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OUTCOMES REPORTING AND ACCOUNTABLE SCHOOLING Keynote address by The Hon. Dr David Kemp MP, Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs, to the Curriculum Corporation 6th National Conference, 6-7 May, 1999. Reporting and accountability It gives me great pleasure to be here with you this morning to open the Curriculum Corporation's Sixth National Conference and I am very grateful for the opportunity to talk about the priorities that Australia needs to set in education for the new millennium. First, I would first like to acknowledge the Kuarna peoples of this area on whose traditional lands we have gathered. I would also like to acknowledge any community Elders here today. The Government's main objectives for schooling derive firstly from our desire to see a strengthening of the educational foundations of our democratic society, and secondly from our belief that the quality of our education is the surest guarantee that Australia will meet the challenges of competition in the global economy and provide our citizens with jobs and opportunities in the years ahead. In this context, our main objectives are to raise standards of learning across the curriculum, to ensure that schools and school systems can meet the educational needs of all students, and to improve students' transition from school to work and to further education and training. Today I would like to talk with you about outcomes. This is particularly timely, because it is outcomes which will have a formative influence on the curriculum of Australia's schools as we move into the next millennium. It is the right of every young Australian to have access to an education system, which meets their fundamental educational needs. This is their democratic right-students who leave school Reporting and accountability We can't be sure that our education system is serving all young Australians as they deserve unless we have ways of measuring and reporting the outcomes of schooling nationally. The community has a reasonable expectation that the massive public and private investment in school education should lead to appropriate improvements in skill levels and general educational attainment of our young people. To determine the extent of improvement in broad terms, data has to be collected about how students are accessing schooling, the ways they are participating in it, how they are achieving, and where they are going after they leave school. Good accountability relies on good reporting – at all levels, the school level, the systemic authority or State level, and nationally. The federal Government has a direct interest in school reporting and accountability for a number of important reasons: - to help improve student outcomes: The national government has a stake in the improvement of the educational outcomes of all young Australians – for economic reasons, and for reasons of equity. Clear national goals for schooling and nationally comparable outcomes reporting are crucial to this. The Commonwealth is giving priority in particular to improving outcomes in key areas such as literacy and numeracy, and to improving the outcomes of Indigenous students. Nationally comparable reporting is vital in improving the effectiveness of all Australian schools. Better reporting and better accountability are crucial in providing parents and the community with the information they need to make informed choices about schooling. I will say more about the needs of parents a little later. The Commonwealth wants to improve the effectiveness of its own school funding programmes, and better accountability is one of the keys to this. Making information about educational outcomes widely available is central to building community support for schools. The community, which provides the high level of funding needed to operate the schooling system, has a basic right to full and comprehensive information about how well its schools are doing their job, locally as well as at the broad systemic level. If we are to have a school system for the next millennium, which meets the expectations and The foundation for a proper system of accountability has to be a clear set of national goals, which embody agreed targets. The national goals for schooling first agreed in 1989 have been under review by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) for the past two years or so. In Adelaide two weeks ago my State colleagues and I announced a new set of National Goals for Schooling in the 21st Century, in what has been dubbed the "Adelaide Declaration" (in acknowledgment of the goals promulgated in the Hobart Declaration ten years before). The new goals for schooling are student centred; that is, they focus on the learning outcomes of students rather than the strategies and processes of education providers (governments, school systems and schools). They provide a better balance between the theoretical knowledge students should attain in terms of curriculum content and their capacity to apply, and build on, that knowledge in new contexts or circumstances. They also reflect the importance of students' developing generic, transferable skills (eg problem solving, critical thinking, oral and written communication skills, the capacity to work with others, etc) and entrepreneurial, innovative and adaptive behaviour. The Ministers were quite clear that building confidence in schooling requires an explict commitment to clearly defined high standards. The new goals also describe a schooling which is socially just and make clear the crucial link between educational equity and the achievement of outcomes. Not only must education be free from discrimination, but it must also provide better outcomes for students who are educationally disadvantaged, including better outcomes for Indigenous students, acknowledging the importance of Indigenous cultures to Australian society. It is my belief that for these goals to work, they must embody agreed targets. We have had national goals in schooling for ten years but it was only in March 1997 that Education Ministers