This is how we can curtail Australia's 'long tail' of underachievement
Curtailing the long tail of disadvantage in Australia requires looking from the statistics to the realities on the ground within schools for solutions to this thorny and long-standing problem.
As John Hattie notes, the number of well-meaning
adults within schools has exploded in number, but it has not coincided with a
comparable growth in learning or student success.
As part of ACERs reconsideration of Geoff
Masters blog: ‘Big Five’ challenges in
school education, five years on, I’ll be reflecting on his proposals
and providing two of my own as ways of achieving his suggestions.
I will be joining Sue Thomson from ACER and Anne
Hampshire from the Smith Family in a webinar today to
discuss ‘The long tail of underachievement’, one of the ‘Big
Five’ challenges outlined by Masters.
As has been well established, 1 in 5 of all
15-year-old students do not meet the minimum literacy requirements outlined by
the OECD through its PISA test. This then has ‘knock-on’ effects that mean that
a similar percentage of adults lack ‘functional literacy,’ leaving them
unable to complete everyday tasks such as paying bills, reading
medicine bottles and similar literacy tasks. What
happens within schools is only one part of this thorny issue, but it is also
the most logical place to address it.
It often goes unmentioned that much of the reason
for the long tail of disadvantage is external to education. One recently
discussed suggestion, further supported by the COVID lockdowns, is that of a
digital equity audit - locating areas of greatest need to allow for modern
remote education, so as to more actively address this problem.
Putting aside system-level solutions, I’ll consider
the ways that systems can implement simple, inexpensive, teacher-focussed
interventions to support our students most in need.
As a classroom and literacy intervention teacher, I
work at the pointy end of these issues. For me, these data points not only have
faces, but also names, dreams and ambitions.
And there have been exciting and promising signs of
change being afoot to support these students, but due to the political reality
of our country these remain far from guaranteed.
Among these promising signs are:
- Firth review changes to
vocational pathways within secondary schools
- Improvements to disability support and funding
- Tutoring support for
students negatively affected by COVID
- The Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy
support initiative
It is timely to consider the continued shake of
Australia’s long tail of underachievement. As ever, for the teaching
profession, the two greatest challenges are time and expertise. As teacher
wages, and as such, teacher’s time are the largest investment of all schools
and education systems, I will instead focus on the issue of expertise and how
it relates to turning around student underachievement.
Reflecting on Masters’ proposals, he suggests a
more personalised view of education, where students progress by stage along a
learning continuum rather than by their age. His proposal centres around
three elements: more quality learning data; teaching in a way informed by this
data, using a student’s ‘Zone of Proximal development’; and personalising
students' learning pathways to allow this to occur.
This requires a large restructuring of schooling
in the way that we divide and educate students, and I believe the same
goal could be achieved using the ‘Response to intervention’ model, which outlines three
clear tiers of support:
- Tier 1: Whole class
- Tier 2: Small group
- Tier 3: Individual
Tier 2 and 3 interventions are typically absent
from many schools. The widespread practice here is for teaching aides to
cover off the support of those students in need of tier 2 and 3 intervention.
As John Hattie notes, the number of well-meaning
adults within schools has exploded in number, but it has not coincided
with a comparable growth in learning or student success.
At base, this can be drawn to the level of
expertise within schools remaining stable. I am suggesting that a shift from
having more adults in schools (as though the sheer number of concerned adults
will solve complex issues), towards a focus on quality and well-trained
teachers as the best way forward.
The reason for this is that the long tail of
underachievement is far from homogenous, indeed it involves the most
diverse and complex group within our schools. Tier 3 interventions involve
funded and unfunded students generally able to be classified within these
categories:
- EAL/D
- Disabled
- Indigenous
- Low literacy /Low Numeracy
The challenge is that each of these categories is a
separate field of teaching and research, a complex space with its own
approaches, experts and methodologies. I’ve personally been very fortunate to
complete further study into two of these five areas.
As a personal example, I completed a Master of
Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages (TESOL) and a Graduate Diploma
of Teaching Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), through Departmental
scholarships. Each of these scholarships help me every day with the complex
work of assisting students who exist within this tail of underachievement.
It’s notable that whilst this further study has
been helpful, it’s only the beginning of a long journey of improving my own
teaching to support this long tail of underachievement within my particular
purview.
What I would propose to improve outcomes for this
long tail is initiatives that involve ‘up-skilling’ practicing teachers
through ongoing, fully-funded and supported investment.
How
to intervene to support the 'tail'?
As examples, the tutoring initiatives of Victoria
and later NSW, and the
Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy (MYLN) program provide suggestions around
how tier 2 and 3 interventions could be handled. These interventions are
relatively inexpensive policies (MYLNs: $183M over 4 years; Tutoring support:
$250M over 1 year) and empower trained, expert teachers to support the students
most in need outlined above.
Though there are questions around each of these
initiatives, such as the timing of intervention (ideally interventions occur
early, such as Grade 2, for maximum impact) and the quality and rigour of the teaching, the model and funding of these
approaches support teachers to intervene in ways not commonly covered within
school budgets.
Funded further study in the areas of complex
student learning difficulties outlined above, combined with funding to support
educators completing these studies to make tier 2 and 3 interventions within
their schools, would allow this.
Even a temporary application of these approaches
will be a good starting place to begin to redirect and curtail the long tail of
disadvantage.
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