When the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA) was signed by state and territory governments across the country on Wednesday, 31 July, it was clear that cutting the number of Australian teenagers dropping out of secondary school was a key focus.
To dig deeper into many of the measures the agreement aims to address, EducationDaily spoke to Associate Professor Steven Lewis of the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education.
How will measures in the BFSA help reduce the downward trend of high school dropouts?
“I think it remains to be seen whether these measures in the BFSA actually will increase high school retention and completion rates. That being said, it appears that Minister Claire is expecting the major improvements to come from increasing the funding received by public schools, so it is closer to 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS).
The BFSA also is funding additional literacy and numeracy diagnostic testing for younger students to better enable the early identification of students who require additional support. Another key initiative is the provision of additional well-being support for students, including full-service schools, counsellors, well-being coordinators and mental health workers. Announcing such well-being initiatives is a clear acknowledgement that teachers and schools need additional assistance to aid our young people, and we cannot hold teachers solely responsible for this important task.”
What would you say are the most significant major changes Australian school students face as a result of the BFSA?
“I think the BFSA is a clear acknowledgement that students and young people are struggling under the current schooling system.
While schools largely work for students from advantaged backgrounds, they are clearly not meeting the needs of young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds and communities. These include students in rural, regional and remote locations, Indigenous students, and students for whom English is an acquired language.
The measures proposed in the BFSA also suggest that our public schools need far greater support to provide students from these communities with the same opportunities as students from more advantaged backgrounds.”
The new agreement introduces a new national phonics check for all children in year one, as well as plans for a similar foundational numeracy check – what will this look like and how will it impact educators and students?
“The BFSA suggests that “[a] Year one phonics check and an early years of schooling numeracy check (once available)” will be made available to all schools to support the early identification of students who require additional support in these foundational areas of learning. Presumably, this will help schools provide timely and targeted support to those students who need it most.”
With the number of students needing additional support to be cut from 30 per cent to 20 per cent – how will improved NAPLAN results be achieved and what extra pressure will it put on teachers?
“I think this is a very important part of the proposed BFSA. There are many very explicit targets for improvement, including Year 12 completion, school attendance and student achievement. I hope that the BFSA will differ from previous efforts that often ‘blamed’ teachers and schools for not meeting performance targets.
Such previous efforts unfairly hold teachers and schools accountable, but they do not hold government funding and support for teachers to the same level of scrutiny. For the BFSA or any other prospective agreement to achieve its student learning goals, such targets need to hold all stakeholders accountable, rather than only focusing on schools and teachers.
In that sense, progress towards these goals over the years of the BFSA should also provide opportunities for schooling systems and governments to determine how they should better target areas of high need.”
School attendance is under the microscope – but what will be done to improve this issue? And how can schools and families actually implement solutions?
“This is a key aspect of schooling and the well-being of our young people. A feature of the BFSA that might well help address this issue is the provision of additional mental health and wellbeing support, such as funding specialised counsellors and helping schools to provide full-service (or ‘wrap-around’) supports.
As a society, we should be concerned not only for students’ academic learning outcomes but also their socio-emotional well-being outcomes. Helping our young people better address the issues facing them will help them be better equipped for successful schooling experiences and set them up to be happy and healthy members of society after they leave school.”
Critics have already said this is creating a “segregated” education system where public schools educate the most disadvantaged – what do you think is the best way forward?
“This has long been an issue facing Australian schools: we have many areas of excellence in student performance, but we also have considerable areas of disadvantage. Given that public schools most often service our students with the most significant needs, we must ensure that these schools are also the most well-provisioned. Historically, this has evidently not been the case.
Today, most private schools are either funded at 100 per cent of the SRS or are on the way to achieving that level of funding by 2030. This is simply not the case for public schools, and we can see this tension playing out in the current impasse between the Federal Government and the State Governments of NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland. They are all seeking additional federal funds to bring their schooling systems to 100 per cent of the SRS.
The BFSA should work to provide this additional funding if it is truly to be concerned with creating better and fairer schools and schooling outcomes for our young people.”
