Reconciliation brings hope to creating change

National Reconciliation Week (NRW) is marked every year from 27 May – 3 June. It is an opportunity for Australians to learn and reflect upon our shared histories, culture and achievements and our part to play in achieving reconciliation in Australia.

The dates for NRW also commemorate key milestones in reconciliation in Australia, the successful 1967 referendum (27 May) and the 1992 High Court Mabo decision (3 June).

NRW is preceded by National Sorry Day on 26 May, which remembers and acknowledges the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people forcibly removed from their families and communities, which is now known as the “Stolen Generation.”

NRW 2022 theme and artwork

The NRW 2022 theme is Be Brave. Make Change. This is a challenge to individuals, families, communities, organisations and government to be brave and tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation so we can make change for the benefit of all Australians. Start with brave actions in your daily lives where you live, work, play and socialise.

This year’s theme builds on the 2021 theme (More than a word. Reconciliation takes action) which encouraged us all to take greater action on reconciliation. We saw unprecedented response to our suggestions for everyday and braver actions.

Reconciliation is an ongoing journey that reminds us that while generations of Australians have fought hard for meaningful changes like these, future gains are likely to take just as much, if not more, effort. This year’s NRW artwork (see pullout poster on next page) was done by contemporary Torres Strait Islander illustrator, Tori-Jay Mordey, who shows some of the different faces of Australians working for a just and equal society. They are a visual reminder that reconciliation is everybody’s business. “I sought inspiration of what that kind of brave change might look like from many different people; people I know that are around me, people I see every day,” she said. “And people I see living bravely every day in their own lives – from fierce little kids to older people working with more established mindsets and environments. “We can make a change. But we can’t do it alone. Be brave and start the conversation today.” Tori-Jay Mordey is an established Indigenous Australian illustrator and artist currently based in Brisbane. Over the years she has honed her skills in digital illustrations, drawings, painting, print making and film while also expanding her skills as a mural artist. A lot of her work revolves around human connection and exploring her racial identity.

Moving forward

For reconciliation to be effective, it must involve truth-telling, and actively address issues of inequality, systemic racism and instances where the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are ignored, denied or reduced. While there is greater support for reconciliation from the Australian people than ever before, we must be more determined than ever if we are to achieve a just, equitable, reconciled Australia. As history tells us, this will only happen through continued and concerted action from those who are already part of the reconciliation movement to those who are yet to join. Moving towards a braver reconciliation requires a vision for what a just, equitable and reconciled Australia looks like.

Reconciliation must live in the hearts, minds and actions of all Australians as we move forward, creating a nation strengthened by respectful relationships between the wider Australian community, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. For more information visit reconciliation.org.au

Data driven assessment failing early childhood education

By Martina Tassone, University of Melbourne

Children’s early years from birth to the age of eight are crucial for their social, emotional and intellectual development. However, early years education in Australia is fragmented. It operates across two spaces, the pre-compulsory period, often called early childhood education, and the first three years of compulsory schooling. In recent times the focus in these three years has been on assessment that produces numerical data. Teachers need to demonstrate children are meeting standards.

In contrast, in the pre-compulsory years the focus is on observing and interacting with the child. Practices are based on the belief that all children have agency and are capable learners. A chasm has opened up between these separate education systems. Children go from playing to being tested in the blink of an eye. This abrupt change in young children’s education is problematic.

What does research tell us about the early years?

A 2015 review of research on best practices in the early years identified key factors in successful teaching and learning. The review noted the importance of: • A smooth transition between preschool education and compulsory school education.

• Play-based learning. • Seeing children as capable and having agency in their learning. • Dialogic interactions involving rich discussions between children and between children and teachers.

Australia has introduced a mandated curriculum and a national assessment program in primary schools. The review noted this meant many early years teachers have adopted a more formalised and narrow approach to learning in schools. It isn’t appropriate for young children. We can see the resulting divide between non-compulsory and compulsory early years education in Victoria. On the one hand, teachers need to acknowledge the needs of children from birth to eight years. On the other hand, for those between the ages of five and 12, the Victorian Curriculum requires teachers to assess and report against curriculum standards. The focus on formal assessment and numerical data in the early years of schooling means children as young as six can be labelled as failing. In countries like Finland and Singapore, which have been identified as highperforming, children do not even begin formal schooling before the age of six or seven.

