New Directions for School Leadership and the
Teaching Profession
Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania
submission
Response of the Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania
PO Box 1320 South Melbourne 3205
1
RESPONSE OF THE INDEPENDENT EDUCATION UNION
VICTORIA TASMANIA
TO THE DISCUSSION PAPER - NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
AND THE TEACHING PROFESSION September 2012
1.0 Preamble
1.1 The Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania (IEU) welcomes the opportunity to provide
comment on the discussion paper New Directions for School Leadership and the Teaching
Profession produced by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development
Victoria.
1.2
IEU notes the discussion document’s prefacing message from the two Education Ministers, the
Hon. Peter Hall, Minister for the Teaching Profession, and the Hon Martin Dixon, Minister for
Education. The Ministers make clear that the document’s focus and intentions relate to
members of the whole teaching profession and to all schools and students in Victoria. The
document therefore is of importance to the non-government school sector as it has far reaching
implications for the teachers, leaders, education support staff, students and parents involved in
schools in this sector.
1.3
IEU fully supports community discussion around what the goals and structure of schooling
should be moving into the future; how we effectively build capacity in systems and schools,
principals and teachers to be able to deliver high quality personalised learning opportunities for
students; and how we are better able to reduce disadvantage.
However, IEU’s response to the discussion document New Directions highlights a number of
areas of significant concern, particularly in respect to both the narrowness of the overall goals
of the reform agenda identified, and many of the measures by which it is proposed to achieve
improvement in teaching, and by inference, student learning. IEU is concerned that many of the
measures run contrary to the approaches taken by successful high performing education
systems, and borrow instead from attempts in other lesser performing countries that have
resulted in a more fragmented, demoralised and less collegial teaching profession, and which
have not resulted in better learning outcomes for students.
2.0 The Focus of New Directions
2.1 The Government’s Goal
The discussion document and the Ministers’ message in particular, essentially detail three areas
of reform focus to lift the performance of students, schools and systems in Victoria. These are:
(i)
lifting the performance of Victoria’s students into the global top tier of countries, as
identified in the results of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) in
the next 10 years;
(ii)
improving the quality of teaching; and
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(iii)
placing school leadership at the centre of the reform effort, most notably by giving
principals the power to ‘determine’ the quality of teaching in their schools.
2.2 Areas of Action
The document focuses specifically on the importance of the quality of teaching in the reform
agenda and outlines three areas of Action for lifting this performance in order to achieve the goal
of lifting Victorian student performance to that of the top tier countries. These areas of action are:
(i)
attract great people into teaching: attract stronger candidates and improve their
preparation;
(ii)
create a high performance profession: stimulate a culture of excellence and effective
professional development;
(iii)
provide strong direction and support: elevate the role of leadership at the school and
system levels.
3.0 IEU response to the Focus of New Directions
3.1 Concern at New Directions goal for student achievement
IEU expresses significant concern about the document’s extremely limited definition of and goal
for the educational achievement of students in Victorian schools.
IEU does not see changing the ranking of performance of Australian students in an international
test (i.e. PISA) as an appropriate and adequate goal of education in Victoria nor does it see this
test as the appropriate measurement of student learning and achievement.
It is of great concern that the document frames student learning and achievement solely as
performance on the PISA tests, and as a consequence, the raft of reform measures are
proposed to lift the performance of 15 year old students by six months to that of the top tier rank
of countries in the PISA results.
In addition, the IEU rejects the concept that the various measures, such as exiting the lowest
performing 5% of teachers across the system, can equate to a calculable number of months of
student learning improvement.
This simplistic, fragmented and unbalanced approach to improving student learning will, if
adopted as the goal for schooling, have an extremely detrimental effect both on the capacity of
schools to improve the broad educational outcomes of students, and on the capacity of leaders
and teachers to work together to achieve this.
3.2 Student learning must be at the centre
3.2.1 Learning and Instruction
The ultimate criteria of the quality of education systems and schools is how well students learn
what they are expected to learn. The problem of focusing on international test comparisons, as
the New Directions paper does, is that it puts an inappropriate over-emphasis on scores in
standardised achievement tests. Teachers and schools must help students learn, not simply pass
tests.
Developing a deep understanding of how students learn and building the capacity of teachers to
enhance the learning of students must be the premise on which system and school reform is
based. Education policies designed to raise student achievement in countries such as Finland
and Canada, have put a strong accent on teaching and learning by encouraging schools to craft
optimal learning environments and establish instructional content that will best help students to
reach the general goals of schooling. In addition building networks among schools that stimulate
and spread innovation is important in lifting achievement across all schools.
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The transformation of the Finnish economy, for example, into a knowledge–economy has relied
on investment in innovation. This resulted in education policies that focus on better knowledge
and skills in coherence with creativity and problem solving. It is expected that the education
system provide quantities of skilled and creative young people with appropriate competences to
deal with rapidly changing economic and technological environments. This in turn has required
policy makers to focus on keeping teaching and learning creative and open to new ideas, rather
than fixing them to predetermined standards and accountability through national testing [and
international scores]. (Sahlberg 2011 p 108)
Responsive education requires a focus on and adequate support for personalised learning for
students. This means however, that schools need to be able to provide learning environments
that enable greater focus on personalised learning. It also means investing in:
(i)
building the capacity of teachers, individually and as teams to effectively identify, plan,
deliver and assess with greater focus on the individual student, and
(ii)
giving them the time and resources to do this very complex task.
One of New Directions key shortcomings is that does not examine this complex and necessary
aspect of improving student learning, and because it does not focus on learning and learning
environments, it does not give us a cohesive and comprehensive road map to achieving better
learning outcomes for all students.
3.2.2 Early Intervention
An important element that New Directions (page 5) does identify as contributing to lifting the
performance of an education system is acting early and providing support for those with greater
needs to prevent disadvantaged students falling behind.
IEU endorses this strongly and calls on the government to develop as part of its reform agenda,
a comprehensive strategy for early intervention in both government and non-government
schools. This strategy of early intervention is one of the key aspects attributed to the Finnish
education success. This focus ensures that possible learning and developmental problems are
diagnosed early during early childhood before children enter school. In the early years of primary
school, intensive special support, mostly in reading, writing and arithmetic, is offered to all
children who have major or minor special needs. In Finland, the early recognition of learning
difficulties and social and behavioural problems is key and professional support is provided to
individuals as early as possible. Up to half of those students who complete their compulsory
education at age 16 have been in special education at some point in their schooling. (Sahlberg
2011 p 47)
3.3 Learning environments - Class sizes
IEU does not agree with the premise in New Directions that smaller class size does not have a
positive impact on student learning.
New Directions refers to one source in respect to class sizes – the 2010 paper from the Grattan
Institute’s Ben Jensen. This paper gave a brief comment on class sizes and made one reference
to the meta-analysis of two economists and one study in Florida. There was no attempt to
provide an academic analysis of the wealth of research available on the significant effects of
reduced class sizes emanating from both the USA and UK.
New Directions also does not take account of many other factors that are related to the benefits
of smaller class sizes, nor does it acknowledge other measures being used to increase one on
one time with students. These include the special education strategies in Finland, and the
extremely high frequency of use of personal tutors and long hours of instruction in many Asian
countries in the “top tier” performers on PISA. In Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Shanghai,
jurisdictions that are on a par with Finland in reading, mathematics and science, most children
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spend hours after their regular school days and on their weekends and holidays in private
classes and test preparation schools. While this approach is not appropriate for Australia, it
highlights the problems of larger class sizes in some of these Asian countries.
3.4 Improving the quality of teaching - building and supporting the capacity of the teaching
profession
3.4.1 IEU agrees with the statement in the discussion document that improving the quality of teaching
is a complex task, in part because teaching is a complex task. It is a profession that requires
both technical and emotional intelligence, the ability to be flexible and respond to new demands
all the time, and the courage and commitment to help young people find and fulfil their potential
every day.
IEU is pleased that the document also states that the government recognises that there are
many great teachers working in Victorian schools at present, achieving outstanding successes
in educating, motivating and inspiring young Victorians. (page 6)
3.4.2 Cohesive and consistent approach necessary
IEU notes that the discussion document has focussed on three broad areas in which it is
proposed to improve the quality of teaching – attracting stronger candidates and improving their
preparation; stimulating a culture of excellence and effective professional development; and
elevating the role of leadership at school and system level.
While not disagreeing that the above areas are important components in developing and
supporting quality teaching, IEU believes that there is a lack of a comprehensiveness and
consistency in the proposals. The overarching and guiding premise must be to support a
capacity building approach to teacher and leadership effectiveness. Many of the specific
proposals in New Directions, however, focus little on capacity building and much more on
managerial control and compliance.
Many researchers looking at system reform have identified successful drivers of improved
educational outcomes. The IEU’s response to New Directions is informed by this research.

