I’d like to start by sharing a story
there’s a coast and the two schools
school a and school B between these two
schools there’s a main road the boundary
line which dictates which students in
which houses go to which school runs
along the main road because school a is
closer to the coast the median house
price is higher and therefore the
students that go to school a have a
higher level of socioeconomic advantage
so green here means upper-class yellow
means middle class and red means lower
class because school B is further from
the coast the level of advantage for
students at school B is lower relative
to school A because school B is
perceived to have more behavioral
problems and school a is placed in a
nicer area so it seemed to have better
resources high achieving students from
school B desire to go to school a as
they believe they’ll have better
outcomes and better opportunities at
school a and what this does is it
creates a large imbalance in the level
of advantage between school a and school
B but what I haven’t told you is that
school B is the school that I teach at
as was mentioned before my name is Adam
endo and I’m the head of mathematics and
science at a disadvantaged school in
metropolitan Perth I started out
studying chemical engineering and
chemistry here at UWA I then went on to
do the teach for Australia leadership
development program doing my masters of
teaching following this I’ve taught it
to socioeconomically disadvantaged
schools here in Perth when I was
studying chemical engineering
one of my friends made a rather crude
generalization that stuck with me to
this day and that’s the electrical
engineers they deal with the electrical
parts mechanical engineers deal with the
mechanical part or the moving parts
civil and structural engineers deal with
the non moving parts the chemical
engineers
they look at the whole thing they look
at the big picture from start to finish
and the purpose of chemical engineering
is to take raw unrefined resources and
materials and put them through a process
that allows them to become more refined
and more usable I’m not in chemical
engineering but I think I’m doing
something a little bit smaller but not
with inanimate objects
with people how do we take raw students
for lack of a better term and value add
to them so that they’re more refined and
can contribute more positively to
society I think the answer lies
somewhere in here and what I believe
this should look like is dictated by my
vision for education in Australia that
all children regardless of background
are entitled to an excellent education
there’s a lot of research being done at
the moment about what an excellent
education looks like as dictated by high
rates of learning but there’s another
part to this how every student at every
school can have access to that which
we’re offering and this is the part that
I’d like to talk about today more
advantaged schools typically tend to
have access to better quality teaching
better resources and also a more
positive school climate there was a
study done by the program of
international students assessments Pisa
and they looked at the average school
science scores and compared the
difference between advantaged schools
and disadvantaged schools and what they
found was that the difference between
advantaged and disadvantaged schools was
a hundred points this equates to about
three years worth of learning so you
could take one student in an advantage
school and another in a disadvantaged
school and what you would find is the
the difference in science knowledge
would be roughly three years which is
pretty significant
it’s not just about academic outcomes
another issue we have to be mindful of
is something called social segregation
which put simply is just the splitting
of social classes so upper classes
middle classes and lower classes all
being separated from each other in the
same study by Pisa out of 71 countries
that were surveyed first being the most
socially segregated the most splitting
between classes Australia was actually
ranked eighth which might be surprising
to some of you Trevor cobalt on the save
our schools website referred to social
segregation as a double jeopardy effect
he said that not only a student’s
disadvantage because of their conditions
at home
when they come from a disadvantaged
background but also when they’re
socially segregated more disadvantaged
is imposed on them as well so in other
words more social segregation leads to
worse educational outcomes for students
and also a wider achievement gap between
those that advantaged and those that are
disadvantaged but it’s not just academic
outcomes as I said before social
segregation is shown to lead to poorer
expectations for the future for those
students from disadvantaged backgrounds
it’s shown to lead to greater social
intolerance within communities and
workplaces and also damaged social
empathy as well as decreased capacity
for social groups to coexist so it’s not
just about how students are doing well
in school but it has implications for
how different classes cultures and
groups actually integrate in society
which has really big implications for
how productive we are as a country and
as a community so a lot of people try
and solve this and the first thing that
people jump to is that why don’t we
throw more money why don’t we put more
