I was privileged to attend the Broadford Secondary College awards night [ last night, December 18th] and witness the launch of the Delaney Family Endowment for Year 12 students studying at Broadford Secondary College. This is a $20,000 Endowment in perpetuity.
How simply the policy challenges facing the nation can be distilled in to an eloquent and most generous commitment by a family that simply wishes to see everyone have the opportunity to achieve, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Such a genuine, humble and heartfelt commitment to an entire community will, I know, have an impact for many, many generations to come. This is philanthropy in its truest form.
What a wonderful example for all communities and policy makers.
The disturbing scenes in London over the last few days bring in to a stark contrast the competing challenges of the immediate, short-term need for social order and the extended, long-term need for social inclusion.
There are many thousands of pictures and words that will be written about this London summer.
The soul sinks at the pictures – of a woman leaping from a burning building, of the owners of a family shop seeing their life’s work turned to ash, at the sight of a thug unzipping the rucksack still on the back of an injured teenager and taking from it what he wants. The soul sinks at the sight of people trashing the places where at least some of them live.
Zoe Williams, also writing in the Guardian about the psychology of looting says:
Looting in Hackney
this is what happens when people don’t have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can’t afford, and they have no reason ever to believe that they will be able to afford it. Hiller takes up this idea:”Consumer society relies on your ability to participate in it. So what we recognise as a consumer now was born out of shorter hours, higher wages and the availability of credit. If you’re dealing with a lot of people who don’t have the last two, that contract doesn’t work. They seem to be targeting the stores selling goods they would normally consume. So perhaps they’re rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can’t afford it.”
Many are asking, “Is this a one-off or the beginning of wider, deeper unrest?”
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I suspect the longer-term response rests in the effectiveness or otherwise of some fledgling educational and social-enterprise experiments.
I am particularly familiar with Hackney, having visited and studied some of the educational institutions that have been developed in the area over the last decade, so the events there strike a personal and professional chord with me.
This is an economic struggle for social mobility and schools will be one of the keys to the success or failure of these communities, indeed the wider society.
Mossbourne Camera
Hackney and surrounds has been the site of unique educational and social-enterprise experiments [for want of a better word] with the introduction of the Mossbourne Community Academy and the Petchey Academy. These were part of Tony Blair’s “Academy” programme established in 2000. These schools are directly funded by central government and are independent of local government control. These schools receive additional support from personal donors, benefactors or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind, they are self-governing and many are registered charities or operated by other educational charities.
Mossbourne community academy was established seven years ago on the rubble of Hackney Downs school, which was once dubbed the worst in the country.
Mossbourne Community Academy opened in September 2004 and is now an average sized
Mossbourne Grounds
inner-city school with substantially more boys than girls. The proportion of pupils entitled to free school meals is very high, as is the proportion of students from minority ethnic backgrounds. The proportion of students for whom English is not their first language is well above average and the proportion of students with special educational needs and/or disabilities is above average. The academy specialises in information and communication technology (ICT). In summer 2009 the first group of Year 11 students took public examinations. In September 2009 the newly created sixth form began with a sizable group of Year 12 students. The academy is extremely heavily over-subscribed. It reflects a fully comprehensive intake drawn from the locality. The academy has a stable staff and high student stability.
The Petchey Academy specialises in health, care and medical science. The academy moved into its new premises in September 2007. The students reflect the wide ethnic mix in Hackney; about half are of Black African or Caribbean heritage and a significant proportion come from homes where English is not the first language, but few are in the early stages of learning English. The local area is one of considerable disadvantage. About a quarter of students have learning difficulties and/or disabilities, which is higher than that typically found. The academy is significantly over-subscribed and draws its students from about 40 primary schools.
The initiative of the new Academy schools was [and still is] highly controversial, but the focus on producing achievement where previously there was none and focusing on access to employment and higher education pathways, where previously there were none has to be recognised as “drawing the line in the sand” for future generations.
Obviously, the proof will be in the results of these schools. The most recent Ofsted report [ Office for Standards in Education] clearly demonstrates exceptional and outstanding achievement rates for students attending the Mossbourne Academy and good achievement for the Petchey Academy.
In 2009, it was reported that the Mossbourne Academy produced an extraordinary 84% of its pupils achieving five good GCSEs including both English and maths – a performance way above the national average, by children who started out below educational par.
In the context of these riots and civil disorder, one wonders what role these institutions are playing, or can play in the future? This is a new dimension to the challenge of providing social mobility and the promise of participation in society for these schools.
Of course this is too early to tell, but the growing divides in modern societies in wealth, employment and more importantly, simple opportunity, are challenges that we all need to consider.