Performance-based culture – teacher appraisal and unsatisfactory performance
In the document’s Section 3. Creating a high performing profession: stimulate a culture of
excellence and effective professional development, IEU agrees with the summary of what top
tier systems do in respect to professional collaboration, research and professional learning.
However, IEU does not agree with the statement that a common characteristic of high
performing organisations more broadly is an intensely performance-based culture.
It is not clear what is meant by ‘performance-based culture’ but from the elements picked out of
the various systems used as examples, it would appear to mean a system of appraisal akin to
that quoted as occurring in Singapore – an A to E teacher rating system.
The document’s version of appraisal and feedback is not the model used in successful
countries such as Finland, for example, and does not support a collaborative, non-punitive
approach. Teacher appraisal will not work unless it is embedded in a school culture of learning
where teachers are motivated to learn from feedback. Peer observation will only be an effective
development tool where there is trust and it is focused on improving student learning and
teacher collaboration. In order for collaborative approaches to work well, schools need to be
resourced to give teachers and leaders adequate time (see section below Teachers work – time
and organisation). The New Directions focus on data collection (such as through NAPLAN), and
the use of measurement tools that reflect teacher progress is inadequate in respect to the
measures required to support building teacher effectiveness.
Processes focused on unsatisfactory performance must be fair and consistent. Concerns over
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areas of teaching performance must be evidenced, and where found to be substantiated,
support given to assist the teacher to develop in these areas. Where all areas supporting the
profession work together, that is, high level of teacher pre-service training, collaborative
cultures in schools, and timely access to good quality professional development, then dealing
with unsatisfactory performance in a formalised way should be a rare occurrence.

