Archives: Media and Advocacy

By Dallas McInerney, Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Schools NSW

First published in the Financial Review 5/9/2022

In his remarks to last week’s Jobs and Skills Summit, the prime minister highlighted the need for more Australians to learn the skills required for a rewarding career; in the room were industry leaders who had come to Canberra with a common message, their businesses are struggling to find the right type or level of skills to meet Australia’s needs.

Like most large-scale public policy challenges, solutions will need to be farreaching and move beyond the immediate, the fi nal communique laid down somegood next steps, a white paper process will follow to provide long-range options.

The good news is that Australia already has a policy framework responding to the labour force challenges identified at the Summit; the Measurement Framework for Schooling has been in place since 2015 and oversees a suite of national and international school-based tests, the main component being the domestic NAPLAN (literacy and numeracy) assessments administered in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9.

NAPLAN is coupled with several international tests, such as the OECD’s Programfor International Student Assessment (PISA) which measures emerging attributesprized by employers of the latter 21st century, such as critical thinking andproblem-solving.

The labour force challenges reported by the business leaders confront all of us, every citizen has an interest in the success of an integrated economy, the ready supply of goods and services, and employment opportunities that support personal fulfillment.

Several of last week’s announcements focused on better engaging seniors and the semi-retired into the workforce as laudable as that might be, the real policy dividends will be reaped by foregrounding the needs of tomorrow’s workforce and that focus should start in our classrooms.

Thanks to the reforms pursued by successive governments, the average annual income of Australians has increased significantly over the past 40 years; a critical driver of this was a productivity measure in the form of higher educational attainment.

In 1970, only a third of Australian boys undertook the Year 12 HSC or equivalent; 50 years later, it is 75 per cent, and for girls, it is more than 80 per cent; the transformation of our human capital allowed Australian industry to reap huge opportunities in the global economy.

This pace of global change will continue, and as the world leaves behind the industrial and information revolutions for the uncertainty of the knowledge and human economies, it should prompt consideration of how assured our prosperity is continuing through the 21st century – and what will deliver it.

In the coming knowledge-based world order, there is the potential for our humancapital to reach the economic signifi cance of the commodities and agriculturalsectors of last century, certainly it will be an essential means of participation.

Noting the borderless workforce of tomorrow, Australia’s participation in these international tests provides rich comparative insights into the relative position of our students against global peers. Recent data for Australian students shows wehave work to do with static or declining performance in several key domains, writing for boys and numeracy generally, need an early focus.

NAPLAN continues to attract criticism from within and outside the education sector. Teacher unions were early and vocal critics of its design and alleged high-stakes impacts, and it’s to Julia Gillard’seternal political credit that she overcame opposition and put the focus on NAPLAN’s long-term benefits.

Over time, several reforms have taken the edges off these tests and increased their educational utility, with a rich longitudinal data set emerging that can be mined to inform classroom interventions and improvements. NAPLAN can be both a barometer of performance and a compass for future policy in the ongoing development of Australia’s knowledge and skills base.

Far from being a neo-liberal artefact that commoditises students, standardised testing can monitor and support the learning journey students as they prepare for post-school training, further study and ultimately, employment.

To not measure the progress of our students through 13 years of schooling wouldbe a failure of accountability, not to government, but to the students themselveswho deserve to have the full benefi ts of a quality education, there isn’t much equityin substandard literacy levels or limited employment opportunities.

An ongoing commitment to monitoring students’ progress and maximising their educational opportunities is vital for success, done correctly, the jobs of tomorrow will be theirs for the taking.

Dallas McInerney

Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Schools NSW

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald 22 March 2022

The marathon is the flagship event of the modern Olympics and a culmination point on the last day of competition; runners cover a gruelling 42 kilometres before entering the stadium for a single lap to the finish line. What if the television coverage ignored the race start and the first 41 kilometres, didn’t bother profiling the athletes or their backstories, forgot to mention the
qualifying events before the Games and the commentators only started talking a few minutes before the end?

We would feel let down and without the benefit of context, unable to fully celebrate the talent and effort of all runners. Thankfully for sports fans, this does not happen, but this is the approach we have for the reporting of results for the Higher School Certificate.

Presently, HSC results reporting is excessively focused on elite achievement indices (Band 6s), the connecting pathway to university entry and resulting ATARs devised by the universities. It is good to celebrate such achievement. However, as the clear majority of school-leavers do not transition directly into university, is this the type of reporting regime that best captures the breadth of the achievements of our students? Why not report HSC results in a way that is more meaningful for the way in which school-leavers will transact with the credential, such as recording post-school employment, traineeships or vocational education?

The release and publication of HSC results data are tightly controlled by legislation, a result of authorities keen to avoid repeats of the infamous reporting of Mount Druitt High’s class of 1995 HSC results. The screaming headline of “The class we failed” resulted in swift amendments to the NSW Education Act that prohibited future reporting of low-performing schools. An unintended consequence has been a massive shift in focusing (almost exclusively) on results at the top end of achievement fuelled by a publicity arms race that over-reports on the top end, leaving behind a distorted view of the HSC’s purpose, its wider utility and, critically, a huge amount of unrecognised student achievement.

