Memorable memorabilia or a nodding brush with the truth.

 

Ken “Noddy” McAullay

I attended Aquinas College from 1951to1955. For some years now a group of Old Aquinians from the late 1940s and the 1950s have been attending a morning Coffee Club and catch up at the New Generation Sports Club in Kings Park. Well, actually, apart from  a cup of coffee, we also enjoy a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of red wine.

Sadly, numbers from the 1940s are dwindling and a few old boys from the 1960s are starting to attend our monthly gatherings where we naturally talk at length about how great we all were back in the day.

To demonstrate how inclusive our group is, we occasionally enjoy our Coffee Club at the Craigie Tavern and  at Bistro 21 in South Fremantle. This enables old boys in the far flung northern and southern suburbs of Perth to front up occasionally. The Craigie Tavern is owned by Fred Pawle (1955) and  Bistro 21 by Victor Paino (1952). This year we also enjoyed our very first Coffee Club gathering at Aquinas College. We met in the Churack Pavilion, which was built from funds generously donated by Geoffrey Churack (1955).

At this month’s  Coffee Club, Ross Willcock (1953), showed me a photograph on his mobile phone. He said he took the  photo of a piece of Aquinas memorabilia on a shelf in the Justin Langer room in the Churack Pavilion when our Coffee Club met there earlier this year. It was a picture of Ken “Noddy” McAullay in East Perth Football Club colours. Below the photo was a citation of Ken McAullay’s outstanding career as an East Perth and State footballer and as a batsman in the WA Sheffield Shield side. He obtained the nickname “Noddy” in his early days at East Perth because of his habit of nodding his head in agreement whenever coaches or senior players spoke to him.

 Ken was in the strong  East Perth teams that played in Grand Finals in 1966, ‘67, ‘68, ‘69 and 71 and were Premiers in 1972, the year that Ken won the Tassie Medal as the Best and Fairest player in the National Football Carnival. The citation also  stated that Ken McAullay had been educated at Aquinas College in 1961.

As I handed Ross’s phone back I said, “ You know, I am an East Perth Supporter. I saw most of Ken McAullay’s games but I never knew he went to Aquinas.”

“He didn’t”, grinned Ross. “You know who told me?... Ken McAullay!”

It seems earlier this year Ken McAullay went to Aquinas, for the very first time in his life, to watch his grandson play football in an interschool match. During the game, Ken visited the Churack Pavilion. Looking around at the memorabilia in the Justin Langer room he was astounded to see his picture alongside that of his East Perth teammate and dual Sandover Medallist, Peter Spencer. Ken moved in closer to read the citation. He was absolutely stunned to read that he attended Aquinas College in 1961. He told a friend, “I have never been to Aquinas before today.”

Ross later shared this quirky piece of information with the entire Coffee Club group, among whom was a 1961 Old Boy. He confirmed that a student named Ken McAullay attended Aquinas in 1961. It seems that somebody preparing memorabilia for the Churack Pavilion noticed that  a Ken McAullay attended Aquinas in 1961 and decided to make a feature of the footballer/cricketers’ outstanding career.

The real Ken McAullay had already told Ross that  a distant cousin of his did attend Aquinas College in 1961. However, this cousin was not a champion footballer who won a Tassie Medal or played in the WA Sheffield Shield team.

Presumably the photo and glowing citation of the Ken McAullay, the Phantom Old Aquinian, has been removed from the memorabilia display. No one knows why the year 1967 headed the citation.

 

It’s not the teachers, it’s the system that needs fixing.

Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, recently formed a committee to investigate the crisis in teaching, where shortages are occurring because teachers are resigning. This problem was highlighted at the recent conference of federal and state education ministers held in August.Their classic quick fix for the teacher shortage was to put successful and intelligent but unqualified teachers into classrooms. I certainly hope that the Minister for Health does not use the same solution to overcome the shortages of doctors and nurses in operating theatres and hospital wards.

The problems in education are not caused by poor teaching, they are caused because the education system is broken. There are several reasons for this breakdown but it is largely due to the massive imbalance in education spending on high and low achieving schools and the over use of accountability measures and data collection.

Gonski’s recommendations were received by government in 2010. The major recommendation was to spend more money on needy, low achieving schools. What happened? In the decade since 2012, politicians at state and federal level have increased funding on independent school five fold in comparison to government schools.