agreed on a specific target for literacy. For ten years Australia's schools have reported on aspects of the national Goals in the National Report on Schooling in Australia but without including any clear, comparable data on student attainment in key areas. This is now changing and from the 1999 edition, the National Report will start to report more meaningful national data on performance in literacy, beginning with data on Year 3 Reading. I believe it is pointless having national goals for schooling unless we can measure our progress towards achieving them. I know Ministers want these national goals to have some positive effect on educational practice in the nation's schools. The only way this will happen is if the goals include targets against which progress can be measured and reported to parents and to the community. We must make this link. Too often national strategies are articulated which have little discernible impact on the way schools operate. An example from America is instructive here. One of their national goals – to be first in the world in maths and science - was formulated without being linked to what was happening in American schools. There is now considerable doubt among American authorities, in the light of the outcomes of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, that this goal is achievable in the foreseeable future. As one commentator has put it, this goal "is completely meaningless, and it serves only to focus attention on the most pessimistic construction of our problems in maths and science, rather than setting expectations that will demonstrate significant progress". When Ministers released our own new national goals in the Adelaide Declaration they were endorsing a set of goals arrived at by consensus between Commonwealth and States, the product of two years of development and consultation with government and non-government school systems and a wide range of community groups interested in education. In endorsing the goals, Ministers also issued some clear directions for the national reporting on the outcomes of schooling, including the setting of targets. They affirmed their commitment to nationally comparable reporting of educational outcomes. They agreed on the six areas of the new goals which should have priority. And they set up a dedicated taskforce, properly resourced, to get the job done. The areas Ministers agreed on for initial work are all of key importance: student achievement in literacy and numeracy, science, information technology and vocational education and training, and student participation, retention and completion. Some mechanisms are already in place: The targets we are developing here must be meaningful to Australian schools and make clear the high expectations that the community has for Australian schooling. Benchmarks make clear the minimum standards that the community expects from Australia's schools. That this formula works in Australian schools is quite clear from our experience with the national literacy goal and literacy benchmarks. The benchmarks developed were subsequently endorsed by all Education Ministers who also adopted Australia's first national literacy and numeracy goal - that every student leaving primary school will have minimum acceptable literacy and numeracy skills and that every child enrolling in school from 1998 will achieve these standards within four years. This was the outcome of a highly successful collaborative process, which saw all Ministers make a fundamental commitment to literacy and numeracy and to being accountable for standards. This was a crucial development for Australian schools because the development and agreement of national level benchmarks permits the assessment of student performance against the agreed standard by all education systems, using their own rigorous processes. Once student performance has been assessed, public reporting of this achievement to the Australian community is possible and means that the public is able to examine the performance of education systems in terms of fundamental outcomes. The public nature of the information gives an impetus and incentive to all education systems towards further improvement and achievement of the national goal. Children in Year 3 in all States and Territories were assessed against the national literacy standard during 1998. The process for initial assessment against the benchmarks was designed to permit an evaluation of the extent to which the existing State tests measured the concepts of literacy embodied in the agreed national benchmarks. Of the three strands of literacy, reading, writing and spelling, reading has already been recommended for publication. At last month's MCEETYA meeting Ministers agreed to examine the 1998 achievement data to review the process of the equating as a means of achieving an agreed approach with the aim of publishing State and Territory Year 3 reading data by 30 June 1999. Ministers also agreed to report nationally aggregated data on Year 3 reading achievement against the national literacy benchmarks. Year 5 children will be assessed against the Year 5 literacy benchmarks as soon as possible. In the light of the evaluation of the 1998 assessments further work has proceeded to ensure that all relevant aspects of literacy in the benchmarks can be assessed by each State and Territory through their own testing programs in 1999 for reporting next year. Testing through State-based assessment programmes has many advantages, and at the April 1999 MCEETYA meeting Ministers noted issues which needed to be addressed to ensure comparability of literacy test data in the future. These issues included common elements with State and Territory tests, common testing age, timing of tests, costs of changing tests and student exclusion policy and practice. As a starting point to addressing these issues, State testing managers, in collaboration with the Benchmarking Taskforce, are now looking at identifying areas that are amenable to more common testing approaches. It is expected that data for 1999 will reflect the takeup of these approaches.