The annual HSC media frenzy is the product of two related information sets: ranking data released by the schools regulator, the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA); and proxy lists compiled by news organisations. NESA releases four categories of HSC Merit Lists: first in course, top achiever, all-rounder and distinguished achiever. Combined, this identifies only a quarter of the annual HSC cohort. Media outlets, operating within legislative constraints,
devise their own measures, both the Herald and the Daily Telegraph use a success rate measure which is the result of re-engineering public data and assigning a number and rank to a school.

Both approaches have technical limitations or distortive influences on education as discussed in new research by Catholic Schools NSW, HSC Public Reporting Reform. There are serious questions that arise from a narrow and limited reporting regime that obscures the breadth of student effort and prevents recognition of the wider achievement of HSC students, including
student progression, improvements in whole school cohorts and attainment in subjects not prized by the front pages of newspapers or university deans.

Turning our schools into Band 6 factories was never envisaged by any credible educational authority, much less supported; there is already evidence of HSC subject choices privileging Band 6 calculations over more important factors such as academic suitability and longer-term career options.

Allowing more HSC students to see their hard work and results better reflected in official reporting and wider commentary can only be affirming for school-leavers and a source of encouragement for those who will follow. Such reform can be achieved while still celebrating our best and brightest, as we should, but there is room for more celebration in the HSC winners’ circle. It would be a great way to keep more students attached to their studies, encouraging investment in their futures and maintaining the currency of the HSC.

By Dallas McInerney, Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Schools NSW

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald 30/8/2021

Does every problem have a solution? The answer must always be yes; to think otherwise is to contemplate life without hope or, indeed, a future. The pandemic is seriously testing this outlook. Our policymakers are confronting wicked challenges in real-time against an invisible enemy, and they deserve both our support and grace.

In normal circumstances, the Higher School Certificate is a hugely complex exercise: 120different written examinations held in more than 750 exam centres, overseen by 7500supervisors, resulting in excess of 400,000 papers to be marked, all condensed into a few weeks starting in October. Oh, don’t forget the stringent security protocols during the drafting, printing and transporting of exams to maintain rigour and confidentiality. Now try it during a 1-in-100-year pandemic within the limits of a restrictive public health regime.

There is a basic two-part covenant that exists within the NSW school sector at present: students, remain focused on your studies and end-of-year preparation, and the leaders and administrators will ensure you will be awarded an HSC that minimises COVID-related disadvantage while maintaining integrity in the credential.

I have no doubt the students are keeping up their end of the bargain. The teachers have been outstanding. The rest of us have some quick work to do.
Emerging optimistic from a disrupted 2020, this year’s HSC candidates have already had multiple adjustments to their assessment tasks and the commencement date for their written exams twice delayed. Combine that with remote learning, stay-at-home orders and a confusing ensemble of information, and certainty is now the most valuable gift we can deliver to these students.

Future opportunities for certainty should not pass unrealised, and those opportunities should be taken in the coming days, not weeks. Staff and student resilience should not be tested for a day longer than necessary; as my former NSW Education Standards Authority board colleague, Mark Scott,
wrote on these pages on Saturday, these students are bewildered by how little control they have at the moment.

To be clear, the default position is the HSC written examinations should proceed in the most normal manner possible, given COVID-19 restrictions; the students have been preparing for these tests for several years, they have invested themselves in the process, and they deserve that opportunity. External exams are a great leveller, minimising the influences of wider privilege and allowing for a fair comparison between the assessment marks allocated by the school.

However, the degree of difficulty in staging written HSC examinations within the Public Health Orders while faithfully addressing the equity concerns (as we must) has risen dramatically.

It should be a source of reassurance to the community that the government has available to expert advice from a special purpose committee, which in turn has access to the most experienced educationalists and psychometricians in the country. The NESA COVID-19 Response Committee has been in place since 2020. All three school sectors are represented, and it continues to advise the government on options and issues relating to the conduct of HSC examinations (most recently as last week), as per its mandate.

Nothing further is required of administrators or leaders but purposive action and a final decision. COVID-19 doesn’t do serendipity.

HSC students have been told three different dates for the commencement of their 2021 written examinations; no one should tolerate a fourth. Assuming that the date is now inviolate and exams are to proceed, the exam timetable remains the missing piece. This needs to be finalised and shared without delay.

Finally, as the exigencies of the pandemic recede, let’s discern whatever opportunity we can amid this awful time. The HSC has been in place for more than 50 years and has proven to be adaptive and resilient, an internationally recognised end-of-school credential. However, the longevity of the HSC is no guarantee of its continuing inherent utility. All things should be re-examined as frequently as is prudent, even if we end up keeping what we have. Before that, let’s give these kids the HSC opportunity they deserve. It’s the least we should do.