resources into schools to help fix this
and what I can tell you that is that
factoring in inflation increased wage
inflation in the education system and
also the increased population of those
that are attending school in Australia
the amount of funding going into the
education system has actually steadily
increased over time
but if we look at results for
high-stakes testing such as year nine
NAPLAN what we see here is that there’s
a stagnation those that are meeting the
national minimum standard the percentage
for that is actually relatively the same
no matter what the strand is no matter
what area they’re testing the amount of
students meeting that standard is fairly
stagnant this might just be for year
nine but I can assure you that it’s
pretty much the same for all the
different year groups that are tested so
what I’m proposing is that it’s not
necessarily money that’s the be-all and
end-all solution sometimes it helps but
what I think we need to be looking at is
how do we better use the resources and
money that we already have to produce
the best outcomes possible so back to
this problem I told you before that the
boundary line that separates school a
and school B runs along the main road
what I propose we do in this situation
is we put it perpendicular to the main
road what this means is that school a
and school B both share the coastline so
there’s a bit of a reshuffle in terms of
the advantage of the students attending
those schools it might not be a perfect
once in reality but I think it’s going
to reduce the the risk of students
wanting to move to another school
because they perceive it as being better
this is just one solution to one unique
problem and what I’d like to do is share
one area that can help to reduce the
effects of socio-economic disadvantage
in schools and use my own schools
examples to show how we make that happen
this area I’d like to focus on is the
supportive school climate and an
environment for learning school climate
or a positive school climate has been
shown to narrow achievement gaps not
just between advantaged and
disadvantaged students but also between
high achieving and low achieving
students so positive school climate is
used to useful no matter what school
you’re in it helps to decrease the gap
between students who have a difference
in how they’re achieving at the school
that I’m teaching at our school vision
is centered on in
adding students to learn what this means
is that students aren’t coerced what we
do is we build a climate where students
want to be invited in where they have
buy-in and have a sense of ownership
over the learning process how we target
these care areas of improvement is based
on five major values these are
intentionality optimism care respect and
Trust so everything we do is through the
lens of intentionality care optimism
respect and Trust when we engage with
students when we engage with colleagues
is that with care is it with optimism
every decision that we make every policy
that we change its intentional and we do
it with optimism we do it with respect
trust at the center of this using it as
a lens for change what we decide to
change and what we target is what we
call the five PS people places policies
programs and processes these are the
five things that we always target and
reflect on to make sure that when we’re
changing we’re very specific in what we
want to change making sure that each of
those changes are intentional caring
optimistic respectful and trusting so
let me give you an example if a students
below benchmark if they’re getting a D
or e grade if we notice they’ve slipped
behind what they’re normally achieving
whatever that is and that student needs
to be caught up what we do is we look at
data we look at how classes are tracking
we look at how individuals are tracking
we look at how the cohorts tracking
we’re constantly looking at data every
five weeks so we have a really clear
picture and a really clear indication of
how those students are tracking and when
we need to intervene following that we
then ask a series of questions based on
a five-piece so in terms of people
places policies programs and processes
we ask are there problems with
engagement or participation of students
what can I do as a person to change to
improve my practice how can I best meet
the needs of these people in my class
and we ask a series of questions based
on these five PS so for places we say is
the classroom inviting policies are the
rules and expectations inviting and we
basically use these as a
framework to invoke change through the
lens of our five values to make sure
that students have buy-in and there’s a
positive school climate so they want to
be a part of that learning process if I
was to boil down the whole problem of
socio-economic disadvantage into two
words first would be data we need to
know that social segregation and
socio-economic disadvantage are a real
thing and we need to know what research
tells us about how we can minimize the
effects of it happening we also need to
understand the data in our schools
both looking at individuals classes and
the broader school and identify areas of
risk and need and secondly the other
word is equity
how can we make sure that every child in
every school has access to education and
excellent education thank you
[Applause]
you