Positive changes at primary school The emphasis on outcomes is already making an impact on Australian primary schools. A Federally funded report on the place of literacy and numeracy in the primary school curriculum demonstrates this shift in emphasis. This report surveyed 1200 primary schools conducted by the Australian Primary Principals' Association and the University of Melbourne. The majority of schools are reporting that they have greater clarity about the literacy standards that schools are expected to achieve. They have indicated that teacher confidence about ensuring success in literacy is increasing and that there is more support and financial resources being made available for literacy. These changes have brought specific benefits to low achieving students. Primary schools are devoting on average about nine hours a week to literacy and about four hours a week to numeracy. I expect the emphasis on numeracy will change as the numeracy benchmarks are implemented. This reporting framework of national goals incorporating agreed targets and benchmarks of student attainment - provides us with a way of monitoring the key outcomes of Australian schooling. I do not pretend that these processes will provide us with a picture of the total social, intellectual or emotional outcomes of Australia's schools but they allow us to keep a finger on the pulse of what is essential. Assessment of students against national standards does not erode the value of teacher professional judgement as education systems and schools will continue to use a variety of literacy and numeracy assessment and intervention approaches, many of which - as they should - include teacher judgment as a key element. The benchmarking process will be continually refined and extended to other areas. I think there would be value, for example in undertaking some development work to define appropriate outcomes for higher thinking skills across a range of subject areas. The Federal Government has already set in train in cooperation with State and Territory Ministers the development of indicators of student attainment for its civics and citizenship programme. A baseline survey begun last year will establish students' understanding before schools have really had a chance to implement the learning units of Discovering Democracy. From this baseline survey the Government plans to establish benchmarks and apply these benchmarks to the results of the next annual survey in May 2000.
This accountability framework also has implications for how individual schools report to parents. It is this Government's fundamental conviction that the way to ensure the quality of schooling is not through policing by armies of inspectors but by full and proper reporting to parents. Already there are examples of States using national benchmarks as a standard in the reporting to parents of their child's performance. There is great potential for schools, if they so wish, to use benchmarks and targets at the school level to ensure that all students achieve a minimum acceptable level in literacy and numeracy. By adopting local school-based targets within the context of national goals and benchmarks, schools can develop processes for school improvement and for encouraging effective teaching and learning practice. A focus on performance and outcomes at the school level, and the reporting of such outcomes to parents and the community provides an incentive and focus for school efforts in literacy and numeracy. It also provides a means by which the community could assess their school's progress against the school level targets and also against the national goals. Inevitably there is resistance within school systems to public reporting of the performance of individual schools against benchmarks, for fear that schools with disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged students would appear to be performing poorly. Yet already States are trialling more sophisticated approaches. Some States, for example, are already reporting "league tables", based on the extent to which individual schools are value adding in relation to TER scores. Western Australia has recently released the performance of schools aggregated to regional levels, showing that there were some regions with schools where no student reached the national literacy benchmarks. In my view such information is a very positive contribution to the achievement of educational equity. It will undoubtedly spur on efforts to address the evident educational disadvantage suffered by students in such areas. As we move into the era of school accountability for outcomes, there needs to be increased attention to what constitutes adequate reporting by schools, given what parents are seeking. The Federal Government has funded a report into reporting on student and school achievement by the University of Sydney which includes some analysis of the expectations of parents about reporting practices of schools and systems. The reports are not yet finalised but the initial data reveals that it is difficult for parents to assess information about the performance and effectiveness of schools in both the government and non-government sectors in Australia. A significant point to emerge from discussions with parents was their need to obtain some idea of their children's progress in basic skills against agreed standards. Parents are anxious to work in partnership with schools but they want schools to keep their side of the bargain. Parents want information about school achievement that is objective, reliable and credible and that is not presented like a "sales pitch". They want the information provided to capture the realities of schools, and in particular the outcomes in all their variety of what they want for their children. They also want information that can be easily comprehended. Parents expressed a desire to have access to guidance and advice on the characteristics of effective schools. They would utilise such information to supplement their own concepts about good schools. What this indicates is that, while parents consider comparable information from standardised tests important, they wish to receive far more information about their child's performance across the whole gamut of schooling. One of the studies funded by the Government outlines best practice to help schools develop reporting to parents that provides a balanced, comprehensive and structured framework for assessing the achievements of schools. In the future I expect that educational accountability for schools will be more closely tied to the way they