Question:

This is an article about school leadership, new education policies and programs, legislation, trends, developments, research and education debates in Australia only, 

Keep in mind current issues, trends, debates, reforms, research and developments in education and educational leadership. AUSTRALIAN only.

Your target audience is, P-12 school leaders throughout the Australia. 

Below are useful list of journals, newspaper, blog, podcasts and videos about school leadership and P-12 education that you might use to further stimulate your thinking and opinions or prompt an idea about an article.

Articles can be of any of the following types: descriptive/informative (reports), analytical, reflective, predictive, entertaining, or opinion and/or information intended to spark debate. 

MUST be about Australasian issues and trends. Perhaps some of the online resources in this list might help.

The most important thing to remember is that the readers of this article will be school principals.

Current issues and trends in P-12 school education: state and national

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/11/10/3361421.htm
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2011/11/09/33155_editorial.html
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/education/barr-admits-to-gap-in-school-performance/2353273.aspx
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/poor-students-need-earlier-help-experts/story-e6frfku0-1226190734158
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mums-in-several-brawlsl-at-kelso-state-school-in-townsville/story-e6freoof-1226200395362
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/call-to-pay-staff-more-at-poorer-schools/story-fn59nlz9-1226198316425
http://www.theleader.com.au/news/local/news/health/schools-decline-defibrillators-after-heartless-policy/2357260.aspx
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/parent-power-plan-for-schools/story-fn7x8me2-1226200106106
http://m.smh.com.au/national/education/schoolboys-thrive-on-risk-at-recess-20111020-1madc.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15175962
http://www.educationreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=Breaking+News&idArticle=22473

Leadership knowledge, attitudes and skills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb2PI0LaxGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiDbhQrPtOc
http://www.thoughtsfromtheoffice.org/
http://www.johnbaldoni.com/blog/view.php?id=145
http://online.wsj.com/video/staying-connected/326FC515-3602-4D04-9F42-0348EA213D7B.html
http://online.wsj.com/video/thomson-reuters-ceo-on-how-to-hold-fewer-meetings/A1F4E5EC-D8A5-4E9E-BFBE-4B938E6F813E.html
http://online.wsj.com/video/facebook-coo-sandberg-honest-communication/5D3A9D9E-DB19-4402-99A4-94BD8F1A9DD1.html

Answer:

The need for targeted funding to bridge the gap between children from varying backgrounds

 

Introduction

Today, Australia faces a serious problem relating to inequality between indigenous and non-indigenous children within the country’s P-12 education system. The most worrying thing about this problem is that this gap continues to widen in both state and territory P-12 schools. This is an entrenched problem that has persisted not only in the P-12 system but also in the entire education system. It is merely a reflection of the underlying inequalities that split the Australian society into two sections: indigenous and non-indigenous population.

However, there are challenges that are unique to P-12, which school principals need to be aware of. This paper highlights these challenges and the ways in which they manifest themselves in the country’s education sector. It also explores the various scholarly perspectives offered by researchers regarding disadvantaged background and its influence on school performance, the related initiatives that have been embarked on in the recent past, and the alternatives that exist in terms of targeted funding.

Challenges relating to the gap between children of different backgrounds

One of the main challenges that manifest a widening gap between children from different backgrounds is high school performance. In Australia, children from non-indigenous backgrounds have by far been performing very poorly. Their performance has been so poor that presently, focus is on targeting additional teaching resources to the affected schools. The indigenous engagement problems that continue to be pointed out in almost all Australian policy circles are no longer a surprise. In areas where this gap is huge, school drop-out rates also tend to be high. In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), for instance, this drop-out is highest among children aged between 9 and 11 (News.com.au). ¹

The gap also manifests itself through dropout rates. After a long period of increased rate of school completion rate within the Australian P-12 education system, this trend started to take a nosedive. According to Marks, the school retention appears to have reached its peak in 1992.² However, between 1992 and 1995, the retention rate dropped from 77% to 72% (Lamb).^­2 Lamb notes that there are social, state-related, and system differences in the recent drop in the rate of student retention across Australia. In the data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the patterns are surveyed on the basis of geographical locations, states, school systems, sex, and social backgrounds.

