Education Week 2005

Education Week Message

I spent part of the weekend at Rosehill racecourse and came home a bit richer on the day. All with not a horse in sight, apart from the odd happy snap of polo ponies at the occasional neighbouring stand. Along with a number of Secondary and Primary Principals I spent time representing our schools at the DET display at Education Expo held at Rosehill Gardens this weekend.  The stand was well positioned and had a forward looking “look,” a look commented on positively by a number of the display visitors.

Part of the richness also came from spending time deliberately focusing on the good that we do, and the good that we can do.  I know that you will all, this week in particular, be trying to showcase the good that your school does, in the best way possible: the demonstration of the joy that children have taken in their learning. We can never forget the look on the face of a child who displays work to a close adult who cares, and who obviously looks like they are comfortable relating to the teacher: as a professional educator and, also, as a significant caring adult within the same child’s life.  The desired outcome is, after all, similarly shared. Most of us want our schools to be places where children are happy, where teachers care and, where children learn.

It has always struck me that the most powerful predictor to a child’s school “success” is not so much socio-economic status as the attitude toward learning which forms part of the child’s family culture. The attitude toward learning and, in particular toward the local school’s ability to provide learning leaves a child at the point of contact with formal school in the best state of preparation possible: they want to be there and they want to know how to find out stuff ! There are, of course, always links between this and those who have seen the positive benefit of an attitude like this.  We should not, however, continue to use this as our only “rule of thumb” or we will continue to lose sight of our primary asset: the strength of our diversity and the ability of the people in our schools to do magnificent, inclusive work 

The theme for Education Week : Leading the Way, when placed boldly on such a forward looking background as the Expo stand, took a key message position.

The comparison between the large, integrated DET display contrasted sharply with the compartmentalised stands of the various independent schools and people with things to sell.  Symbolically, here was a plethora of choices, all marketing a key idea or image.  Juxtaposed with this was the large DET stand, positioned as a complement to the TAFE stand and combining to provide a context and a sense of ability to be a service for all. There was even, should we choose to see it that way, a hint that we could take the view that we are the organisation which is shifting to a futures focus, still the major player. We are, in fact, ”Leading the Way” within a sector where many other organisations will need to evaluate the shelf life of a market position which uses, as justification for its cost, the anchorages it provides to the success perception of the past.

There is a classic saying somewhere about failing to expand our horizons if we are not from time to time willing to leave the known world behind.  We can even, perhaps, afford to be much more decisive in our path toward the future when we have clear evidence of the potential for rapid and chaotic change, and the potential to gather information and ideas much faster than ever before.

It is technology’s utility in enabling these processes which makes it such a powerful tool within the educational environment. It is not a competitor, but rather a running supply of potential suggestions to “what if’s” “who did” or whatever. All we need to do is to excite the curiosity to find out and the capacity to collect, from the multiple inbound information streams, pieces which connect to provide meaning or perspective to a significant aspect within our life and our view of a quality world.

There are some key parallels in the overall need of our system and quality learning models. At all levels, we need quality learning environments.  Physical quality, and a deep sense of the quality of the particular micro-environment within its wider zone are both essential.  This quality will rely on the care that the people who interrelate within the environment bring to their sustenance of its quality.

The thing is, of course, people lose heart at caring sometimes, over time, when it seems as though nothing they do is ever good enough, and that they will always have their professional integrity brought into focus when the actions of a few attract the headline grabbing interest of the media.  Principals will spend a lot of time this week thanking many people for the work that they do in contributing to education. 

Allow some time for a bit of an inward hug to yourself in recognition of the work that you all do and in recognition of the fact that you belong to a group of diverse but talented operators across the Principalship of NSW.  I walked through the playground at a colleague’s school on Friday and heard the chorus of children saying hello and was reminded of the absolutely pivotal role that Principals play within their local school and its community. It is this intangible which is so difficult to quantify in dollar terms but which says so much about the worth available to a school and its community when they have a Principal who engages with the key concept of being, literally, the principal.  It is a worth which needs our ongoing recognition and respect, in all of our schools from the smallest to the very large.

I have also seen, at close hand in the last week, the power of collegial groups.  One of the joys of the role I play as President is the opportunity to interact with groups of Principals in different parts of the state. Invariably I come away learning so much more about the variety of places, all of the outward signs of difference. 