there’s a coast and the two schools
school a and school B between these two
schools there’s a main road the boundary
line which dictates which students in
which houses go to which school runs
along the main road because school a is
closer to the coast the median house
price is higher and therefore the
students that go to school a have a
higher level of socioeconomic advantage
so green here means upper-class yellow
means middle class and red means lower
class because school B is further from
the coast the level of advantage for
students at school B is lower relative
to school A because school B is
perceived to have more behavioral
problems and school a is placed in a
nicer area so it seemed to have better
resources high achieving students from
school B desire to go to school a as
they believe they’ll have better
outcomes and better opportunities at
school a and what this does is it
creates a large imbalance in the level
of advantage between school a and school
B but what I haven’t told you is that
school B is the school that I teach at
as was mentioned before my name is Adam
endo and I’m the head of mathematics and
science at a disadvantaged school in
metropolitan Perth I started out
studying chemical engineering and
chemistry here at UWA I then went on to
do the teach for Australia leadership
development program doing my masters of
teaching following this I’ve taught it
to socioeconomically disadvantaged
schools here in Perth when I was
studying chemical engineering
one of my friends made a rather crude
generalization that stuck with me to
this day and that’s the electrical
engineers they deal with the electrical
parts mechanical engineers deal with the
mechanical part or the moving parts
civil and structural engineers deal with
the non moving parts the chemical
engineers
they look at the whole thing they look
at the big picture from start to finish
and the purpose of chemical engineering
is to take raw unrefined resources and
materials and put them through a process
that allows them to become more refined
and more usable I’m not in chemical
engineering but I think I’m doing
something a little bit smaller but not
with inanimate objects
with people how do we take raw students
for lack of a better term and value add
to them so that they’re more refined and
can contribute more positively to
society I think the answer lies
somewhere in here and what I believe
this should look like is dictated by my
vision for education in Australia that
all children regardless of background
are entitled to an excellent education
there’s a lot of research being done at
the moment about what an excellent
education looks like as dictated by high
rates of learning but there’s another
part to this how every student at every
school can have access to that which
we’re offering and this is the part that
I’d like to talk about today more
advantaged schools typically tend to
have access to better quality teaching
better resources and also a more
positive school climate there was a
study done by the program of
international students assessments Pisa
and they looked at the average school
science scores and compared the
difference between advantaged schools
and disadvantaged schools and what they
found was that the difference between
advantaged and disadvantaged schools was
a hundred points this equates to about
three years worth of learning so you
could take one student in an advantage
school and another in a disadvantaged
school and what you would find is the
the difference in science knowledge
would be roughly three years which is
pretty significant
it’s not just about academic outcomes
another issue we have to be mindful of
is something called social segregation
which put simply is just the splitting
of social classes so upper classes
middle classes and lower classes all
being separated from each other in the
same study by Pisa out of 71 countries
that were surveyed first being the most
socially segregated the most splitting
between classes Australia was actually
ranked eighth which might be surprising
to some of you Trevor cobalt on the save
our schools website referred to social
segregation as a double jeopardy effect
he said that not only a student’s
disadvantage because of their conditions
at home
when they come from a disadvantaged
background but also when they’re
socially segregated more disadvantaged
is imposed on them as well so in other
words more social segregation leads to
worse educational outcomes for students
and also a wider achievement gap between
those that advantaged and those that are
disadvantaged but it’s not just academic
outcomes as I said before social
segregation is shown to lead to poorer
expectations for the future for those
students from disadvantaged backgrounds
it’s shown to lead to greater social
intolerance within communities and
workplaces and also damaged social
empathy as well as decreased capacity
for social groups to coexist so it’s not
just about how students are doing well
in school but it has implications for
how different classes cultures and
groups actually integrate in society
which has really big implications for
how productive we are as a country and
as a community so a lot of people try
and solve this and the first thing that
people jump to is that why don’t we
throw more money why don’t we put more
resources into schools to help fix this