 In 2009, NAPLAN, a universal assessment programme, at huge expense,  replaced perfectly adequate random sampling assessment schemes. At the same time. teachers and principals have been bogged down in data collection and accountability procedures that deflect them from their main focus...teaching the child sitting at the desk. Politicians, policy makers and bureaucrats should all remember that if their policies do not improve the performance of the child sitting at the desk then nothing in education will change. Not for the better, at any rate.

It was Einstein who said that not everything that can be counted matters and not everything that matters can be counted. He also said that we cannot hope to solve the problems of the present by employing the solutions that gave rise to those problems in the first place.                                             Wise words indeed but who is paying any attention to them?

I first wrote a blog article about  education as a broken system in June 2013. Almost ten years ago. NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming                                                                             Since then, nearly 200 000 people have read that blog story. Obviously, none of them were in a position to do anything about fixing the system.

If we can agree that the system is broken then  we should pay some attention to a man who was the father of effective and valid  random sampling instead of testing each and every product. That same man was a systems analyst. His advice saved huge corporations billions of dollars. His name was  Professor Deming, (1900-1993) a professor of mathematics. Professor Deming was invited to Japan in 1950 by General MacArthur to assist in that country's first democratic election after World War 2.

While there, Deming was approached by Japanese industrialists asking if could advise them on how to improve their products, which at that time were regarded as poor quality and often referred to internationally as “Mickey Mouse” products.

Deming studied Japanese industrial production and then gave the industrialists his 14 Point Plan which he said would make them internationally competitive. He said it would take them five years.

The Japanese did it in four, by which time US car dealers were stunned to find that their American customers preferred to wait until the better made Japanese cars arrived in their showrooms, already well stocked with cars manufactured in Detroit.

Deming believed if the system worked effectively, the product would be of good quality and the workers would be happy in their work. As a teacher and principal I always believed that a school was a place where children came to have fun with their friends and their teachers while acquiring the knowledge, skill and habits that would enable to live happily in the environment in which they lived. The problem with teaching today seems to me to be that teachers have lost the joy of teaching. Sad!

Deming found the Japanese workers were burdened with excessive accountability measures,  causing stress and loss of job satisfaction. Exactly the conditions that are causing good teachers today to resign or take early retirement.

I will list just six of Deming’s fourteen points. If the Federal Minister’s special committee can persuade him to apply these to the education system then many of the problems would dissolve.

 

No 3: Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspections by building quality into the product in the first place.

No 6: Institute training on the job.

No 8: Drive out fear and build trust so that everyone can work more effectively.

No 10:Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets asking for zero defects or new levels of productivity…the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

No: 11 Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management objectives. Substitute leadership!

No 12:Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work. This means abolishing the annual rating or merit system that ranks people and creates competition and conflict.

 

I am sure the Federal Minister and all teachers would agree that:-

* we need to drive out fear and build trust in our schools and in our teachers.

*we need to eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets calling for zero defects because low quality outcomes are generally  the fault of the system, not the teacher.

*Number 11 is a beauty. Cut out the Administrivia…substitute real leadership.

*We must remove the many data gathering processes and procedures that rob teachers of the joy of teaching. That is why so many are leaving the profession.

Let us hope that in ten years time they are not calling for more committees  to solve the crisis in education. After all, Professor Deming gave us the solution over seventy years ago.

Inequity in Australian education. Quick fixes don't work.

 The 2021 PISA results will be announced later this year. Since the early 2000s, Australia's PISA rankings in English, Mathematics and Science have been trending downwards.No one will be surprised if this downward trend continues.

A recent article by Annie Fogarty in the West Australian newspaper (7/7/2022) titled,  “Our poorest falling behind” reminded us that every Australian child deserves quality education. Ms Fogarty also  highlighted the growing achievement gap in Australian schools. The gap between the Have and the Have Not schools. 

Ms Fogarty said that children living in “disadvantage and dysfunction” suffer higher rates of mental illness which have a significant impact on school achievement. She echoes the words of respected US educator, Dr Diane Ravich, who participated in the US National Assessment programme. In this role she sacked many principals and teachers in under performing schools. By 2009, Dr Ravitch had changed her mind. In her bestselling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American Public School System,” she regretted having sacked so many hard working principals and teachers, saying “Poverty, not poor teaching, is the major cause of failure in schools.”

