New performance measures for SA schools
South Australia’s new Education Minister Susan Close will develop new ways to measure the performance of South Australian schools.
Close, appointed in early February, has asked her department to examine new ways to track the quality of schools, beyond the national NAPLAN tests.
Flagging a renewed focus on improving the quality of public school education, Close told InDaily that the NAPLAN was useful but had its limits.
“For the system, unfortunately because it’s the only clearly reported indicator, it’s the only one we end up talking about,” she said.
“What I want to see is a more diverse set of identifiable and quantifiable indicators for how schools are going, including NAPLAN.
“We’re developing other forms of measure of numeracy and literacy and I’m interested in exploring whether there are other qualitative and quantitative measures that we could be applying.
“But that’s week two of a minister saying – ‘I’d like to see if we can do this’.”
NAPLAN results released last August showed South Australia lagging behind other states on 17 out of 20 measures.
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Close says she wants to see those measures improve, but turning it around will not be a quick fix.
“I do want to see our results go up,” she said. “I note that we have a higher proportion of disadvantaged families in South Australia, we have a higher proportion of kids entering the system with development delay, and I know that has a consequence for NAPLAN.
“So I don’t assume that anything I can do quickly in the schools is going to have a transformative difference. But you do see schools that improve how they are teaching and the results in NAPLAN and other results.”
Close, who replaced Jennifer Rankine in the troubled portfolio, believes a new process of reviewing schools – led by experienced principal Susan Cameron – will be a key to improving quality.
Cameron and her team were appointed last year and are beginning individual school reviews this year.
Close wants the review to find out where individual schools are leading or lagging, and come up with a set of actions to address any problems.
She wants to the reviews to bring “rigour” to the process of managing school performance.
“I think we’ve had a bit of a gap in the history of management of schools where that kind of school-by-school review hasn’t happened, and I think this is going to be one of the keys to lifting that quality,” she said.
She sees Cameron’s work as being connected with a Government promise, made in the Governor’s speech at the opening of parliament this month, to decentralise departmental bureaucrats and make sure they work more closely with schools.
In Close’s mind, this is about providing schools with more autonomy, giving them administrative and policy support which is more tailored to their individual needs.
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While the details of what that will mean remain sketchy, Close believes external performance management doesn’t mean greater centralised control.
“This sort of intervention – this is part of the autonomy and empowerment of the school,” she said. “You don’t asume they’re all the same … What’s happening in this school with this community? What advice do we have? I’d expect to see quality improvements as a result of that.”
The idea of decentralising the bureaucracy came from Premier Jay Weatherill, a former Education Minister.
Close says the department is working through what this means, but she’s reluctant to reintroduce a regional office model.
“We’re going through a process now to determine where the effort of head office is best directed to support schools.
“There will be some debate internally as we look at each of those (areas). Sometimes is is better to keep things centrally – it’s more efficient – but making schools successful is what we need to do.”
Close was educated in public schools, completing her secondary education at Blackwood High School.
Her two children are also being educated in the public system.
While she retains responsibility for child protection and the key agency Families SA, Weatherill has brought in Deputy Premier John Rau to manage reform of the child protection system after several horror years for the agency.
She says Rau will help guide her on how to address the eventual findings of the federal royal commission into the abuse of children in institutional care, a state royal commission into the child protection system, and the Coroner’s ongoing inquiry into the death of Chloe Valentine.
The new arrangement seems likely to free her to focus more on educational outcomes – a dynamic she acknowledges.
She is “personally extremely interested in education” and will be focusing on that side of the portfolio, but “not at the expense of my responsibilities”.
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