Underneath, however, in that huge bulk of “iceberg” below the waterline, there is a vast shared capacity. It is evident in our email lists and in the discussions we have over morning tea and dinner.  It is the willingness we have to sing together or gather in good humour, and the expertise we bring as practitioners in our core role as a teacher.  Most of all, however, it is the development of a sufficient sense of trust and affiliation that enable the commendation of peers amongst peers.  I heard a remark at a retirement function about the number of children’s’ lives which had been touched by the retiree.  I remember Denis Fitzgerald writing around twelve years ago of hope to be part of “each of their tomorrows.” We also probably intuitively know it will actually be contributions to the otherwise intangible which will be most remembered.

We are, after all, either heads or handles in an axe which has “had five new handles and three new heads, but it’s still Grandpa’s axe.”  And, after all, the axe will only ever be a quality one, and do the job, if head and handles are the optimum type and fit.  It is hard to imagine harmony with discordant notes.

Just as in music though, there is always an opportunity to explore rhythm and tempo.  Traditional chord progressions can be set to a range of beats and styles.  The reality will always remain, though, that the first violinist will not exhaust themselves to play a solo ‘note perfect’ out of fear for the conductor, but rather out of a sense of exhilaration at being an integral and leading part of a whole.  It is the “feel” with which a musician performs which adds an intangible, yet recognisable, quality to the performance. A challenge for all of us as educators is to challenge society to place value on learning and particularly value on our Public Schools as a place for this learning to be delivered.  Then, quite apart from our first violinists, we will have the whole shebang, down to the cannons, firing winning shots.

Now, none of the above idealism takes away a couple of cold facts :

Goodwill sustains education, and the intangible desire to be an integral part of the positive gestalt that is a school will only continue when there appears to be a value placed on this role.  While the media continues to find that it can always sell newspapers with a juicy school story, or a piece to stir up a variety of fundamental opinions, they will continue to leave teachers in significant doubt regarding their worth.  There are cultures in the world where learning, and schools as an agency of its provision, are seen as more important than an adolescent irrepressibility of an instinct to have a swipe at institutions.

Failure to see that learning, wanting to learn, and expanding a repertoire of learning strategies can greatly expand a child’s horizon of possibility is a component of neglect in parenting.   By this I mean that there is a massive disappointment in a society where there is still a lot of ‘sufferance mentality’ toward schools.  It can’t be just up to us to generate some sense of excitement about the potential to learn and grow, and to continually improve what we do to meet the needs of those who want our help to learn.

Just as the jockeys at Rosehill would find themselves before the stewards for failing to allow a horse to run on its merits, all of society needs to question whether they are giving children the best life chance and choices possible.   

Then we need to accept that there is a sharing of responsibility for making this happen, but that the key attitudinal stance will come from home, in the same way as language patterns and default social behaviour. We can work hard to provide alternate behaviours and attitudes, but the default will always be the key attitudinal stance of the environment, unless there is a real effort made to shift this as a defensible position.

So, it is time to reposition our thinking about the place of education in the lives of all of us. The messages given in a visual sense then become critically important. 

Despite the massive infrastructure costs involved, we must begin to see resources not only in dollar terms. We need the clear demonstration of a genuine desire at all levels within our support systems to significantly affect changes to the way that our schools are seen: literally and figuratively. The economy of scale which sees even minor budget enhancements as prohibitive when extrapolated across our vast system cannot continue to be an excuse for failure to adequately maintain and clean our schools.  If we seriously want schools to be places where children are happy, and where children learn, then we need to provide sites, buildings and classrooms which reflect the trend within all of our facilities towards being clean, safe, functional and well maintained. Calls from our schools for this to occur ought not, any more, to be seen as whinging, but rather as part of a desire, held system wide, for us to present our entire system as an organisation which cares about how it looks.

That was the message in the stand at the Education Expo.  It is time to shift elements of systems thinking toward the goal of a system wide consistency of quality environments rather than continue to accept a paradigm where the desire of individual schools to improve their facilities is seen as an irritation.

It seems that the distribution of wealth within our schools sector should be a cause for a far greater outcry than the odd squawk we hear at present. It seems that hard questions which could be asked about the funding arrangements of some schools don’t seem to get much airplay.  There seems to be a basic level of unfairness in a system in which the individual units which loosely form part of the independent sector are allowed to accumulate cash surpluses through access to “building fund” donations/fees and through usage of scholarship systems and other enrolment practices which extract the best possible income stream from government funding arrangements.  The millions of dollars accumulated as ‘surpluses’ by several elite Sydney schools within the past year are an obscenity at a time where many schools live daily with the knowledge of what needs to be done, but with the frustrating reality that the timeline for doing it is undisclosed, and the financial wherewithal to do it even more elusive.

