Closing the Gap: Leading Schools in Focused Collaboration

Closing the gap: Leading schools in focused collaboration

Patrea Walton, Department of Education, Queensland

Samantha Knowles, Department of Education, Queensland

Introduction

In 2008, a significant step was made towards reconciliation between First Nations people (referred to in Australia as Indigenous people) and other Australians. The then Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, delivered a landmark apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples (Australian Government 2008). In this speech, the Prime Minister acknowledged that all governments have a special responsibility to engage with Indigenous communities[1] in order to rebuild the trust lost through the laws and policies of successive Parliaments that have caused profound grief, suffering and loss. The speech laid out aspirations for a future which embraces all Australians and which harnesses the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to “close the gap” in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

To enact the promises of the Apology, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) launched an integrated national strategy to address Indigenous disadvantage in Australia. The strategy, Closing the Gap[2], was viewed as a generational approach to addressing Indigenous disadvantage quarantined from the fluidity of policy typically bound by short-term election cycles (COAG 2008). The targets were:

• closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation (by 2031);

• halving the gap in infant mortality rates for Indigenous children (by 2018);

• ensuring all Indigenous four years olds in remote communities have access to early childhood education (by 2013) [later amended to 95 per cent by 2025];

• halving the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy (by 2018);

• halving the gap for Indigenous people aged 20-24 in Year 12 attainment by 2020; and

• halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (by 2018).

In this paper, we outline the approaches taken by the Queensland Government to address two of the Closing the Gap targets relating to education: halving the gap in Year 12 attainment and lifting performance in Year 3 Reading. The combined histories and expertise of our people at every level were necessary to engage in system-wide reform. It describes the collaborative efforts of the Queensland state school sector, in partnership with local communities and major stakeholders like the Queensland Teachers’ Union, to seize the moral imperative and drive behavioural change across the state. The paper also details the deliberate and purposeful actions taken by regional directors, principals and teachers to directly and explicitly combat the major educational disadvantage experienced by Indigenous students in Queensland. The simple goal was to redress what leading Indigenous researcher, Dr Chris Sarra, called a “tide of low expectations” for Indigenous students (Sarra 2017).

The Queensland context

Queensland is the second largest Australian state (with an area of 1,730,648 km2) comparatively five times the size of Japan and seven times the size of Great Britain (Queensland Government, 2018a). It is the third most populated state and the most decentralised with nearly half of its 4.9 million people living outside the capital city of Brisbane. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People account for 3.6 per cent of Queensland’s population (Population Australia, 2018).

The state education system is divided into seven geographic regions. In 2017, the Department catered for 534,426 students in 1238 schools across the state with more than half of these located in regional, rural or remote communities. There were 53,559 Indigenous students enrolled in Queensland state schools (approximately 9.9 per cent of all enrolments) increasing 18.5 per cent from 2013 to 2017 making this cohort the fastest growing population in the state education sector.

Fundamental to achieving any large-scale behavioural change in a vast decentralised educational system such as Queensland is the management and maintenance of a ‘tight-loose’ coupling model for project governance. In 2014–2015, the Department initiated a reform program to close the gap. The Department commenced by setting an agenda that provided school communities, from Regional Directors through to individual class teachers, with:

• a sharp and narrow focus on closing the Year 12 certification gap

• clear regional and school accountabilities based on outcomes

• flexibility to disperse and deploy resources to suit their local community needs

• access to a suite of high quality resources to resolve issues limiting the achievement of desired outcomes.

The Deputy Director-General State Schools, Regional Directors and Assistant Directors-General disseminated the consistent message through every arm of the organisation to “do whatever it takes” to close the Year 12 certification gap (Button, Dungan, Nixon & Walton 2016). Clear communications regarding the expectations, aims and outcomes of the initiative were reinforced at regular weekly meetings, publicly discussed in regional presentations, events and conferences. The systemic drive to close the gap in Year 12 certification was unequivocal.

To assist regions and schools to strategically assess, evaluate and plan their actions to close the gap, the Performance Monitoring and Reporting Branch and State Schools Performance revised their data sets and publication formats to ensure that they were user-friendly, accessible and met the needs identified by individual schools and not just the system. This helped clarify regional and school accountabilities and enabled attention to be targeted to every individual Indigenous student entering Year 12 across state.

