Journal of Educational Administration

Emerald Article: System alignment as a key strategy in building capacity for school transformation Jim Watterston, Brian Caldwell

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To cite this document: Jim Watterston, Brian Caldwell, (2011),"System alignment as a key strategy in building capacity for school transformation", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49 Iss: 6 pp. 637 - 652 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578231111174794 Downloaded on: 21-10-2012 References: This document contains references to 37 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

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Alma Harris, (2011),"System improvement through collective capacity building", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49 Iss: 6 pp. 624 - 636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578231111174785 Stephen Dinham, Frank Crowther, (2011),"Sustainable school capacity building - one step back, two steps forward?", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49 Iss: 6 pp. 616 - 623 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578231111186926 M. Bruce King, Kate Bouchard, (2011),"The capacity to build organizational capacity in schools", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49 Iss: 6 pp. 653 - 669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578231111174802

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System alignment as a key strategy in building capacity for school transformation

Jim Watterston
Department of Education and Training, Canberra, Australia, and

Building capacity for school transformation 637

Received March 2011 Revised May 2011 Accepted June 2011

Brian Caldwell
Educational Transformations, Brighton, Australia
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review strategies to build capacity for school improvement in Australia. The focus is on public schools and strategies adopted for the system as a whole. Design/methodology/approach This paper traces developments from a national perspective and makes a case for the key contemporary policy shift that has provided the platform for a new era of educational reform. Two contrasting case studies are described in order to demonstrate the pathways embarked on by a large jurisdiction, namely the State of Victoria, which has led the nation in terms of devolved decision-making for public schools, and second, a much smaller jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is introducing a range of reforms to give public schools much greater autonomy in order to achieve improved performance. The paper concludes with a futures view of how strategies may continue to evolve. Shifting the language from improvement to transformation is canvassed. Findings It is concluded that a key to success has been to align strategies among different levels of the school system: central, regional/district, school and classroom. The possibilities for moving beyond improvement to transformation are canvassed. Originality/value The value of the paper lies in its up-to-date account of system-wide efforts to improve schools and a summary of evidence on their impact. The paper is of particular interest to school and school system leaders as well as those engaged in the study of educational policy and educational leadership. Keywords Improvement, Educational policy, Leadership, School change, Education, Schools, Australia Paper type Research paper

There are several seemingly intractable problems in education in Australia and efforts to address them are gathering momentum even though educational reform and strategies for school improvement have been underway for nearly four decades. These problems include the unacceptable disparity in achievement between high and low performing students (PISA, 2006), including distressingly low levels of success for the nations Indigenous students (MCEETYA, 2008, 2009); a fragmented approach to school governance across the six states and two territories; continuing and often debilitating debates about school choice, especially in relation to public (government, state) schools and private (non-government, independent) schools; and the content of curriculum and approaches to learning and teaching. Despite these problems, Australias students generally perform well in international tests of student achievement such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (Gonzales et al., 2008;

Journal of Educational Administration Vol. 49 No. 6, 2011 pp. 637-652 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0957-8234 DOI 10.1108/09578231111174794

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PISA, 2006; TIMSS, 2007). There is, however, a general view that the country could do much better, not only in addressing the aforementioned problems, but, in ensuring that the system of education at all levels helps ensure that Australia will thrive in an era of globalization. Much of the effort is connected to the challenge of achieving what has been termed a new federalism or cooperative federalism. Constitutional powers to make laws in relation to education lie with the states but the federal or commonwealth government has a very important role because of its nancial powers and inuence. It is the only level of government that has the power to raise funds through an income tax and a Goods and Services Tax (GST), and it must make decisions on how funds will be disbursed to the states and territories. There can only be a truly national approach if there is broad agreement across both levels of government and an arguably unprecedented effort is being made to achieve this. A key concept is alignment; a key challenge is how to achieve alignment of effort among and within the different levels of government in ways that have an impact on outcomes for students. International observers are surprised that a national framework is not already in place, since this is the normal arrangement in most countries. In this respect, considering nations around the Asia Pacic, Australia is more like Canada and the USA. Indeed, the constitution that established Australia as a nation in 1901 is in many respects modelled on that of the USA, with the challenge of developing a national perspective much greater in the latter, with 50 states, than in Australia, with six states and two territories. There is, for example, no national curriculum in the USA and the likelihood of developing one is remote, whereas Australia is in the midst of introducing one. Canada presents another contrast, with the federal government having virtually no role in school education except for Indigenous students and children of military personnel. There are also differences in these three countries in respect to private and public schooling. Australia provides public funding to support both, and the mechanisms for allocating funds are complex and under constant scrutiny and debate. In the USA, there is a constitutional bar to the public funding of private schools, but the picture has become blurred with the introduction of publicly funded, privately-operated schools, as illustrated in the growing but still relatively small charter school movement. In Canada, the issue has been resolved in most provinces with parity in funding for public and non-public so-called separate school systems. This paper traces developments from a national perspective and makes a case for the contemporary policy shift that has provided the platform for a new era of educational reform. Two contrasting case studies are described in order to demonstrate the pathways embarked on by a large jurisdiction, namely the State of Victoria, which has led the nation in terms of devolved decision-making for public schools, and second, a much smaller jurisdiction, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is introducing a range of reforms to give public schools much greater autonomy in order to achieve improved performance. The paper concludes with a futures view of how strategies may continue to evolve. Shifting the language from improvement to transformation is canvassed. Conceptual foundations The developments reported in this paper have their foundation in several important concepts in administration. These include governance, decentralization and