The surpluses published in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning (SMH 16.5.2005) show that in just seven Sydney private schools, a combined surplus of many million was posted.

At a time where the constant refrain from Treasury in response to calls to fund things like the recommendations from the Aboriginal Education Review is that “we have no money,” we are left looking over the fence at a group of organisations who can readjust their fee structures to pass on increases in costs and accumulate reserves which are then used for facilities improvements to offer even more “value added observables” to attract an even greater slice of a market which is fuelled at all levels by a belief system which touts the belief that “you get what you pay for.” It would seem that many children may not get what they pay for at all, but rather provide an income stream which allows the school to play a game of “one-upmanship” in the facilities and benefits race.

Principals operate at a key position within this complex context.  Principals will, as human beings, make mistakes and demonstrate human weaknesses. They do, though, like most people, operate from a position of best intent. There is much to be done to continue a process of cultural evolution to one where the interface between Principals, the service they deliver and the concept of the government as a “client” of the service is seen as an interface being managed by people who need support and professional development to enhance their capability to do the job in a highly effective manner.  Principals accept the accountabilities which come with the territory. We need to also accept that they cannot be simply expected to add a constant stream of management competencies to an already diverse range of accountability expectations without significant investment in providing support in the more esoteric areas of what is an increasingly complex pattern of financial practices and compliance with policy implementation.  Put simply, we cannot expect the same people to take on more and more, in domains of practice which are increasingly further and further away from the core business which attracted them to schools in the first place.

The mind boggles when we realise that the combined surplus of $18 million from the seven schools outlined above would have a flow on effect of very significant proportions for every primary school in NSW. All of this comes at a time where we expect Principals to continually assimilate new key accountabilities in OH&S, localised management of issues and resources and transparency of process across all areas.  Principals, as a matter of personal and professional pride and duty, work hard to meet these expectations. That they do so at all, when the priority placed on their support and resourcing can best be evidenced by looking at the tools which have been provided for the task, is actually a miracle. We are still managing our school finance and administration systems with DOS based software which was originally rolled out on Hypec 286 machines using 5.5inch floppies: the equivalent of thermal paper faxes in a business environment where colour plain paper multi-function machines are the norm.  To deliver the level of service across the range of areas now seen as part of the Principal’s responsibility we need to acknowledge that support is needed, rather than criticism that the Principal is inadequate in their capacity to perform.

The key interface for this is the relationship between School Education Directors and Principals.  It is critical that this relationship is built with a clear appreciation of these factors.  The challenge for School Education Directors is enormous in that there is a need to develop relationships in multiple dimensions: those related to the vertical lines of accountability and those related to the provision of lateral support and an environment where there can be an expansive approach to the capability development of our Principals within the domains of highly effective school leadership.  This is no mean feat, and one which will only be achieved through a genuine commitment from all parties to a process of continuous improvement: a process spiralling inexorably toward a better future, given direction by a set of core beliefs and processes which embed a commitment to a quality Public Education system as a non-negotiable social objective.

To return to the beginning, it is clear that we have much to be proud of.  Just as the stand at Rosehill promoted a view of an integrated set of system components which is future looking and world class by comparison with the segmented market of “choice,” we need to demonstrate a commitment to ensuring that we can legitimately reproduce that imagery in all facets of what we do.  There is a huge cost in doing so on the scale we require but, when we cast forward into the future and see the enormous differential in potential return of outcomes, then we see that it is certainly worth the investment.

Thanks to all of you for the enormous investment you already make in terms of time, energy and commitment.  Let us hope that the positive messages which we can generate about the good that we can do might be matched “dollar for dollar” in fundamental shifts at all levels in our organisation toward the system message generated as part of our Education Expo contribution.  This may mean a shift from a culture of ‘micro-political blame insurance’ by people within power trees, to a culture of consistency of belief in the worth of what we do and the good intent of all of our people to do it.

There are encouraging signs of a will to achieve this at a range of levels.  It is critical, for the very survival and future of our system, that everybody make a commitment to ‘walking the talk,’ and ensuring that the gap between rhetoric and reality is absolutely minimised.  This is a two way process and one which requires energy and effort. I know that Principals have both.

Have a great Education Week.

Roger Pryor

16^th May, 2005