Central office, regions and schools used data walls to facilitate cooperative discussions and planning to locate strengths and weaknesses across settings and locations. A small team of centrally based officers provided tailored support to regions and schools based on historical and ‘real time’ certification attainment data. Support included workshops for schools, leadership sessions to build school and regional capacity, and brokering partnerships with external learning providers.

Case management was organised at regional and school level, contextualising the advice and resources and direction being provided by Central Office. Regional data walls drew on Central Office data sets but added local, more relevant and granular information that could impact on student success. The approach allowed flexibility and innovation to flourish, drawing on the considerable experience of local communities, but held within the bounded constraints of the common goals and data sets of the Year 12 initiative. Different ways of working and monitoring models emerged within different regions, showcasing the unwavering commitment of teachers and principals working in partnerships with stakeholders like the Queensland Teachers’ Union to achieve a shared vision.

Outcomes

A decade on from the release of the Closing the Gap strategies, some targets appear elusive (Australian Government 2018) but significant progress has been made in regard to two educational targets:

• ensuring that Indigenous four years olds have access to early childhood education. By 2016, 91 per cent of Indigenous children (approximately 14,700 children) were enrolled in early childhood programs.

• halving the gap in Year 12 attainment. The proportion of Indigenous 20-24 year-olds achieving Year 12 or equivalent increased from 47.4 per cent in 2006 to 65.3 per cent in 2016. While the rates for non-Indigenous Australians also improved, the gap narrowed by 12.6 percentage points over the past decade (from 36.4 in 2006 to 23.8 percentage points in 2016)” (Australian Government, 2018, p. 9).

Other targets such as those relating to school attendance were “not on track.” Despite this, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported an enrolment of 215,453 students identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander in Government schools in 2017 (ABS 2017) while 2016 Census data showed an increase in school attendance by Indigenous students between 2006 and 2016 (ABS 2018). Attendance of students in the 15 to 17 year age group increased from 51 per cent and 54 per cent to 70 per cent and 73 per cent respectively. Further, and encouragingly, there has been a marked increase in the 2017 National Apparent Retention Rate for all full-time students remaining in school until Year 12 (84.8%); an increase from 84.3 per cent in 2016. The Year 7 to 12 Apparent Retention Rate for Indigenous students was 62.4% in 2017, up from 59.8 per cent in 2016. Over the past 10 years the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander retention rate has increased significantly, from 47.2 per cent in 2008 to 62.4 per cent in 2017.

In terms of Indigenous educational achievement, however, it has been noted that the proportion achieving national minimum standards(NMS) in the 2017 NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) tests is on track in only one (Year 9 numeracy) of the eight areas (reading and numeracy for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9). However, the gap between Indigenous and non- Indigenous students has narrowed since 2008 across all NAPLAN areas, particularly reading in Years 3 and 5, and numeracy in Years 5 and 9. In 2017, attention was directed towards closing the Year 3 Reading gap in Queensland, adopting similar principles to those proven effective in the Year 12 certification initiative. The current data shows that:

• 96.4 per cent of non-Indigenous students in Queensland are achieving at or above the national minimum standard (NMS) in Year 3 Reading.

• 86.1 per cent of Indigenous students in Year 3 are reaching the same standard (an improvement from 77.1 per cent in 2008)

• 807 Indigenous students achieved in the upper two bands of NAPLAN in 2017 Year 3 Reading.

Of the seven national educational jurisdictions, Queensland has shown the largest improvements in education outcomes for Indigenous students in Australia, with significant improvement in six of the eight measures of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) from 2008 to 2016 in reading, writing and numeracy achievements. Most notably, Queensland is the only state to have achieved the national goal of halving the gap in Year 12 certification for Indigenous students, achieving this milestone in 2015 – more than 5 years ahead of the 2020 target. In 2017, 97.2 per cent of Year 12 Indigenous students achieved a Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE) or a Queensland Certificate of Individual Achievement (QCIA). Reflecting on the decade since Closing the Gap was introduced, the Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships. The Hon. Jackie Trad noted that:

• Between 2006 and 2016, the proportion of Indigenous 20–24 year olds in Queensland with Year 12 or equivalent attainment increased from 56.2 per cent to 71.2 per cent.