networking. There are two related integrating themes. One is the distribution of power, authority and inuence among and within different levels of administration, with alignment of effort as the goal. The other is collective capacity which Fullan considers to be the sine qua non of system reform (Fullan, 2010 p. 70). Governance Governance may be dened as the process whereby elements in a society wield power and authority, and inuence and enact policies and decisions concerning public life, and economic and social development (International Institute of Administrative Sciences, 1996). In his international work for different school systems Michael Fullan advocates a tri-level arrangement in describing the shift from whole school reform to whole system reform (Fullan, 2004, 2005) with the three levels being national/state, district and school. He cites the successful alignment of these levels in the success of the system of schools in Ontario, Canada (Fullan, 2008). Other writers stress the need for exibility in governance. Sir Michael Barber is Expert Partner in the Global Public Sector Practice of McKinsey & Company and former head of the Prime Ministers Delivery Unit in the UK. He contends that:
The era of the large, slow moving, steady, respected, bureaucratic public services, however good by earlier standards, is over. In the new era, public services will need to be capable of rapid change, involved in partnerships with the business sector, publicly accountable for the services they deliver, open to diversity, seeking out world class benchmarks, and constantly learning (Barber, 2003, p. 115).

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Flexibility of a kind that Barber had in mind is illustrated by Bentley and Wilsdon (2004), writing for the London-based think-tank Demos (Bentley is now Deputy Chief of Staff for Australias Prime Minister Julia Gillard) who suggested that an adaptive state is required if the best approaches to service delivery are to be achieved at a particular point in time:
We need new systems capable of continuously reconguring themselves to create new sources of public value. This means interactively linking the different layers and functions of governance, not searching for a static blueprint that predenes their relative weight. The central question is not how we can achieve precisely the right balance between different layers central, regional and local or between different sectors public, private and voluntary. Instead, we need to ask How can the system as a whole become more than the sum of its parts? (Italics in original) (Bentley and Wilsdon, 2004, p. 16).

Reecting that element of governance that is concerned with social development, Michael Keating, former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in Australia under Prime Minister Paul Keating (no relation) described reforms in service delivery in the public sector in the following terms:
The reforms of public administration affecting service delivery stemmed fundamentally from public dissatisfaction with many of the services provided. The major problems were their lack of responsiveness to the particular needs of the individual client or customer [. . .] society has become more educated and wealthy and its individual members have developed greater independence and become more individualistic [. . .] This individualistic society is both more demanding and more critical of service provision (Keating, 2004, p. 77).