Collaborative cultures
Michael Fullan from the University of Toronto reports in his paper Choosing the Wrong Drivers
for Whole School Reform (2011) that every high performing system studied by the McKinsey
group in their study (How the world’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better)
combined policies to attract and develop a high quality teaching force along with strategies and
incentives for leaders and teachers to work together. This study highlights that successful
countries did not get that good just attracting different people to the profession. They also
simultaneously changed the profession on the ground by building collaborative cultures focused
on developing educator commitment and competence.
Whole system success requires commitment that comes from intrinsic motivation and improved
technical competencies of groups of educators working together purposefully. IEU is concerned
that many of the proposals in New Directions do not promote this essential element, and indeed
work against the motivation, commitment and collaborative culture necessary.

Teacher Quality
The focus on teacher quality in the document has fallen into the same problematic approach
that has dogged the USA. The approach to ‘improving teacher quality’ relies on a deficit view of
teachers who are seen to lack the skills and knowledge necessary to reach identified standards,
who need to be assessed against these standards and continually topped up with professional
development to the required levels, or removed from teaching altogether.
IEU believes that what we mean by the much quoted term ‘quality teaching’ is really what Fullan
and other education thinkers call effective instruction. What constitutes effective instruction
(teaching) is the crux of preservice teacher training, professional development activities, and
collaborative professional endeavour.
Focussing on the nexus between student engagement/achievement and developing strong
instructional expertise is key. The government’s approach needs to focus on the best/most
effective ways of developing strong instructional expertise. Motivation and expertise go hand in
hand.

Individualistic, reward- based drivers are not effective
Much of the research on successful system approaches to improving quality agree that those
methods which focus on using test results, teacher appraisal to reward or punish teachers and
schools, and which promote individual versus group solutions fail dismally and have been
abandoned.
IEU does not support performance based payment (‘differentiated rewards based on effort and
performance’) as an effective incentive for teachers and leaders to do their job well.
Performance-based payment and incentives do not support the collegiality necessary to
systematically improve student learning.

Teacher’s Work – time and organisation
An important area that the New Directions discussion paper does not deal with is the issue of
the organisation of teachers’ work. If the Victorian government is sincere in its desire to lift the
learning outcomes of students, then the organisation of teachers’ work should be discussed.
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It should be noted that the top performing countries (as measured by PISA results) do not have
the same balance of classroom instruction and collegial teacher planning time as has become
the practice in Australia. Sahlberg notes that ‘interestingly, high performing nations in all
academic domains included in PISA rely less on formal teaching time as a driver of student
learning (Finland, Korea, Japan), whereas nations with much lower levels of academic
achievement (Italy, Portugal, and Greece) require significantly more formal instruction for their
students’. Sahlberg also highlights that lower teaching hours provide teachers more
opportunities to engage in school improvement, curriculum planning, personal professional
development during their working hours.
Far from addressing the need for a different balance in teacher class time and preparation time,
New Directions instead proposes that teachers use school holiday time for mandated
professional development. This proposal implies that teachers have too many holidays and do
no preparation and assessment etc in them. In reality, at primary and secondary level, Australia
has a longer school year with on average 197 days of instruction per year compared to the
OECD average of 186. Only two OECD countries have more days of instruction per year than
the gazetted school term days in Australian states and territories.
Individualisation of education and improved teacher preparation time is a world-wide
educational approach. Yet, if we look at a comparison of teacher time spent per week on direct
instruction we have an interesting picture – Australia averages 20 hours, Shanghai 10 – 12
hours, South Korea 16 and the OECD average is 18 hours.
New Directions needs to acknowledge that teaching is a holistic profession combining work with
students in the classroom and collaboration with colleagues in the staff room.