One study has described the early years in countries like the United Kingdom, America and Australia as being at the mercy of top-down policy development, leading to “a highly prescriptive and assessment-driven early years climate”. UK researchers have identified the “datafication” of early years education and its impacts on children and teachers. And Australian researchers used the term “adultification” to describe the unrealistic expectations placed on young children.

So what happens in our schools?

My doctoral research found “datafication” and “adultification” defined the early years of schooling in Victoria.

I engaged with more than 100 early-years teachers to explore their literacy teaching and assessment practices. The recurring theme was these teachers were expected to frequently assess young children in formal ways that provided numerical data.

Teachers voiced frustration. One described the early years as “death by assessment”.

Another lamented that community expectations were unreasonable, saying “people are hung up on data, numbers”. There was an overwhelming sense that the teachers knew their children best and should be given the agency to assess and plan for literacy teaching rather than being required to use a suite of commercially produced assessment tools. The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) is designed to support early years teachers working with children and families. Its premise is that children have the greatest opportunities to develop neural pathways for learning and are also most vulnerable to negative experiences from birth to eight years. The framework is based on research into best practice for children in these years. Rather than formal assessment based on numbers, the VEYLDF advocates for assessment that is authentic and responsive to how all children can best demonstrate their learning and development. The Victorian Education Department encourages teachers in schools to use the framework. However, little is known about how many actually use the framework to inform teaching and learning. Making it mandatory to report against curriculum standards from the time children begin compulsory schooling sets the boundaries for how many teachers operate. It is hard to have a foot in both camps when reporting against these standards is mandatory and you feel compelled to prepare children for what comes next – which includes NAPLAN, the national assessment program.

Schools can still let children be children

However, some schools are turning their backs on the relentless measuring of young children’s attainments. St John’s, a multicultural primary school in Melbourne’s inner west, is one example. You only need to look at the school website to see its philosophy differs from many others: “St John’s Horizon (a school communitydeveloped vision) clearly states ‘KIDS AT THE HEART’ which encapsulates our focus and belief in the image of the child – the child who is capable, curious, full of wonder, rich in knowledge, able to construct and co-construct his or her own learning. We believe in JOY – Joy in learning.” A conversation with the then-principal, Gemma Goodyear, gave me an insight into these beliefs, which are inspired by teaching and learning in schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Goodyear said children do not come to school to be “fixed”, and the teachers engage them by providing meaningful, contextualised learning experiences. And, yes, through their focus on rich learning they still get great results without relentless testing. It is time to revisit the early years of schooling and ensure teachers have the skills and understandings they need to support learners in this phase. These years should be a time when children become engaged and excited about learning, a time of great joy, and a time when children are allowed to be children.

Martina Tassone is the early childhood and primary course coordinator and a language and literacy lecturer at the University of Melbourne. This article was first published at The Conversation website and is reproduced here with permission. The opinions expressed in this article is that of the author and do not necessarily reflect any official policies or positions of the SSTUWA or AEU.

The resilience of education in a broken world

By Susan Hopgood President, Education International (EI)

This article is the first of a two-part series and is the transcript of a speech delivered by Education International President Susan Hopgood (pictured right) at the Australian Education Union’s 2022 Federal Conference in Melbourne in April.

I want to begin by thanking (AEU Federal President) Correna (Haythorpe) and the entire AEU leadership for inviting me to provide an international perspective to you this morning. I can say for certain that this is the first time in history this address has been given by a person who has been largely behind closed doors in Melbourne for the past two years. At the same time that many of us have been stuck in place, it strikes me that the one central feature we’re all witnessing is a world unmoored from its foundations.

In an era of lockdowns, so many circumstances and situations that used to reliably attach the past to the present have become detached.

These are seismic events, a reordering that defies all our experience. But more than that, these events are occurring against the will and largely against the interests of the vast majority caught up in them.

The brutal invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime has ushered in crisis and chaos on a global scale. Thousands have already been killed and millions are under threat as a much wider involvement in the combat remains a very real possibility. These events tear away at our foundations – respect for international borders, the right of nations not to be invaded and the proscriptions against the killings of civilians.

Education has reportedly been a special target. In the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, teachers and the education department pushed back on Russian occupier demands to teach a new official curriculum. They refused and the Russians have since kidnapped the head of the state education department in retaliation.

It’s important that we remember this is not the first time just in our own working lifetimes that war has been waged against civilians. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, just to name a few. Brutal military campaigns led by a handful and perpetrated against entire societies.