According to Keating, this focus on the individual does not mean that concern for the common good is abandoned. It is the proper role of government to be concerned with

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the common good but: there has to be a reinterpretation of the notion of equity as a guiding principle for the delivery of public services, away from uniformity toward the differentiation of services, with the assistance provided varying according to each recipients particular needs (Keating, 2004, p. 78). Developments in Australia illustrate exibility in governance and the continuous search for the best conguration of structures that distribute authority, power and inuence in efforts to build capacity and achieve school improvement. Decentralization Fullans tri-level approach assumes a particular structural conguration that warrants closer scrutiny. In the USA and Canada, the three levels are state (province), district and school. The district has powers allocated to it in state (province) legislation. In Australia, the three levels are understood to be the state (territory), region and school. However, the region is not a different level of government, as the district is in Canada and the USA. The distinction between administrative and political decentralization may be helpful. According to Altshuler (1970, p. 64):
The former involves delegation from superior to subordinate ofcials within a bureaucracy. The organizing principle of the bureaucracy remains hierarchical. The top ofcials remain free to revoke the delegation at any time [. . .] Political decentralization, by contrast, involves the transfer of authority to ofcials whose dependence is on the subjurisdictional electorate, or more narrowly, a subjurisdictional clientele. The assumption must be that such ofcials will not be manipulable by the former possessors of the transferred authority.

In Australia, structural arrangements for regions are more like administrative decentralization whereas, in USA and Canada, districts are more like political decentralization. The French concept of deconcentration (Fesler, 1968, p. 370) may better describe the geographic dispersion of ofcials in regional arrangements in Australia. Decentralization to the school level is a key part of the developments reported in this paper. The concept is variously known as school-based management, site-based management and school self-management. For example, a self-managing school is a school in a system of public education to which there has been decentralized a signicant amount of authority and responsibility to make decisions related to the allocation of resources within a centrally-determined framework of goals, policies, curriculum, standards and accountabilities (based on a denition of Caldwell and Spinks, 1988, 1992, 1998, 2008). It may be more appropriate in Australia to refer to a bi-level approach in school reform (rather than tri-level). Networking The concepts of governance and decentralization are normally associated with the vertical distribution of authority, power and inuence. However, recent developments are also concerned with horizontal arrangements. It is in this respect that the concept of networking is relevant. A network is an association formal or informal, temporary or permanent, mandatory or voluntary between and among individuals, organisations, agencies, institutions or other enterprises, through which participants share knowledge, address issues of common concern, pool resources or achieve other purposes of mutual benet (Caldwell, 2008).

The possibilities of networks were addressed in the work of the Schooling for Tomorrow project of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2003). The following illustrate different facets of networking, with the rst (Johansson) highlighting connections to decentralization (autonomy) and community, and the second (Barber) concerned with uncertainty, knowledge transfer and capacity building:
School autonomy goes hand-in-hand with being connected to community, other educators, and the broader society. Hence, the key roles of networks, and partnerships. Too much educational practice in OECD countries is characterised by isolation: schools from parents and the community and from each other; teachers and learners in isolated classrooms ( Johansson, 2003, p. 149). The challenge of reforming public education systems is therefore acute. Those responsible are in no position to deal with uncertainties. What they can do is manage and transfer knowledge about what works effectively, intervene in cases of under-performance, create the capacity for change in the system and ensure that it is exible and adaptable enough to learn constantly and implement effectively (Barber, 2003, p. 115).

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These vertical and horizontal arrangements are not mutually exclusive, as made clear by Harvard Universitys Karen Stephenson who sees organisations as a sort of double-helix system, with hierarchy and networks perpetually inuencing each other, ideally co-evolving over time to become more effective (cited in Groves, 2008). The notion of co-evolution is consistent with the exibilities in governance advocated by Barber (2003) and Bentley and Wilsdon (2004). National direction and intervention Over the last three decades Australia has experienced a steady drift of students from the government (public) to non-government (private) sector. The deregulation of the educational environment coupled with an increase in middle and higher socio-economic communities have meant that a growing proportion of Australians have been able to exercise choice and select non-government schools. This has created a challenge for the public system. In addition to changes in educational preferences has been recognition that achievement levels across Australia, while high, involve a relatively wide gap in performance of low- and high-achieving students. This has led to a national priority to raise educational outcomes for students from low socio-economic backgrounds and also for Indigenous students to the levels that are comparable to non-Indigenous students. With the election of the Rudd Labor Government in 2007, there has been a stronger and more inuential set of strategic initiatives and policy directions led by the Federal (Commonwealth) Government aimed at lifting educational standards across all jurisdictions. The mechanism has been a suite of National Partnership Agreements designed to inject additional resourcing into all schools (government and non-government) to target areas of underperformance. These partnerships have included agreements on: literacy and numeracy, schools in low socio-economic areas, indigenous students, teacher quality, tertiary and vocational education and early childhood. Resources have included reward payments to each jurisdiction for reaching targets and milestones. There has also been a $14.3 billion building program in all primary schools across the nation and science centres in selected high schools in addition to a capital investment program that has provided much-needed digital resources and associated infrastructure to all schools.