Teese points out to the studies done during the early 1990s, whereby many people of low social-economic backgrounds who had all along been relying on education for their future security, started gradually turning away from school.³ These studies suggested that there was a need to monitor the number of children who completed school, their backgrounds, and the reasons given for the drop-out decisions. Such information would help confirm or dismiss policymakers’ assertion that the main cause of this negative trend was background and lack of proper learning environment and resources.

According to Lamb, the problem of social differences appears to be a deep-seated feature in Australian P-12 schools.⁴ Lamb observes that the issue of learner’s background is of great relevance because it determines the extent to which the child will be able to access basic learning resources.⁴ Specifically, Lamb gives the example of performance in English and Mathematics, which, according to the findings of his study, show a very strong correlation with not only socioeconomic background, but also the school attended and gender.⁴ Other important confounding factors include the enrolment size in the school, type of school, and its social composition. Students from poor backgrounds normally feel intimidated when they attend the same schools with learners from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

Rothman notes that it is worrying that more and more children may continue renouncing extended learning.⁶ Although it is unlikely that the drop-out levels will reach the all-time lows of the 1990s, the downward is a cause of concern among many people. Those who express a link between a child’s background and the likelihood to remain in school have been holding their thought after considering the fact that the downward trend has been increasing in spite of the fact that economic the circumstances of many people have not changed much in recent times.

For some time now, the Australian labour market has been characterized by few opportunities for teenagers and a high level of unemployment among the youth. This indicates that early school leavers will continue being substantially disadvantages in the job market, mainly in terms of competition. Ordinarily, one may choose to argue that many young people are attracted by employment opportunities to get away from school and disadvantaged backgrounds, so that they can start assisting their parents with income-generation activities. However, this is not the case, and the reality is that there are stronger influences that shape children’s decision to leave school before their time.

Remedies to the performance gap: Researchers’ perspectives

According to Considine, sociological researchers have focused a lot on the relationship between a child’s socioeconomic status and educational performance at school.⁷ In the case of Australia, the reality has been that children from poor backgrounds are normally at an advantage when it comes to performance at school, especially in major exams. The main predictors of academic performance identified in the study by Considine on over 3000 students within the Australian P-12 education system include ethnicity, housing type, parental educational attainment, gender, unexplained absences, and student age.⁷ However, when all other factors are controlled for, family structure, geographical location, and the chief source of family income do not influence educational performance. This led Considine to conclude that the ‘social’ and ‘economic’ components of a child’s background influence a child’s academic performance in entirely different ways.⁷ The implication of this finding is that although there is need for financial assistance to families and schools where children of disadvantaged backgrounds come from, there is also need for the low-income parents to be offered the necessary educational and psychological assistance. Such a move would be for the betterment of the child’s educational performance.

In his view, Rothman points out that the ways in which socio-economic status (SES) influence the academic achievement of a child is not clear.⁶ In this regard, there are many theories that attempt to expound on this relationship. One point of view offered is that children from poor backgrounds attend school from a point of disadvantage because of a lack of an appropriate academic environment at home. Another strand of argument is that school and neighborhood environments have a far-reaching influence on academic performance. The outcome of the latter argument is that low-SES schools generally tend to perform poorly, only that young learners have to be extremely resilient if they are to survive the ‘cycle’ of poor academic achievement. This debate is of utmost relevance since it influences the nature of policies that are aimed at mitigating the persistent problem of educational disadvantage among some learners within the Australian P-12 school system.

Targeted funding

In Australia, the way in which successive governments have interpreted the debate on socio-economic background factors has greatly influences the way it has targeted funds aimed at ameliorating the disadvantage that is normally associated with certain backgrounds. It is worth mentioning here that as early as 1975 the Disadvantaged Schools Program had been established in Australia. This program was aimed at reducing the negative effects that come with disadvantaged backgrounds on school performance. Through this program, additional funds were channeled into school-wide projects in schools situated in neighbourhoods of low SES. In the mid-1990s, this program changed course and its implementers started to dwell more on numeracy and literacy. Today, there are variations in its implementation between states.