I don’t need to tell you how this all disproportionately affects children. Back before most of our lifetimes, at the outset of World War I, Save the Children founder Eglantyne Jebb wrote that “Every war is a war against children.” UNICEF tells us the war has caused one of the fastest large-scale displacements of children since World War II.

This includes more than 1.8 million who have crossed into neighbouring countries as refugees and 2.5 million who are now internally displaced. Every day in every way, our children are being detached physically and emotionally from the world we all know and from any predictable path forward. The examples are all around us. We can see with our own eyes the structure of millions of lives shifting off the foundations.

And of course, this destructive trend disproportionately affects the poor, people of colour, nations in the global south. [Let’s] begin with Covid. The first thing to know from an international perspective is simply the numbers: as of last week (late March), [there were] 479 million global cases and just over six million deaths. But we also have to know that in lowincome countries, one in five persons have been vaccinated, while in high-income countries, everyone eligible has received an average of two doses. Think of that gap. COVID-19 disrupted education for an estimated 1.6 billion students worldwide. The implications of global learning loss are just now beginning to come in and, to no one’s surprise, the loss was again focused on vulnerable populations. Hundreds of millions of families were also effectively unmoored from food security, social stability and personal safety. It’s important to recall that Covid hit at a time when reportedly fewer than half of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were able to read a short, ageappropriate text, compared to more than 90 percent in high-income countries; at a time when 128 million youths already faced education disruption due to conflicts, forced displacement, child labor and a range of environmental crises; and at a time when an estimated 69 million more teachers were needed worldwide to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal for quality education. The pandemic also hit at a time of crisis for the planet itself. Here at home, the adjective “recordbreaking” has lost all meaning. This year’s floods follow last year’s cyclones and record rainfall and the year before that the worst wildfires in recorded history. A group of former defence and security officials wrote in an open letter to the Australian government just weeks ago, saying climate change represents

the “greatest threat to the future and security” of our country. “The first duty of government,” these officials said, “is the safety and protection of the people, but Australia has failed when it comes to climate change threats.” In February, the UN body charged with environmental monitoring said three things that should terrify everyone on the planet: • Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly. • Many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted, and • There is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages. Even without further action, human activity is causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swaths of the natural world and rendering many areas unlivable. Unlivable.

Families, communities and nations untethered from their homes and their lands. And of course, countries that contribute least to the problem shoulder the heaviest burden of the climate emergency, while the countries that created the problem and got rich in the process, can afford the luxury of piecemeal responses and public relations.

And who are the most vulnerable and subject to the most severe impacts? No surprise: women and girls from marginalised backgrounds and in the poorest communities. Floods often mean schools are either destroyed or inaccessible. In times of climate-induced crises, such as a natural disaster, drought, or resource scarcity, girls are more likely than boys to be taken out of school to complete household chores like collecting water or taking care of siblings. In Malawi, it is estimated that 1.5 million girls are at risk of becoming child brides due to the impacts of extreme weather events caused by climate change. Impoverished girls and women are often forced into sex work in the aftermath of a natural disaster, as documented in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis in 2008. After our own 2009 bushfires, there was an increase in domestic violence against women and children.

Natural disasters such as floods, fires and hurricanes caused by climate change displace millions of people annually from their homes, and 80 percent of those displaced by the effects of climate change are women.

This forced migration often places women in precarious, unsafe and unstable conditions. Migrant women are more likely to face poverty and are less likely to receive a quality education. Separated from their families, women and girls face increased vulnerability to human trafficking and sexual assault in overcrowded shelters.

Beyond the natural and accelerated crises are the disasters of policy. Across the globe, too many governments are failing miserably in their responsibilities to their people.

(continued from page 23) Basic responsibilities – to collect taxes, to provide infrastructure, to promote equity and equal rights, to invest in their own people, to meet their funding commitments to education.

Failing to adequately invest in teachers’ training, many governments have resorted to recruiting unqualified teachers, with salaries well below the minimum wage. Worse than that, as you well know, governments have turned to privatisation of public education systems. The pressure from the education technology sector has grown to the point where failure is almost not an option economically. Valued at $254 billion US dollars in 2021, it is expected to reach more than $600 billion in five years. Successive World Congresses of EI have supported a campaign to confront these forces and the opportunists among them. Since 2015, EI’s Global Response campaign has driven the fight against the growing privatisation and commercialisation of education globally. The privatisation trend is especially pernicious in Africa. For years the continent has witnessed the rapid growth of so called “low-cost” private schools – schools notorious for employing unqualified teachers with low salaries and few labour rights and operating with little accountability. For several years, EI and our member organisations have campaigned against these schools, especially Bridge International Academies, the largest “lowcost”, for-profit school chain in the world. The World Bank’s private sector division invested more than $10 million US dollars in Bridge’s operations in Africa and supported the company’s expansion elsewhere.