In 2008, Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd,  concerned about education standards, commissioned successful businessman, David Gonski, to investigate the situation. Gonski discovered what became known as the Education Gap. This gap was the huge difference in achievement outcomes between high and low achieving schools.  

In 2010, Gonski presented his review the the new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.  Gonski believed the education gap could only be closed by allocating additional resources to schools in need. The Gonski Review was sought to eliminate the gap between high and low achieving schools. It sounded too good to be true and it was. Politicians, who generally act for political reasons rather than educational reasons, soon changed Gonski’s focus. In the decade since the Gonski Review’s release, federal and state government spending on private schools increased fivefold in comparison to spending on government schools. Trevor Cobbold, an economist and national convenor for public school advocacy group Save Our Schools, says “Gonski didn’t fail. It is governments that failed Gonski, and thereby failed disadvantaged students,” he says. Some people say that Gonski failed. The fact is Gonski was never tried, never implemented.

As a result, the achievement gap in our education outcomes grew  wider. Our PISA ranking dropped. Many politicians and some in the media called for the problem of Australia’s falling PISA ratings to be fixed. How? Well, they all said, teachers need to work harder. They need to be much better trained. They need to be more highly qualified. Teachers should be paid according to performance. Those wanting to be teachers must be selected from the very highest achievers with ATAR scores in the top 10%. There were frenzied calls for "Back to basics." They wanted quick fixes. Hard working teachers have heard that sad song before.

 Unfortunately, amid all the tumult and shouting about how to fix Australia’s education problems, there is little reference to what actual educators think about the achievement gap in Australian education. Pasi Sahlberg is an educator. He was in charge of education in Finland when that country always appeared in the top four of the PISA rankings. He is currently a Professor of Education at the Gonski Institute for Education at the University of NSW. Speaking about the declining PISA results a few years ago, Sahlberg reminded everyone that Albert Einstein once said, ”We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Sahlberg made three points. Firstly, he said the inequitable distribution of resources in our education system was the major cause for the growing achievement gap. There was, he said, a need to revisit the Gonski reforms to ensure that school in need were better resourced, so that there would be “high-quality education for all, individualised support for those who need it and valuing whole-child development throughout schooling.”

Secondly, Sahlberg said we need to make health and wellness in schools another priority. He said the data shows “That the decline of youth wellbeing has happened at the same time as slipping PISA scores in Australia…a student who suffers from anxiety disorders, depression, sleep deprivation or suicidal behaviours is not likely to be successful in school.”

 All teachers know that most of the social, emotional, psychological and behavioural problems that they deal with on a daily basis, originate from outside the classroom. Low socio-economic status, domestic violence, drugs, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse all impact on a child’s school performance.

Finally, Professor Sahlberg warned against employing the quick fixes so favoured by politicians. He said quick fixes do not fix equity or student wellbeing. “It is the wrong strategy because it does not address educational equities and enhance students’ wellbeing, so that every student would have a fair chance to succeed.”

 The evidence is clear. Schools in lower socio-economic areas generally perform below schools in the “leafy green” suburbs. Everyone knows that. State Education Departments know it. They have known it for over fifty years. Those hard working teachers in those under resourced school  are like soldiers provided with inferior weapons and very few bullets being criticised by their superior officers for not winning the battle.

 Sahlberg suggests it is more rational to get back to the real basics. Instead of indulging in teacher bashing and school bashing we need to inform ourselves of the educational research and implement equitable resourcing policies that will close the achievement gap by providing equity and wellness for all students.

Sadly, Pasi Sahlberg pointed out how to solve Australia's education gap three years ago. But nothing has changed. His advice was not heeded by those politicians with the power to do something about it. We still have politicians saying we need to recruit teachers in the top 10% of ATAR. We still have politicians saying we need more highly  qualified teachers. We have still have politicians saying we need to start teaching formal literacy and numeracy skills at a younger and younger age. It is no good pointing out to these politicians that PISA high flyers, like Finland and Singapore, do not start formal primary school education until children are seven. Pasi Sahlberg has given them the solution but our politicians are still sprouting quick fixes that they feel are political vote winners. That is no way to run an education system.

During the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians and the media deferred to the wisdom and knowledge of the health experts. Likewise, it is critical for the future wellbeing of our students, our schools and our society that principals, teachers and other education experts, like Pasi Sahlberg, be listened to and their sensible advice be implemented

It’s pretty basic, really.