School funding programs underwent a major restructuring in 2009. Educational leaders have been pondering the factors that influenced the Australian government to restructure its funding for both government and non-government schools in 2009. These changes came soon after the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to the newly proposed framework for financial relations at the federal level (Harrington).⁸ All in all the new strategy appears to be well suited for addressing the gaps between children from rich backgrounds and those from poor backgrounds. Since funding for government schools is done separately from that of private schools, it is possible to address certain needs that are specific to each category of schools.

In a recent Schools Funding Review Submission, the Australian Education Union noted that in matters of funding P-12 schools, the notion of equity seemed to have acquired different meanings to different groups.⁹ The explanations offered by the more than 70 stakeholders involved in the funding review, for instance, led to the emergence of some 40 different definitions of the notion of equity (Australian Education Union).⁹ Although some definitions contain strong statements, one cannot help but notice that these stakeholders do not seem to be enthusiastic about dealing with the gap between endowed learners and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. If they were, then this understanding would have surfaced in the way they defined the notion of equity.

Yet international assessments made by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicate that the country’s overall performance in the P-12 education system is dropping. This finding coincides with that dropout rates highlighted earlier on in this paper. Such negative results have far-reaching implications for school principals, educational leaders, and most importantly, those who are entrusted with the task of allocating funds across Australian schools. Fortunately, Australian Education Union acknowledges that the negative results are ‘wake-up call’ for the country’s education planners.⁹ As Taylor observes, there is an indication that the allocation of funding in Australian schools is inequitable, and that it is not supporting a satisfactory opportunity for all children to achieve the highest possible educational potential.¹⁰

Conclusion

In summary, all stakeholders in Australia’s education sector should understand the need to bridge the gap between learners’ circumstances so as to enable them maximally exploit the educational opportunities provided in the P-12 system. Although researchers are yet to reach consensus on the influence on socio-economic background on school performance, it is clear that a disadvantaged background ultimately limits a learner’s ability to exploit all educational opportunities that comes his way. It is upon school principals to ensure that the funds channeled into their schools are targeted towards projects that bridge the gap between learners of different backgrounds. The school principals should also exercise their leadership skills by influencing federal policymakers into channeling funding into priority areas.

 

References

1. com.au (2011) Poor students need earlier help – experts, November 10, 2011, retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/poor-students-need-earlier-help-experts/story-e6frfku0-1226190734158  on November 22, 2012.
2. Marks, Gary (2010) Patterns of participation in year 12 and higher education in Australia: trends and issues, LSAY Research Reports, Longitudinal surveys of Australian youth research report.
3. Lamb, Stephen (1998) Completing school in Australia: Trends in the 1990s, Australian Journal of Education, 42(1), 19-49.
4. Teese, J. (2007) Richard Structural Inequality in Australian Education Vertical and Lateral stratification of Opportunity, The Influence of Genetics on Contemporary Thinking, 3(1) 39-61.
5. Lamb, Stephen (2001) The stratification of learning opportunities and achievement in Tasmanian secondary schools, Australian Journal of Education, 45(2) 12-94.
6. Rothman, Sheldon (2003) The changing influence of socioeconomic status on student achievement: recent evidence from Australia, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia.
7. Considine, Gillian. (2002) The influence of social and economic disadvantage in the academic performance of school students in Australia, Journal of Sociology, 38(2), 129-148.
8. Harrington, Marilyn (2011) Australian Government funding for schools explained, Parliament of Australia, Parliamentary Library, 31 January, 2011.
9. Australian Education Union (2011) Schools Funding Review Submission, March 2011.
10. Taylor, Sandra (2003) Social justice in a global context: Education Queensland’s 2010 strategy, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(4), 29-83.