Schools that work

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 1, No. 16 15 - 29 October 2007 ]
Research shows size does matter

Bigger is often better when it comes to school performance, writes KATHERINE SMITH.

With VCE exams underway, the public’s attention turns not only to the results of individual students but also to the performance of Victoria’s secondary schools. News reports feature profiles of astonishingly smart teenagers winning valuable and competitive scholarships to prestigious universities.

But beneath the fascination with performance, a vast cache of research and analysis is attempting to document the qualities and contributing factors of excellent school outcomes for students, and the secret recipe for school performance. Associate Professor Stephen Lamb is a member of a research team from the University’s Centre for Post-compulsory Education and Lifelong Learning, based in the Faculty of Education, and has done extensive research into school performance for the Victorian government.

“One of our main findings,” he says, “is that the widely held belief that small schools are better able to nurture students and give them more attention is a mythology.” In fact, from research in Melbourne so far, it seems that size does matter and the opposite is true: bigger schools tend to be better performing schools.

Associate Professor Lamb says that among the key elements determining school performance, financial resources, the socio-economic background of students, strategies for staff placement across the school, and innovative school-based programs, are critical – but that the hierarchy of importance is debatable. “The relationship of size to achievement is one that educational policy-makers need to be very aware of,” says Associate Professor Lamb. “We need to acknowledge that schools below a certain size (about 600 students in an urban school) tend to struggle, and this needs to influence how we manage our schools. “Socio-economic status (SES) is widely accepted as having a big impact on outcomes for school students,” he says.

”And the location of a school within the SES distribution of Melbourne means lower SES schools tend to be in the west, north and outer east. “However, during the course of our research, we observed that some schools with students of lower SES were performing much better than we might have expected, given their overall circumstances, while some of higher SES weren’t doing so well.

“By looking at things like management and resource strategies in those schools that were ‘punching above their weight’, we knew we could identify at least some of the components that make schools work in an urban setting, beyond the SES determinant.” By definition, one of the key advantages that bigger schools have is a larger number of students and more teachers, resulting in a greater capacity to offer a much broader range of programs. But teacher numbers are not the only determining factor; it is how that rich resource is deployed, which is critical.

“More effective schools spread experienced teachers across year levels, paying special attention to student needs in year seven and year eight classrooms, which runs counter to the fairly common practice of focusing resources at VCE,” he explains. “These schools are also very aware of the critical transition from primary to secondary school – a make or break time when some kids can tune out of the educational experience. They also implement strategic intervention programs early, well before an achievement gap can become a chasm.”

Soula Bennett is the Head of Middle Years at Northcote High School, which draws 1320 secondary school students from across the inner north of Melbourne and has established a solid reputation. She says the school recognises the need to “put in the groundwork during the vital middle years, so that students can achieve the results they, and their families and teachers, want at VCE level”. Ms Bennett, who has been teaching mathematics and science for 17 years, says when students arrive in year seven they are curious and enthusiastic but still connecting with the school and need careful nurturing.

By year eight some of them have often become a bit more disengaged – with the school, their parents and teachers – although they still strongly identify with their community of friends. Ms Bennett says that by engaging with them through that time with appropriately friendly and fun but firm support, by year nine, the school can really start to work with them on looking at pathways for their education. Associate Professor Lamb says indicators that schools are effective include positive responses to student questionnaires on teaching and learning, which show them to be engaged both with their education and their school community. In effective schools a significant proportion of students continue beyond year 10; there are good performance outcomes for both Vocational Education and Training (VET) and VCE programs; and a large number of students go on to employment or further education and training after they finish school. Associate Professor Lamb is quick to emphasise that VCE results are not the only ones that matter.

“Schools in the west and north of Melbourne – some of which have typically ‘underperformed’ in VCE results, achieve other valuable outcomes,” he says. This includes students successfully completing school-based apprenticeships in VET programs, or studying for the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (a year 11 and 12 program aimed at preparing students for direct entry to the workforce). Significantly these programs tend to work best in larger schools where VCE is “part of the mix”, Associate Professor Lamb explains, with roll-on advantages for all students. Beyond individual student experience, larger issues about public policy and schooling emerge that go to the heart of what public education policy is all about: the chance for students to experience quality in education, no matter what their socio-economic background.

If financial resourcing is only one component of school performance, then the management strategies of schools in the public sector – typically funded up to two to three times less than many private schools according to Associate Professor Lamb – matter enormously, and present social justice challenges for policy-makers. “When we look at schools in the private sector that have demonstrated success, we can see they are almost always big schools,” he says. “We see that ‘funding per student’ is only one issue: also important is ensuring a critical mass of students and staff to ensure program choice and subject breadth, facilitating an education experience that suits the inclination and capacity of each student.”

The trend over the past three decades in Victoria, he explains, has been towards the privatisation and marketisation of public sector schools, in a way that encourages public schools to compete against one another and act like those in the private sector, with independent governing bodies, and a fair degree of freedom in how budgets are allocated and procedures managed. More importantly, zoning has all but disappeared from the public education platform, meaning parents have much greater choice in choosing a school for their child – or not choosing a local school, as the case may be. Many of the changes that have been made in public education over this time of ‘reform’ have been well-intentioned, attempts to purge mediocrity from the system and deliver practical and relevant education. But as in all complex policy choices, some of the impact has been unforeseen, and unfortunate.

“Large, high-performing schools use their ability to attract high-performing students as a platform to grow their success, while other schools experience residualisation,” Associate Professor Lamb says. “A smaller, less effective school loses its best students, ending up with the hardest-to-teach kids, and has to spread funds thinly across fewer programs. This restricts choice for students, who not surprisingly don’t do so well in subjects they’re not ¬really into, and the whole cycle goes around and is reinforced.” Some of the impetus behind government concern over school performance comes from a societal shift in expectations of education and the role of schools, alongside increased parental anxiety about their children’s future success, according to Associate Professor Julie McLeod, of the University’s Faculty of Education.

The extent to which schools provide genuine opportunities for social mobility, particularly for working class and low SES students to move up the social hierarchy, remains an ongoing concern. “Educational sociologists are now finding that growing numbers of parents today are increasingly concerned about the threat of downward mobility, and the possibility that their children will not fare as well or be as well off as they have been themselves,” she says. Parents want to protect themselves and their children from this trend, and ¬responses such as ‘value-adding’ to children’s education with extra out-of-school activities are commonplace.

Additionally, changes in the economy and the sorts of jobs that will be available in the future are unsettling for parents, and it becomes harder to assess where certain sorts of training and careers fit in the social hierarchy.
“Schools come under increasing pressure to solve these problems for parents, with education often becoming more and more focused on career outcomes and university entrance,” says Associate Professor McLeod. Although she says the same anxieties are not necessarily shared during their school years by students themselves, whom, she says, can be much more concerned with developing a sense of who they are and the interpersonal and relational dimensions of their schooling experiences. Associate Professor McLeod, with colleague Professor Lyn Yates, has been looking at how different school cultures can impact upon students’ sense of self and values – how schools contribute to the shaping of young people into adults.

She says that students on the whole have an “accumulating sense of self” which is developed over the length of schooling and through the full range of formal and informal curricula, including how home, community and school values do or don’t come together. “Students seem to feel better about themselves and their school when they have a strong sense of purpose about their education, and are not entirely results-driven – when they can see what the result is for, rather than seeing it as an end in itself,” she says.