The Public Education Council Wishes to Thank the Many Students, Teachers and Principals

Acknowledgements

The Public Education Council wishes to thank the many students, teachers and principals who welcomed the Council into their schools and generously shared their ideas about public education.

The Council is also grateful for the support and cooperation given by officers of the NSW Department of Education and Training.

The Council would also like to thank the following academics, educators and policy makers who contributed their time and expertise to the public forums held to discuss the challenges currently facing public schools: Craig Campbell, Sue Dockett, Don Edgar, Robyn Ewing, Alan Hayes, Phil Lambert, Barry McGaw, John Pegg, Brian Powyer, Frances Press, Alan Rice, Geoffrey Sherington, Margaret Vickers and Tony Vinson.

To the many practising teachers and regional and school leaders who participated in the Council’s forums and ensured well grounded consideration of the issues facing public schools the Council wishes to express its appreciation. Particular thanks are extended to those who gave presentations on the challenges being confronted and the range of innovative responses being developed: Rhonda Brain, Julie Cadger, Ruythe Dufty, Karen Hall and Ann McIntyre.

The Council is also grateful for the advice and support of officers across key agencies of the NSW Government concerned with the well-being and development of children and young people. Particular thanks are due to Gillian Calvert, Commissioner for Children and Young People and Jenny McDonald, Office of Children and Young People, The Cabinet Office.

The Council also had the benefit of the views of many practitioners in the community and private early childhood sector. Particular thanks are due to the Oorangah Wandarrah Multi-purpose Aboriginal Children’s Centre at Airds and the Wunanbiri Pre-school at Alexandria who welcomed Council members into their centres.

The Council takes responsibility for the content of this report, but wishes to acknowledge the contribution to its work of its secretariat, and to thank these able and committed officers for the support and stimulus they have provided.

Published by the NSW Public Education Council

Sydney, 2005

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the NSW Public Education Council and not necessarily those of the NSW Department of Education and Training or the Government of New South Wales.

New South Wales Public Schools

BUILDING ON STRONG FOUNDATIONS

Society puts the hardest jobs in the public sector. In the private sector, we handle important but easier jobs - where there are reasonably clear signals about the value of the things we make. But when we are not satisfied with the outcomes created by the private sector - when something has not been attended to, or has created ancillary negative consequences, and so on - then we ask the public sector to intervene. When there are ambiguities about value, or conflicts about priorities and values, we ask the government to step in. So we shouldn't be surprised to discover that the problems the public sector is handling are the most difficult, most confusing, and most conflict-ridden - and, therefore, the hardest to guarantee high performance.
Professor Herman Leonard
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University[1]

Foreword

New South Wales has a proud tradition of over 150 years of public investment in public schools, providing free, secular education to students from all backgrounds and communities. The NSW public school system has developed from its initial role of providing a basic primary level education to providing comprehensive education from Kindergarten to Year 12, leading to employment or further education and training, for approximately two thirds of the state’s children. Public schools are constantly evolving to meet increasing expectations and the needs of changing populations through a blend of continuity and change.

In recent decades, however, there has been a dramatic change in the context in which public schools are operating in New South Wales, which has no parallel in times past. The Public Education Council has given priority to action that it believes the NSW Government must take to avoid damage to school education in New South Wales generally.

Australia’s falling birthrate is about to affect a school system which has developed almost entirely in line with a growing student population. This downturn will bring new challenges as well as new opportunities.

This demographic change is one of a combination of factors that is now changing radically the previous relationships between public and non-government schools.

The public school system has always had to deal with population shift and areas of decline, with the need to contract services and close schools in some areas with a declining school-age population and to expand services and open new schools in high growth areas. The public school system, likewise, has always co-existed with a non-government system as well as independent schools. Growing affluence and smaller families mean that more parents than in previous generations are able to pay fees for their children to attend non-government schools and are free to exercise that choice. Those non-government schools are now publicly funded by both the state and Commonwealth governments.

In a time of overall growth in the school age population, the competition for students is masked by the fact that both the public and the non-government sectors can expand. But enrolment decline in many areas of the state will place existing schools in competition with each other, within and between the public and non-government sectors, to capture a sufficient share of a dwindling pool of students to maintain their own viability. What were pockets of school age population decline and intense competition among schools will now grow to form a far more pervasive front, according to projected underlying demographic trends.

Increasing public grants to non-government schools since the 1970s have been accompanied by a growth in that sector, with a shift of around ten percentage points of the population from the public to the non-government sector. This shift in the balance of enrolments has not resulted from students being drawn randomly from across the school population. Non-government schools are drawing their students disproportionately from higher income families, with the effect of changing the previous socio-economic composition of the sectors. There is now a need to recognise the consequences of taking funding policies for non-government schools that were developed when the school age population was expanding rapidly and applying them in times of slowing and contracting student numbers.

The fact that many experienced school leaders and teachers in both public and non-government schools are moving towards retirement has the potential to intensify competition among schools for the best teachers, leaving schools that are vulnerable in the market with a disproportionate share of the less experienced .

Market forces are intrinsic to education. But there is a need to recognise that current policy settings and population changes are making many NSW public schools vulnerable to market forces in a way not previously experienced and on terms increasingly working against them. These forces are operating within the public system itself as well as between the public system and an expanding non-government school sector.