report to parents. It was also clear from these reports that parents are, increasingly, using information from schools to make choices about their children's education. Parents supported standardised testing because it provides one means of monitoring school and teacher standards, not just the performance of their children. Test results were seen as a touchstone which was used to inform parent's judgement about the quality of education provided. Whether schools and systems like it or not, parents are making judgements about school performance though it appears from the reports that they do so on a range of anecdotal information. One of the strong arguments in favour of national goals, targets and benchmarks is that they can provide a framework for providing parents with the information they are seeking. Within this framework schools need the autonomy to be able to tailor their reporting to the needs of their community. I don't think we need to take this too far - in some American states a school's funding level rises and falls according to their performance in basic skills tests. Australian One of the great strengths of the approach to goals, targets and benchmarks in this country is that, uniquely, they are all inclusive. The national literacy and numeracy goal stresses that all children will meet the minimum acceptable standards. This emphasis, totally consistent with Australia's national and democratic commitment to equity, makes it essential we pay particular attention to the needs of students likely to be educationally disadvantaged. As the young people at the recent national Youth Roundtable put it, there can be no quality in our education system without equity. Only education which is goal based and outcomes driven can guarantee improved outcomes for disadvantaged students. This is the approach the Federal Government is now adopting to meet the needs of Indigenous students. Some progress has been made towards improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians, but there are still significant gaps in the educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, particularly in literacy and numeracy. Progress has been made in the areas of establishing culturally inclusive curricula, professional development of teachers and increased Indigenous parental and community involvement between 1996 and 1997 but there are still too few Indigenous staff employed in schools. While Indigenous enrolments in vocational education have risen by 42% between 1995 and 1997, Indigenous students continue to remain over-represented in lower skill level courses such as pre-vocational and pre-employment courses. In 1997, 40% of Indigenous students compared to 24% of other students were in courses that dealt with basic employment or educational preparation skills. This is a drop from 1995 when 46% of Indigenous students were enrolled in such courses. The Government increased funding under the Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives Programme (IESIP) from around $88 million in 1996 to an estimated level of over $125 million in 1999. Under IESIP, Federal funding to education providers is linked to agreed performance targets that aim to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous students. It appears that achieving this type of outcomes focus to an education programme is not only a national 'first', but it is also unique in the wider international forum of Indigenous education. From a national perspective, however, the 1997 IESIP performance data is not provided in a sufficiently consistent way to allow it to be aggregated to develop a national picture of the achievement of equitable and appropriate educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians. For almost 10 years, there has been impressive co-operation between and within Australian governments to achieve the goal of educational equality for Indigenous Australians. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the challenge of achieving equitable and appropriate outcomes still needs considerable attention in terms of both mainstream and Indigenous programmes because the baseline for Indigenous students is so far behind other Australians. I have asked all Education Ministers at MCEETYA to reaffirm Indigenous education as an urgent national priority. I have asked Ministers to demonstrate this commitment by
The Government proposes to further support achieving educational equality for Indigenous students by providing funds for a National Indigenous School Attendance Strategy and a National Indigenous English Literacy and Numeracy Strategy. I am also optimistic about a very positive Budget outcome for Indigenous education. Australia's education system for the next millennium must be focussed on outcomes if it is to achieve educational equity. I would like to see this approach we are adopting with Indigenous students extended to other disadvantaged students so we have clear targets for improving their educational outcomes. This will have implications for educational accountability and for Federal funding for schools which will need to be worked through with State, Territory and non-government authorities. The Federal Government remains committed to increased funding for Australia's schools. Our current commitment is over $4 billion annually and I expect the Government will build further on this is in the forthcoming Budget. The Government's vision for Australian schools is quite clear. Australian schooling is already firmly established on principles of diversity and choice both within and between government and non-government schools. In government schools more authority is being devolved down to school level, in recognition of the need for schools to be able to meet the particular demands of educational equity and of parents in their communities. In an increasingly devolved system there must be measures in place to guarantee educational quality. What is being developed at the moment is a system of reporting against the national goals, targets and benchmarks. This framework will eventually provide the basis for enhanced reporting to parents about the outcomes of schooling, both collectively and individually. Our schooling must continue to be underpinned by a commitment to fundamental principles of equity so that students in need have those educational needs identified and action taken to meet them. This is an achievable vision. It is one which is essential to Australia's future. I look forward to working with you as educators to achieve it.
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