Vital Connections

NZEI Principals group, Nelson

Cathy Wylie21 November 2013

Genesis of the book• What difference did Tomorrow’s

Schools make? – 24 years long enough to test a new system

• Why hasn’t it led to more progress on the issues it was expected to solve?

• What needs to change if we are to more successfully tackle these issues?

Expectations

• “It will lead to improved learning opportunities for the children of this country. The reformed administration will be sufficiently flexible and responsive to meet the particular needs of Maori education”– David Lange,

• foreword to Tomorrow’s Schools

In 2012

• “This will require lifting achievement across the education system and in particular, addressing system failure of learners who are Māori, Pasifika, have special education needs, and/or are from low socio-economic backgrounds”

• Hon Hekia Parata, Minister of Education

A Cautionary tale

• School self-management began in 1989

• No gains in student performance • No reduction in inequality of

outcomes• Increased competition between

schools • Increased fragmentation

Challenges for today’s schools• Greater than at any time in NZ

education• Expectations of:

– Engagement of all students – Qualification and pathway success for

almost all

• Schools as key to economic & social development

• Schools as separate institutions more open to query

Before 1989• Latitude at the school level • Latitude in the classroom

– Schools often not operating as single system

• Intertwining of support, knowledge circulation & building & ‘bureaucracy’

• Inspectorate as catalyst and connector• ‘Education family’

OECD Examiners’ report 1983- primary

NZ sophisticated approach to learning not matched by – In-service training– Support for teachers to base practice

on evidence (e.g., for Maori students)– Standards for recruitment of primary

teachers– Teacher:student ratio

1983 OECD examiners’ report – secondary

NZ comprehensive school ideal undermined by academic examinations

General acknowledgement of issues caused by examination backwash

No consensus or urgencyFragmentation of examination boards &

syllabus development Insufficient professional development

Changes needed to be at the political level

The issues leading up to Tomorrow’s Schools

• Secondary schooling – qualifications, growing expectations

• Māori underachievement & provision• Relationship of school & ‘community’• Insufficient funding of professional

development • Generic public service & Treasury rules

for approval of everyday school decisions

Tomorrow’s (& Today’s) Schools

• Diagnosed core issue around education as:– Lack of school flexibility & accountability

• Capability waiting to be freed

– Separating policy & operations would ensure schools became properly independent

– Choice would improve accountability • Parental choice of school• School choice of its support

What was lost• Interconnections

– Circulated knowledge & confidence – Built new knowledge & resources– Identified & nurtured talent – Policy informed by operational

understanding• Work on school development • Joined-up work on secondary

qualifications & curriculum • Curriculum review etc

1990s – the lost decade• New framework for school self-management takes

the attention & energy– Sir John Anderson’s advice to government:

• proper resourcing and support for the new curriculum and qualifications framework is more important than the drive for bulk funding – putting all of a school’s staffing & operational funding into one grant

• Capacity for school self-government not universal • New Zealand unique in the OECD countries in having no

intermediary structures between schools and centreIgnored.

• Lack of coherence among government agencies – Lean staffing – Minimal role for regional Ministry offices – Education Review Office focuses on compliance

The 1990s• Schools were on their own• Sense of competition undercut expectations

of clustering or sharing • ERO the watchdog and scold

- ‘accountability’ learnt as compliance • Entrenched the ‘self’ of self-management • Showed powerlessness of policy Ministry in

relation to improving school capability

Steering at a distance – the 2000s

• Welcome – focus on capability development &

joint work– focus on more evidence-based

approaches and inquiry– provision of useful assessments –

including assessment in learning– A more ‘evaluative turn’ – Investigation of ‘personalised’ learning

Also important

• Professional development – national coherence but focused on individual schools & practice

• NZ Curriculum – Manner of its development – Inclusion of pedagogy – Better initial support – Asks schools to work as collective

cultures

More collective cultures

• Use of student ‘data’ as currency of teacher conversations

• Sense of progression across years

But still difficult to:– have time to work productively with colleagues

• Only 57% of primary teachers & 28 % of secondary teachers have sufficient time to work together to plan teaching & discuss student work

– observe colleagues – learn from teachers in other schools

Unevenness in extent to which schools are learning cultures

Riding the challenges

• Far better base for teaching & learning development than had 25 years ago

• Most of this has come from joint work– NZ Curriculum, practice+research knowledge &

networks

• It is still unevenly experienced & shared

• Development needs persistence– It needs to be well-founded so that encouraging

results are likely – It needs collective inquiring cultures.

But – no real changes to the ‘building blocks’ of the

system • Sense of competition sharpens • Funding & property remain pre-occupations• Voluntary school clusters are unreliable• Still too easy for schools to deteriorate• Uneven gains – too reliant on individuals &

school situations• Insufficient use of knowledge

– Reinvention of wheels– Limited bridges for operational-policy work

Benchmarking Educational Leadership Practices survey

results

20

Quality of school leadership

• School scores reflect school context –lower where ask is greater

• School scores unrelated to years of principal experience – Essential to have ongoing principal and

school leaders support & development

Fragmentation• Increasingly clear that some issues beyond

ability and authority of individual schools to resolve

• Recent loss of schools-government trust– Danger of return to 1990s defensiveness

• Need collective frameworks and shared responsibility

Self- management = self-handicapping

• Cumulative cost of – stand-alone schools – thinning of schools-government relations– thinning of infrastructure to support

educational & school development

• Increasingly harder to address deep issues & ensure public funding can be well spent

Where to from here?• How do we reconnect schools with the

support and challenge they need to keep developing?

• How do we develop more sharing and

building of knowledge that improves learning?

• How does government work with schools to address the problems schools cannot solve on their own?

Learning from other systems & research on

change• Productive roles of:

– ongoing relationships – formative accountability (based on

sharing of knowledge, focused on inquiry)

– shared responsibilities – joint work – something more than sum of parts

Reframing the system

• Connection rather than separation• Coherence • Principles would be:

– Knowledge building & sharing – Capability development– Relationships of challenge & support – Shared responsibility for student

learning opportunities & outcomes

New relationships for a true learning system

• Self-management within a collective– Porous rather than fenced (off)

• Reframe school-government-community relationships through – creation of districts

• Work framed within underlying principles• Role for larger community

• Reframe policy-operations relationships through – Real evaluative inquiry at national level– Take shared responsibility seriously

Reflective questions

• If you were designing our education system now, how would you ensure that No school was left behind?

• What would the Ministry of Education do and how would it work to ensure schools had equal amounts of challenge & support?

What can you do to build a more collaborative way of working?