Public schools are now being placed in a competition for students, teachers and public funding. They are faced with policies for the funding and planning of schools that are contributing to a maldistribution between the sectors of the total workload of schooling. The effects are exacerbated by a growing misallocation of the total resources available from public and private sources in relation to the share of work that each sector accepts.

The combined effect of these changes is profound. What is the role and responsibility of government in education, in the light of these market forces and the changed conditions which now confront the public schools that are their principal responsibility? The Council has taken the view that a key responsibility of governments in education is to protect the status of education as a ‘public good’ where the benefits to the whole community are greater than the sum of the benefits to the individual learners; and where schools provide a framework of universal opportunity so that benefits to some are not achieved at the cost of others. The Council recognises that schooling is a partnership and that school communities and the broader community as well as governments have responsibility for the health and sustainability of public schools. This report deals specifically with action that lies within the power of the NSW Government.

As well as making explicit the underlying values that it believes should underpin the policies of the NSW Government, the Council has identified the practical reasons why the priority for public investment in schooling in New South Wales must be the provision of high quality public schools. Any weakening of the long-held commitment to a strong and socially representative system of public schools in New South Wales will reduce the capacity for the state to deliver quality schooling in all areas, to achieve the most economic use of public resources, and to achieve the spread and depth of educational achievement necessary for personal, social and economic well-being in today’s world.

The priorities identified in this report are those that the Council considers most urgent, if the community is to sustain its confidence in the commitment of government to sustaining and advancing the public school system that has contributed so much to quality of life in New South Wales.

NSW Public Schools: Building on strong foundations xxi

Executive summary vii

Recommendations xv

Chapter 1:

Positioning public schools for the future 1

Chapter 2:

Resourcing public education 22

Chapter 3:

Ensuring equality of access to quality teaching 47

Chapter 4:

Strategic planning for demographic change 68

Chapter 5:

Information systems and organisational intelligence 76

Chapter 6:

Early childhood education – building blocks for life and learning 80

Chapter 7:

Future directions for primary education 101

Chapter 8:

Future directions for secondary education 114

Appendix

NSW Public Education Council: Terms of reference and membership 124

References 125

List of tables

Table 1: Distribution of selected student categories in public and non-government

schools in NSW 26

Table 2: Numbers of beginning teachers appointed to individual schools, 2004 52

Table 3: Schools with concentrations of beginning teachers in 2004, by region 52

Table 4: Age distribution of teachers in NSW public schools 2004 53

List of figures

Figure 1: Relative cost impacts of student and community factors 25

Figure 2: Age profile of permanent public school teachers, NSW 54

Figure 3: Permanent NSW public school teachers aged 59 years or over 54

Figure 4: NSW primary and secondary school age population tends 1985 – 2020 69

Figure 5: Change in 5-14 and 15-19 year old population, 1996-2001

Sydney Statistical District 75

Figure 6: Change in government school enrolments, 1996-2001

Statistical sub-divisions within Sydney Statistical Division 75

Figure 7: NSW population composition 87

Figure 8: NSW population 0-8 years 1990-2020 87

Figure 9: NSW secondary age population, students enrolled in government

and non-government schools and TAFE 117

Figure 10: NSW government school apparent retention rates, and full time

employment, participation and unemployment rates of 15-19 year olds 117

NSW Public Schools: Building on strong foundations xxi

Executive summary

Positioning public schools for the future

In today’s knowledge economy, education is essential for ensuring both economic prosperity and social advancement, for individuals and the community as a whole. This concept of education as both a public good and an individual entitlement is embedded in the NSW Education Act (1990) and in the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century; and is central to the NSW public school system.

New South Wales has in place key elements of a sound public education system, including a comprehensive and rigorous curriculum, statewide systems for assessing student achievement, qualified and committed teachers and strong student welfare and support programs.

Despite the many strengths of the public school system, demographic and social changes, economic pressures and policy decisions of state and Commonwealth governments have combined to produce a climate of insecurity in New South Wales for public education.

The NSW public education system now more than ever needs strong leadership and clear direction to meet these challenges; and to overcome the unintended effects of a series of restructures which have weakened the capacity for public advocacy. Work is needed to establish a climate where school and system leaders are encouraged to take a proactive role in advocating publicly the benefits and achievements, as well as the challenges, of public education.

The Council is aware of a range of competing views about possible future directions for public schooling, which involve different approaches to governance and financing. The Council does not accept that governance and delivery structures are ends in themselves and notes that many proponents of change are unable to provide evidence of the educational, social or economic benefits that would result. There are real risks in trying to simply transplant models of schooling developed overseas to New South Wales.

A strong and socially representative system of public schools continues to provide the best means for the NSW Government to provide quality education in all schools, combined with the economic use of public resources. Investment in public education is now a key to bridging the growing divide between families and communities that are reaping the benefits of economic change and those being forced to the margins of social and economic life.

The Public Education Council welcomes the fact that the NSW Government has implemented a number of recent initiatives to strengthen public education. But a more concerted effort is needed by the government, through its Department of Education and Training, to strengthen public confidence in public schools and to provide the conditions for teachers to work most effectively.

There is a need to ensure that all government policies and priorities in education give explicit and practical effect to the principle set out in the NSW Education Act (1990) that ‘the principal responsibility of the State in the education of children is the provision of public education’.

Resourcing public education