• From 2012 to 2017, the retention rate of Indigenous students in high school in Queensland improved by 11.7 percentage points to be 73.8 per cent, well ahead of the national average retention rate of 62.4 per cent.

• Improvements in pre-school enrolment show 87.7 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in 2016.

• A continuing long-term decline in mortality rates for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (a 20 per cent decline from 1998 to 2015) and importantly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children under 5 years old (a 22 per cent decline since 2005) in Queensland.

(Queensland Government 2018b)

Conclusion

An Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) report examined six Canadian provinces and territories, and referenced the work occurring in New Zealand and Australia to disrupt the generational educational failures experienced by Indigenous populations (OECD 2017). The report commended the “significant and sustained improvements in the proportion of Indigenous students achieving Year 12 certification” and acknowledged the importance placed by the Queensland state school sector on authentic and consistent engagement with communities to inform and shape these changes (OECD 2017, p. 85).

The scale of reforms required to eliminate longstanding educational gaps cannot rely on one system or organisation in isolation from its community. It is only through collaboration with key stakeholders who hold sway over the tenor and tone of conversations occurring at dinner tables, in shopping centres and the media, as well as schools. Sharing data and honestly accepting the opportunity to engage in genuine conversations about successes and failures across our schools is essential to progress.

Queensland is very proud to be leading Australia in closing the education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. We recognise the enormous efforts occurring daily in homes and classrooms around the state and congratulate our communities. Our Education Minister, The Hon. Grace Grace, is leading the way with this recognition by announcing a new award category for Indigenous Education in our Showcase Awards for Excellence in Schools program[3]. The Showcase Awards are part of a system wide program to recognise and reward state schools that are significantly improving student learning outcomes. The inclusion of a new stand-alone category focused on Indigenous education achievements provides further opportunities to celebrate the successes and share our knowledge across schools, regions and the state. As a state system, we are not, however, satisfied with where we are, and nor should we be. We have a legacy of generational disadvantage to combat and we see this as the start of changing the future for all our children.

References

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). (2017). Schools, Australia, 2017: Summary of findings. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4221.0main+features22017

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics). (2018). 2076.0 - Census of Population and Housing: Characteristics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2016. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/35EA91C74F9E01ABCA257AC200139D04?Opendocument

Australian Government. (2008). Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Retrieved from https://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples

Australian Government. (2018). Closing the gap: Prime Minister’s Report 2018. Retrieved from http://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/ctg-report-2018.pdf?a=1

Button, S., Dungan, J., Nixon, L., & Walton, P. (2016). Whatever it takes: Year 12 Certification in Queensland. Australian Educational Leader, 38(4), 28-32.

COAG (Council of Australian Governments). (2008). National Indigenous Reform Agreement (Closing the Gap). Canberra, Australia: COAG. Retrieved from http://www.federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/content/npa/health/_archive/indigenous-reform/national-agreement_sept_12.pdf

Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). 2017. Promising Practices in Supporting Success for Indigenous Students. Paris, France: OECD. Retrieved from

Population Australia. (2018). Brisbane population. Retrieved from

Queensland Government. (2018a). Interesting facts about Queensland. Retrieved from https://www.qld.gov.au/about/about-queensland/statistics-facts/facts

Queensland Government. (2018b). Queensland committed to Closing the Gap. Viewed 07 March 2018 at http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2018/2/15/queensland-committed-to-closing-the-gap

Sarra, C. (2017). Changing the tide of low expectations in Indigenous Education. Retrieved from

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[1] Indigenous Australians refers to two distinct cultures: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Where this paper refers to Indigenous Queenslanders or peoples, both are being referred to, in the understanding that they are not an homogenous group.

[2] For further information, visit https://www.pmc.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/closing-gap

[3] For further information, visit http://statements.qld.gov.au/Statement/2018/2/23/2018-education-awards-open-for-nominations