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The Federal Government has also focussed on the need for transparency of performance outcomes in all schools. To this end, a national web site known as My School has been created to display National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results for all schools (www.myschool.edu.au). The publication of this information has been controversial as some media have set about creating league tables of schools ranked in perceived order of performance. For many schools this information has brought renewed attention and a high level of public scrutiny, depending on whether results are deemed to be high or low. Whether they agree with publication, or not, teachers have become more acutely aware of, and driven by, the results. As an extension of this transparency and federal involvement in mainstream education, Australia has seen signicant new resources invested in all schools. These come with a new and heightened level of external accountability that is creating impetus around school improvement agendas at the national, jurisdictional and school levels. It would not be an understatement to note that Australia is in the midst of an educational transformation that is signicantly altering the landscape in a way not experienced previously. Prior to taking over as Prime Minister, former Minister for Education Julia Gillard instituted a range of reforms along the lines described previously. While several have attracted controversy, the way of doing business in schools across Australia has been permanently altered. Teachers now understand that there is an evidence base on which they and their school will be judged. As to whether this evidence base is fair and valid is still being contested in some quarters but what is inescapable as Australia moves forward is that there is a basis, albeit narrow and somewhat limited, for judgements of school performance to be made. The importance of creating a reliable and deep evidence base on which policy decisions and reform initiatives can be made and tested has been reinforced by the development of the My School web site which will continue to evolve as more information and enhanced school performance data are added. As Banks (2010) points out, while there have been increases in educational attainment over the past few decades in areas such as Year 12 completions, the gains made up until the mid-nineties have not been built on since that time. Currently, in times of strong employment in Australia, despite the rest of the world struggling to overcome the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, over 20 percent of 20 to 24 year olds are not fully engaged in employment, training or education. Julia Gillard has called for school principals to be given greater autonomy to give their schools the capacity to make signicant shifts in the way they operate in order to achieve improved outcomes. This policy setting is now starting to gain traction across the nation. Victoria has provided a relatively high level of autonomy for its schools for nearly two decades. In 2009 Western Australia created a number of independent public schools whereby local school communities could choose to take on a broad range of self-managing functions. In 2010 South Australia announced reforms that will enable schools to manage resources and select staff. The Australian Capital Territory will do the same from 2011. Case studies from Victoria and the ACT highlight the different ways capacity for school improvement is being developed at the system and school levels. New alignments in Victoria Across Australia each state and territory has developed its jurisdictional approaches to reform and school improvement, with Victoria recognised since the early 1990s as the

most devolved in terms of providing school leaders with a high level of authority, responsibility and accountability (94 percent of the states operating budget in school education is decentralized to schools for local decision-making). If public schools are going to compete successfully for market share in the face of increased participation in non-government schools then public school principals need to have a leadership model that is similar to their non-government counterpart. This includes the capacity to select staff at the local level and to exibly manage all resources including those provided by the state. While the initiatives in place for two decades have been ground-breaking, there are still inconsistencies in the performance levels of schools across the state and overall comparisons with other Australian jurisdictions provide a case for further improvements to be made in terms of student outcomes. On the face of it, however, it is clear that while a relatively high level of autonomy at the school level is important in the quest for improved performance, autonomy on its own is not sufcient. To fully exploit the opportunities for greater innovation and enhanced local decision-making an exemplary level of leadership capacity together with high quality teaching across all classrooms are required. In 2003, the Victorian Minister for Education and Training at the time outlined the need for further educational reform based, as Fraser and Petch (2007, p. 2) describe, on a sense of urgency about the differential quality of the educational experience in government schools. The Blueprint for Government Schools (2003) identied three critical areas for reform: (1) Recognising and responding to diverse student needs. (2) Building the skills of the education workforce to enhance the teaching-learning relationship. (3) Continuously improving schools. The Blueprint recognised that while the public school system in Victoria had improved in some areas, more needed to be done to ensure that the whole system prospered and sustained the gains that had been made. There was also a need to enhance public condence in the quality of the public school system in the face of questions over performance and falling market share. Developing leadership capacity in order to improve the quality of teaching has been the over-arching goal of recent strategic initiatives across the public system. In more recent times however, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) in Victoria has focused on using a deeper and more reliable evidence base to drive both system-based and locally-initiated strategies to bring about improved student performance. This work has been complemented by a stronger level of internal accountability whereby school principals and staff have been required to take greater responsibility for the performance of their schools. Victorian school leaders are contracted for up to ve years and contract renewal has moved from being a mere formality to an opportunity for reection and an integrated performance review. As a result, a more considered and heightened contract renewal process has become a key opportunity for system change and improvement as the tenure of some leaders has been discontinued while others have used this process to make career decisions to move on. Key elements of the Victorian public school reform process also include the alignment of policy and strategic directions. The development of a network model of