and what I can tell you that is that
factoring in inflation increased wage
inflation in the education system and
also the increased population of those
that are attending school in Australia
the amount of funding going into the
education system has actually steadily
increased over time
but if we look at results for
high-stakes testing such as year nine
NAPLAN what we see here is that there’s
a stagnation those that are meeting the
national minimum standard the percentage
for that is actually relatively the same
no matter what the strand is no matter
what area they’re testing the amount of
students meeting that standard is fairly
stagnant this might just be for year
nine but I can assure you that it’s
pretty much the same for all the
different year groups that are tested so
what I’m proposing is that it’s not
necessarily money that’s the be-all and
end-all solution sometimes it helps but
what I think we need to be looking at is
how do we better use the resources and
money that we already have to produce
the best outcomes possible so back to
this problem I told you before that the
boundary line that separates school a
and school B runs along the main road
what I propose we do in this situation
is we put it perpendicular to the main
road what this means is that school a
and school B both share the coastline so
there’s a bit of a reshuffle in terms of
the advantage of the students attending
those schools it might not be a perfect
once in reality but I think it’s going
to reduce the the risk of students
wanting to move to another school
because they perceive it as being better
this is just one solution to one unique
problem and what I’d like to do is share
one area that can help to reduce the
effects of socio-economic disadvantage
in schools and use my own schools
examples to show how we make that happen
this area I’d like to focus on is the
supportive school climate and an
environment for learning school climate
or a positive school climate has been
shown to narrow achievement gaps not
just between advantaged and
disadvantaged students but also between
high achieving and low achieving
students so positive school climate is
used to useful no matter what school
you’re in it helps to decrease the gap
between students who have a difference
in how they’re achieving at the school
that I’m teaching at our school vision
is centered on in
adding students to learn what this means
is that students aren’t coerced what we
do is we build a climate where students
want to be invited in where they have
buy-in and have a sense of ownership
over the learning process how we target
these care areas of improvement is based
on five major values these are
intentionality optimism care respect and
Trust so everything we do is through the
lens of intentionality care optimism
respect and Trust when we engage with
students when we engage with colleagues
is that with care is it with optimism
every decision that we make every policy
that we change its intentional and we do
it with optimism we do it with respect
trust at the center of this using it as
a lens for change what we decide to
change and what we target is what we
call the five PS people places policies
programs and processes these are the
five things that we always target and
reflect on to make sure that when we’re
changing we’re very specific in what we
want to change making sure that each of
those changes are intentional caring
optimistic respectful and trusting so
let me give you an example if a students
below benchmark if they’re getting a D
or e grade if we notice they’ve slipped
behind what they’re normally achieving
whatever that is and that student needs
to be caught up what we do is we look at
data we look at how classes are tracking
we look at how individuals are tracking
we look at how the cohorts tracking
we’re constantly looking at data every
five weeks so we have a really clear
picture and a really clear indication of
how those students are tracking and when
we need to intervene following that we
then ask a series of questions based on
a five-piece so in terms of people
places policies programs and processes
we ask are there problems with
engagement or participation of students
what can I do as a person to change to
improve my practice how can I best meet
the needs of these people in my class
and we ask a series of questions based
on these five PS so for places we say is
the classroom inviting policies are the
rules and expectations inviting and we
basically use these as a
framework to invoke change through the
lens of our five values to make sure
that students have buy-in and there’s a
positive school climate so they want to
be a part of that learning process if I
was to boil down the whole problem of
socio-economic disadvantage into two
words first would be data we need to
know that social segregation and
socio-economic disadvantage are a real
thing and we need to know what research
tells us about how we can minimize the
effects of it happening we also need to
understand the data in our schools
both looking at individuals classes and
the broader school and identify areas of
risk and need and secondly the other
word is equity
how can we make sure that every child in
every school has access to education and
excellent education thank you
[Applause]
you
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