The Gini index of income disparity since World War Two offers some insight in to the challenges we can expect to see in countries around the world, as in many cases, fewer and fewer people not only possess more, but more importantly fewer and fewer seem to have access to any pathways, traditionally provided by a “good education” to the jobs, incomes and therefore the lives that are part of a traditional social contract.
Gini Index since WWII
The question for for our democracies seems to be, when is enough inequality enough?
A psychology study hit the headlines last Friday under the banner
‘Teacher quality makes little difference, study shows’.
AN AUSTRALIAN study has cast doubt over the “teacher effect”, by suggesting differences between teachers play only a minor role in how well a child will learn.
The global study, led by the University of New England, monitored 500 pairs of identical twins during their first three years of school.
They were divided into two groups: twins who shared the same teacher, and siblings who were split across different classrooms.
The same genetics and home life ensured the twins had the same ability to learn. The study was designed to reveal any differences linked to their teacher alone.
Professor Brian Byrne said the finding contradicted the views of educationalists who claimed teacher quality could account for a variance of up to 40 per cent in a child’s learning outcome.
“Our study shows … the ‘teacher effect’ on differences in children’s acquisition of literacy skills in the early years of schooling is no more – and sometimes less – than 8 per cent,” Professor Byrne said.
“This result is certainly in the direction you would expect if teachers do ‘make a difference’ but it is not very large.
Andrew Leigh observes: Discussing NT schools, the CIS’s Helen Hughes writes:
This week all Australian children in school years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sat numeracy and literacy tests for the second time. The tests are to give Australians an annual snapshot of basic educational progress. The first national ‘NAPLAN’ tests, held in May 2008, showed that 90% of children passed. Western Australia has made the tests available for government schools on the Internet, and Education Minister Julia Gillard has promised that all the 2009 test results will be posted by school.
An overview of the 2008 tests showed that there was no ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Indigenous students in mainstream schools in Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT had the same results as non-Indigenous students.
I find this claim difficult to reconcile with the facts. Looking at the NAPLAN report(15mb), here’s year 7 numeracy:
Achievement Year 7 Numeracy- Indigenous Students by State
To put this into more concrete terms, the average score by year 7 Indigenous students is about the level of year 5 non-Indigenous students. (This is true even if you restrict the comparison to metropolitan schools.)
David Brooks reports on some surprisingly large impacts from a randomised trial of New York “Harlem Children’s Zone” schools. The effects are so big that I find it hard to imagine they’re readily replicable, but it’s tantalizing stuff.
The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.
That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”
If ever there was essential reading for every teacher and every teacher-educator, the work of Professor John Hattie from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, would be at the top of my reading list.
The clarity and focus of such an extensive, system-wide meta-study that focusses on the EFFECTs of what teachers, schools and education systems DO is very compelling.
Professor Hattie delivered one of the key-note presentations at the 2007 EARLI conference [European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction]
The abstract states:
The session will overview a synthesis of over 600 meta-analyses of effects on achievement, highlighting the major themes that influence student learning. From these themes, the presentation will demonstrate the development of an assessment model of student learning that has been available and extensively used in NZ elementary and high schools over the past 5 years. A particular theme of the assessment model has been methods for helping teachers see and understand student progress, enable them to set targets/high expectations, and provide feedback so that there are more aware of the importance of some of the key competencies that act as enhancers or barriers to learning.
I would highly recommend the work of Professor Hattie to all involved in educational research. I would suggest you start by reading his Inaugural Lecture from August 1999; see the link at the bottom of this page.
In this presentation, Professor Hattie presents three parts to his “story”. These are
To identify major influences on achievement [ using 700+ meta-analyses ]
To outline an assessment model based on these influences
To demonstrate the power and joy of Educational Psychology
USA Today is reporting on a new comprehensive study of elementary school classrooms that is being published in this week’s Science magazine. Aside from not being overly engaged, the study of over 2,500 classrooms showed that “The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience.”
Did I mention I have two kids in elementary school? Did I mention I already knew this?
More engaging are some of the nearly 100 comments that the article has garnered due to the new USA Today bloggy style. I didn’t read them all, but I found this one especially charming:
Perhaps the problem is the fact that the formerly drugged up hippies of the 60/70s is the generation that are control of not only the government, but also run the colleges, universities and news outlets. These are also the same peace and free love people who do these studies.
My old [ex] teaching lecturer and the former NSW director-general of education Ken Boston, has urged Australia to back a national curriculum, after his involvement in two failed attempts to make the system work.
“I think it is a big step forward, and it should have happened 20 years ago,” Dr Boston said.
“There is no doubt the children need it and the economy needs it.
