Eighteen ACT public schools will take part this year in the trial of a new tool to track their performance and help them improve.
There were concerns last year about the ACT’s literacy and numeracy standards, and about disadvantaged students falling behind. According to last year’s NAPLAN results, one in three Year 9 students did not meet proficiency benchmarks for reading; a quarter of students fell behind in spelling; and around one in 10 students were unable to read or write at the basic level.
The Student-Centred Improvement Framework will equip schools “with the tools, support and data they need to strengthen our overall student, school, and system performance”, education minister Yvette Berry said.
For instance, explained Mark Huxley, from the ACT Education Directorate: “Curriculum implementation, professional learning, targeting of resources – are they going to the right areas of need? Do they have the right professional learning models in place? Is student and staff safety and wellbeing prioritised? …
“The intention is for any school to be able to self-assess where they’re up to on that matrix, and look at what they need to do to increase and enhance … the outcomes of students.”
The Framework will be trialled in nine schools in Term Two, and in nine other schools in Term Three. The outcomes and feedback will be reviewed, and the Framework adjusted. It will then be implemented across all ACT public schools next year. (At this stage, no private schools will take part.)
“This will ensure schools are focused on implementing the right strategies, and adjusting more rapidly if the data suggests there is room for improvement,” Ms Berry said.
The Framework will replace that used since 2016.
“Improvement frameworks are a common feature of education jurisdictions, both nationally and internationally, Mr Huxley said. “So it was timely now to look at the latest international and national best practice improvement for systems and revitalise and revisit our improvement framework processes.”
Sixteen principals – 20 per cent of the cohort – helped to design the new framework. One of those principals, Felicity Lovett, head of Mount Rogers Primary School, said: “It’s been designed for purpose based on what our students and communities need in regards to improvements…
“The matrix that is the framework makes it really clear what the next most important steps could be for a school to take. That has been harder to work out in the past.”
Professor Helen Timperley, Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Auckland, praised the co-design process as “ambitious” and “world-leading”. Normally, Mr Huxley said, bureaucrats impose a top-down process.
The Directorate also looked at what high-performing international and national jurisdictions did to improve their schools, and applied that knowledge to ACT public schools, Mr Huxley said.
Data dashboards will accompany the Framework, to improve access to and availability of information. They will consider school climate survey data, and the day-to-day operational data of information and wellbeing, “allow[ing schools] to have more precision and focus on outcomes for kids”, Mr Huxley said.
“These dashboards will be capturing more student, staff, and community voice than ever before, placing student needs and outcomes at the centre of everything we do,” Ms Berry said.
At the moment, schools are reviewed every five years; the Framework is “a significant shift in … moving away from prioritising necessarily the five-year review”, Mr Huxley said.
Angela Burroughs, ACT Education Union ACT Branch, said the new review process will be a “more streamlined, supportive process of ongoing evaluation and improvement. As an AEU principal member said, ‘the new system is more collegiate and collaborative and is more useful as an ongoing cycle of inquiry where schools can identify areas of particular focus’.”