Just weeks ago, the Bank announced it would no longer invest in this chain. This is a very big deal coming from the largest funder of education in the developing world. Organising and mobilising public pressure can make a huge difference in a democracy. We aim to prove that very soon with the elections here in Australia, am I right? Other parts of the world would envy – at the very least – our access to levers of democracy: the right to vote, to organise, to speak out. But democracy is not guaranteed. Neither is free association or the right to teach and learn. Your support for EI and international solidarity with the world’s educators is making a difference. In nations including Colombia, Burma, the Philippines, Brazil, Turkey, Bahrain, Iran, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan, the fight for our right to join a union, the fight for democratic values and systems, and the fight for educators to do their jobs – these are the same fights. In the Philippines, the national police has been profiling leaders and members of EI’s member organisation, ACT (Alliance of Concerned Teachers).

At a press conference calling this out, ACT’s president Raymond Basilio received a cell phone call from an anonymous man who had detailed knowledge of Raymond’s movements and whereabouts.

The man said an order had been issued for him to be killed. For weeks, billboards sprouted up around the country with his face and those of other union leaders. We helped make sure that Raymond never slept in the same place more than one night. Last June in Myanmar, on the first day of school, more than 200,000 teachers were suspended for opposing the military junta. Hundreds were arrested and tortured; as of last count in October, 29 had been killed. Many are in hiding. EI has extended financial support to the families of teachers who were killed during the protests and to those teachers who are jailed or lost their jobs for joining the protests. In Iran in December, teachers in 110 cities across took to the streets to demand decent salaries and working conditions, an incredibly courageous move in a country where unionists are routinely jailed. One of them is Esmail Abdi, a math teacher and former Secretary General of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association and we have been working for his release and that of other jailed teachers and unionists.

In Colombia, where more than 1,000 teachers have been assassinated since 1986 and death threats to union leaders continue to this day, EI has worked tirelessly to defend the lives of education activists.

The teachers’ union president Nelson Alarcón, left Colombia for a while after receiving more than 1,000 death threats in one week.

In Afghanistan, with the leaders of the main two teacher unions forced into hiding, we helped obtain buses and worked to get them space on a plane. They were there when a suicide attack on the very gate they were approaching killed 100 Afghanis and 13 American service members, injuring hundreds more. Weeks later we managed to evacuate much of this group and are working to get others who were hiding spread across the country to safety. In Hong Kong our 95,000 colleagues were forced to disband their union after a Chinese crackdown during which Chinese state media called the association “a malignant tumor” that needed to be “eradicated.”

The dismantling of quality education often doesn’t require troops and bullets. The New York Times wrote about Lo Kit Ling, a high school civics teacher in Hong Kong whose course has been replaced by “positive” information, in other words, indoctrination.

She once took pride in stimulating critical thinking. Now, she said “It’s not teaching. It’s just like a kind of brainwashing.” On the other side of the world, the free-speech organisation PEN America has reported that, in the last year in the US, 122 education bills have been offered in more than half the states penalising teachers from discussing subjects declared off limits by far-right legislatures. In the first three weeks of January this year, an additional 71 so-called “gag order” bills were offered in legislatures, more than half of them including some kind of mandatory punishment for violators. The educators and their unions are fighting back. Clearly, when you see public education as a public good and a human right and you organise collectively around the principles of quality, fairness and equity, you make some enemies. Our members work every day to ground and connect their students to the knowledge and experience that can make them successful and resilient.

Our unions work every day to ground and connect our profession to sustainable policies by governments held accountable for quality education. And together, every day, we are fighting for these foundations around the world, on Covid, on climate, democracy and sustainable development. Part two of this speech will be published in a future issue of Western Teacher. This transcript has been published with the permission of the speaker. The opinions expressed in this article are that of the author and do not wholly or necessarily reflect any official policies or positions of EI, the SSTUWA or AEU.

National education and union news

Unions win support for paid FDV leave

Money works in education

After years of tireless effort from unions and community activists, the Fair Work Commission recently made an in-principle decision that 2.66 million workers covered by modern awards should have access to 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave.

