaching and collaboration in New Zealand schools? What change modelling did these schools use and can this help other communities of schools to move towards what has so suddenly

become a desirable model? Research that addresses these two questions could assist people skilled in change modelling and quality management systems (QMS) construct and trial models that have a greater likelihood both of success and of evaluating and understanding any evidence of failure. Finally, if so many schools have already moved towards a collaborative model why do we need IES anyway? Why does the Minister need to throw money away on getting schools to talk to each other and work together if this is already happening? Final words The elephant in the room of course is performance pay; a philosophy we have struggled against since it was first mooted in the 1990s. While the catch cry is raising student achievement the subtext is about establishing a competitive career structure for the teaching profession. I am uneasy that the stated outcome of this highly competitive process is collaborative schools. This appears to be not only a philosophical but also a practical anomaly. If the Minister is set on IES let us continue to push for a delay. An extra year would enable more work on lining up the research evidence and, perhaps, widening the field to include investigations of successful education change – including school management philosophy and structure change – in countries where there are similar institutional, social and cultural mixes to our own. We could identify and address the potential work load issues and run pilot studies in sentinel areas e.g. low income, high Māori and Pasifika, rural and remote communities. In these pilot studies the QMS requirements of clear starting points, strategies

and evaluation for continuous improvement could be identified, trialled and evaluated. References Bull, A., Brooking, K. & Campbell, R. (2008). Successful Home-school Partnerships: a Report to the Ministry of Education. Wellington. Hattie, J. (1999). Influences on Student Learning. Inaugural Professorial Lecture. University of Auckland. Jepson, E & Forrest, S. (2006). Individual contributory factors in teacher stress: the role of achievement striving and occupational commitment. British Journal of Educational Psychology. 76, 1. 183–197. MOE (2013). Stand-downs, Suspensions and Exclusions from school. Retrieved at http://educationcounts.govt.nz/indicators/student MOE. (2013a). Ministry Cross-sector Forum on Raising Achievement: Summary Record Friday 1 November 2013. Retrieved at http://minedu. govt.nz Parata, H. (2013). Education Delegation to Travel to Asia. Retrieved at: https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/ detail/2013/09/27/education-delegation-to-travel-to-asia Parata, H, (2014) Morning report: National radio. Radio New Zealand. 7 July, 2014. Towl, P. (2012). I Am Bad Apparently: the Role of Stand-down to Manage Behaviour in Communities of Practice. Unpublished doctoral thesis. The University of Otago.

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