Ms Gillard and Primary and Secondary Public Education. (October 18, 2008)

Last Wednesday the federal Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Social Inclusion and Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, allotted a half-hour of her time to address the Teaching Australia and Business Council of Australia Symposium on Using standards to recognise advanced teaching and school leadership. The stated aim of the symposium was to "explore the opportunities and challenges of using standards to recognise advanced teaching and school leadership".

Ms Gillard announced no new governmental initiatives, she wasn't expect to do so, but she did make some important generalisations which, if significantly addressed by the Rudd government, may be an actual start on the promised "education revolution".

_________________________________________

I would like to see, in Australia, a new framework emerging for the accreditation and assessment of accomplished or leading teachers which supports the aspiration to higher impact and performance among many of our best teachers and encourages rigorous shared evaluation of that performance.

I gather that in the US, the National Board’s process of developing standards in different specialist areas began with five core propositions, that:

• Teachers are committed to students and their learning;

• Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students;

• Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning;

• Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience; and

• Teachers are members of learning communities.

These strike me as highly appropriate. In fact, I cannot imagine any committed educator who would not agree with them in principle.

The challenge, as we all know, is to translate those principles into practice [our emphasis].

But Ms Gillard acknowledged that the better the teachers, the better the education system... [and] few would argue with the proposition that of all the in-school variables affecting student performance, teacher quality is the most important". And she went on to admit the improvement in the performance of our public schools was necessary:

To improve school performance I believe we need to do four things:

1. We need to get the right people to become teachers;

2. We need to develop them into effective and inspiring educators;

3. We need to lift the standards of teaching for all students and target excellent teaching at those students who need it the most, particularly those from the most disadvantaged communities; and

4. We need to ensure that school leadership, facilities and curriculum enable us to do all of the above to an unsurpassed level of excellence.

To do this, our National Partnership for Teacher Quality will seek to facilitate reforms that put more teachers on a path to recognised excellence.

This means addressing the recruitment and initial training of teachers, at their deployment and development in schools, at the quality of their learning and professional development, at the standards of performance and leadership that are expected of them and at the pathways into the profession.

We want to attract a broader range of talented people into teaching...

I recognise that many of our teachers and principals are doing wonderful work in our schools and it is time to give them greater support. I want to modernise our schools and our teaching profession to give them new life, strength and relevance to the 21st century. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ms Gillard also laid heavy emphasis "that an intense, rigorous assessment which includes a strong element of performance-based practice is a vital part of the overall process... The challenge is to show how these features can be integrated into a system of accreditation that is open and flexible and can be successfully implemented in our diverse systems and jurisdictions".

While it is noted  that "we need to get the right people to become teachers" what the Minister of Education's government needs to lay heavy emphasis on is the mechanisms they are prepared to institute to both attract and keep those right people... [i.e.] to attract a broader range of talented people into teaching

You can assess all you like but it'll have damn all effect if you've not worked up a system whereby you've obtained individuals of the required inherent quality and provided a milieu to retain them. And unfortunately, that's the hard part, and it won't happen without sufficient resources being provided.

We can now wait and see what may happen to make it -- inconvenient -- for appropriate policies with appropriate resources to be provided, so far the actions of the Rudd government have yet to match Ms Gillard's exhortation's.

Prime Minister, Australia needs that "education revolution" just as much as the buttressing you've put in place for the financial sector.