This is a historic step forward for workers’ rights in Australia, and has been won by working people against an intransigent former federal government which joined with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to vote against paid family and domestic violence leave as recently as October 2021. The incoming federal government will have to decide whether to extend paid family and domestic violence leave to all workers covered by the National Employment Standards (NES) ensuring the right covers an additional 8.44 million workers.

While the NES covers the vast majority of Australian workers, award provisions only apply to one in four.

ACTU President Michele O’Neil said: “This is an historic win and a generational achievement for millions of women who have fought for this against the resistance of this and previous coalition governments.”

“Already this year, 18 women have been killed by their current or previous partner. Access to paid family and domestic violence leave saves lives. No worker should ever have to choose between their income and their safety.

“The difference between this entitlement being in the award system and the NES cannot be overstated. Failing to include it in the NES would deny access to millions of working people.”

Evidence that money works in education continues to accumulate. A new study published in the latest issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy shows that increased expenditure on schools improves student outcomes.

It found substantial positive effects of increased spending on test scores, dropout rates and post-secondary enrolment.

The study analysed the relationship between school spending and student outcomes in the US state of Wisconsin.

It found that a three per cent increase in operational expenditure per student per year over 10 years resulted in an increase in test scores of three to four percentage points, a nine per cent reduction in school district drop-out rates and a 10 per cent increase in the students who completed high school and enrolled in postsecondary education. The study concluded that: “... the results are driven, at least partially, by a combination of reductions in class sizes and teacher attrition, additional licensed staff and increases in teacher experience and compensation.”

The results of the study are consistent with those of many other recent studies of school expenditure and outcomes.

Twenty-five other studies since 2015 have shown increased expenditure on schools improves student outcomes, especially for disadvantaged students.

The evidence shows that additional school resources improve short- and mediumterm outcomes such as test scores and educational attainment, and longer-term outcomes such as wages, employment and income mobility. As the new study notes: “There is a growing consensus in the economics of education literature that increases in school funding generally improve student outcomes”.

In Australia, critics ignore the extensive evidence that money works in education.

Instead, they claim that international test results for most Year 10 students have declined while funding has increased. However, it is clear that large funding increases have been badly misdirected to the school sectors least in need.

They also ignore the fact that Year 12 results have improved over the past 20 years and that nearly three-quarters of students don’t fully try in the international tests.

Private schools have been lavished with money over the past decade while public schools have been denied the funding needed to make a difference for the vast majority of disadvantaged students.

Combined Commonwealth and state government funding per student, adjusted for inflation, for private schools has increased by nearly five times that for public schools over the last 10 years.

A dramatic change in school funding policies at both the Commonwealth and state levels is needed to ensure that public schools are fully funded to meet the challenges they face.

ACTU welcomes government prepared to take action on wages and secure work

The 2022 federal election result is a rejection of a government which refused to act to address crises in cost of living, wage growth and insecure work.

The ACTU congratulates the ALP on winning government with a strong mandate to fight for secure jobs and higher wages.

Working people have formed the backbone of an historic national campaign this election, a campaign which focused on conversations between colleagues in workplaces, over the phone and on social media about the failure of the Morrison Government to deliver for working people. This campaign, led by working people, ensured that cost of living and wage growth was a decisive issue for millions of voters.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said: “This is a rejection of a government which refused to act to protect the interests of working people.”

“Congratulations to the ALP, who have won this election by standing up for the basic rights of Australian workers.

“Working people have passed judgement on the refusal of the Morrison Government to take action on real wage cuts, insecure work and rising cost of living which working people have struggled through for years under this government.

“Workers have rejected a government which refused to support a $1 per hour increase for the lowest paid workers in our country, and kept caps in place which denied real wage rises to their own employees.

“(This) is a victory for the unionists who stood up against a government that refused to stand up for them.”

Award recognition for member

Congratulations to SSTUWA member Clare Stack for being named runner up of the Australian Education Union’s 2021 Arthur Hamilton Award.

The award recognises the outstanding contribution by a public educator towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education.

Clare (pictured right) was automatically nominated for the honour after being named the recipient of the SSTUWA’s 2021 Reconciliation in Action (RIA) award. The RIA accolade was in recognition of Clare’s work as the Aboriginal Education Coordinator and teacher at Broome Senior High School.

There are more than 300 Aboriginal students at Broome SHS and among the initiatives in which Clare is involved is the Aboriginal Cultural Leaders Program, which prepares Aboriginal students to be leaders amongst their peers and in their communities.

To read more about Clare’s work in January’s issue of Western Teacher visit sstuwa.org.au/WesternTeacher

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