Pre-service Teacher education and attracting the best candidates
IEU believes that teaching is a demanding profession requiring high academic qualifications.
Teachers’ key role in pedagogical decision making requires teacher education to install in all
prospective teachers well-developed knowledge and skills related to curriculum development
and student assessment theory and practice
A broad based teacher education curriculum must ensure that newly prepared teachers
possess well-balanced knowledge and skills in both theory and practice. It also should ensure
that prospective teachers develop deep professional insight into education from several
perspectives, including educational psychology and sociology, curriculum theory, student
assessment, special needs education, and deep pedagogical content knowledge in their
particular subject areas.
Candidates selected into teacher education courses need to be able to meet the high standards
of teacher education courses.
IEU does not support the fast-tracking of prospective teachers into the teaching workforce
before the above mentioned skills and knowledge have been attained to the level of at least a
four year qualification, containing at least the equivalence of a one year teacher education
component. Such fast tracking programs cannot adequately prepare a teacher to cope with the
complexity of teaching.

Leadership
New Directions acknowledges the importance of good leadership. It highlights three areas of
action aimed at elevating the role of principals – attracting and preparing school leaders,
supporting and evaluating them, and acting at a system level to enable continuous
improvement of schools.
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It places most of its emphasis for action on the responsibility for principals to ‘lead the reform
targeting teacher quality’ by a raft of proposals aimed at ‘requiring principals to take
responsibility for the organisation of teaching and use the industrial flexibilities available to them
to increase productivity and implement any other changes required to support great teaching’.
However, the major thrust of these responsibilities in respect to teaching staff are around the
limited managerial tasks associated with hiring teachers, identifying high potential teachers, and
managing teacher performance
The attraction of and support for principals similarly is limited by the overemphasis on a
managerial model of executive search functions, allowing applicants from beyond the teaching
profession, and removing teachers from selection panels. The support of principals is
overshadowed by an overemphasis on measures for reward and evaluation through the linking
of principal performance to ‘ambitious targets’ around school improvement and the like.
New Directions does not adequately emphasise, if at all, the importance of building capacity of
leadership teams for school improvement, and identifying and fostering the skills necessary to
do this effectively.
Good leadership is critical to school improvement. The ultimate purpose of school improvement
and therefore good leadership, however, is seen to be the improvement of student learning in
the school. School leaders have a significant role to play in enabling teachers to work
effectively with students to help them to learn. School leaders need to understand what
supports effective student learning.
Increasing leadership capacity in schools means increasing the capacity of others in the school.
Building capacity is in essence the building of a learning community, one with skills, culture and
internal conditions that enable it to manage productive change. The two main components of
the capacity-building model are therefore leadership capacity and the capacity developed in the
professional learning community. (Russell, Marshall, Mackay and Jane 2004)
These key areas of focus are missing from New Directions.
4.0 Conclusion
The discussion paper New Directions aims to ‘stimulate and inform discussion about the reform
we need’. IEU believes that any reform process must have student learning at its centre and
focus on ways to enhance this. New Directions needs to start from this premise. As Fullan
(2010) so succinctly summarizes:
In the successful countries it is clear that there is an absolute belief that quality education for all
is crucial to their future. These countries then approach the task with the knowledge that
everyone must be part of the solution. They know that teachers are key to improvement and
can only work effectively when they are supported. They make major, coordinated efforts to
improve the quality of teachers through various form of support: from recruitment to the
profession at initial teacher education through the early years of teaching, continuous learning
on the job, good working conditions including team development, and differentiated roles of
leadership as the career evolves.
These are the challenges that Victorian education, its schools and systems, need to be
supported to address.
Response of the Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania
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References
Fullan, M. (2011) Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform. Seminar series. Centre
for Strategic Education, Melbourne
Russell, J. Marshall, G. Mackay, T. and Jane, G (2004) Leading teams: Building the capacity of
leadership teams for school improvement. Reprinted in Leading the education debate. Volume
2, IARTV/CSE 2007 , Melbourne
Sahlberg, P (2011) Finnish Lessons – What can the world learn from educational change in
Finland. Teachers College Press , New York
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Response of the Independent Education Union Victoria Tasmania
PO Box 1320 South Melbourne 3205
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