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collaboration between schools and the provision of renewed and arguably better targeted system support have enhanced decentralization that had, for some, simply meant competition between schools. Research on the impact of networks in Victoria An example of successful networks was reported by (Caldwell, 2008) who drew on research by Educational Transformations, commissioned by the Hume Region to study the implementation of the states regional effectiveness model. Hume is a rural region of about 160 schools located in North East Victoria. The eight elements of the model are professional leadership, a focus on learning and teaching, strategic stakeholder partnerships, shared moral purpose, high expectations for all learners, a focus on continuous improvement and strategic use of resources. Each network in the region includes several clusters of schools with the expectation that principals of each school share responsibility for all students in the cluster to the extent that professional knowledge is shared, issues of common concern are addressed, and resources are pooled wherever possible. Principals and other school leaders in the Hume Region participated in a common professional learning program that focused on building knowledge and skills as well as creating a shared language on matters related to learning and teaching. This was known throughout the region as the common curriculum. There has been powerful impact, with the following, drawn from case studies in six schools, giving an indication of how school leaders perceived the effectiveness of clusters and networks. All schools reported high levels of involvement in their clusters and networks. The high expectations in the region for all school principals to be dedicated, focused and professional, for example, resulted in increased professionalism in all network and cluster meetings. Principals reported that their meetings were more strategic and focused on areas that can assist other schools. Representatives from each school were actively involved in professional learning communities in their cluster that target either literacy or numeracy. Principals reported that their networks also provided resources and support for other forms of professional development. The perceptions of principals, as reported previously for case study schools, were consistent with views across the region. In 2008 the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) conducted an online survey of principals and personnel at the regional and central level to seek their views on a range of matters. In the Hume Region, the percentage of principals giving favourable ratings was higher than given by their counterparts in other regions in Victoria for nine of the 14 themes addressed in the survey. They gave the highest or equal highest percentage of positive ratings to 81 of 168 items (48 percent) in the survey. The following are ratings that are particularly relevant to networking. The percentages are of respondents giving a positive rating and these are the highest in the state for these items. . there is close collaboration among principals in your network (92 percent); . you feel that the people in your network are passionate about what they do (96 percent); . you are proud of what your network does (95 percent); . your network demonstrates its commitment to continuous improvement (97 percent);

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your network is contributing to the greater good of the development and education of children (99 percent); and in your experience, people in your network actively encourage the sharing of information (94 percent).

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An independent assessment of developments in Victoria In 2007 Harvard Universitys Richard Elmore (2007) offered high praise for the approach to school improvement in Victoria. The good news is that Victoria, because of the thoughtful design of its improvement strategy, is on the leading edge of policy and practice in the world. He identied three distinctive features of the design. First, its central focus is the creation of human capital. The central message is simple: Schools improve by investing thoughtfully and coherently in the knowledge and skill of educators. This feature is in harmony with the nding of the McKinsey report (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). Second, accountability measures are seen as instrumental to the development of human capital. He contrasts this with the approach in the USA in which accountability for performance is considered to be the leading instrument of policy, and human investment is considered to be a collateral responsibility of states and localities resulting in a disastrous gap between capacity and performance. What is impressive about Victoria, Elmore states, is its emphasis on using school performance data and data on teacher, student and parent attitudes towards their schools, as the basis for human investment decisions, rather than primarily as the basis for administering rewards and sanctions. Elmores third distinctive feature about Victorias approach to school improvement is the way it denes leaders as essential carriers of the new culture of school improvement. New alignments in the Australian Capital Territory Within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is the nations smallest public education system, there is a transformation occurring that seeks to build on high performing past practice and on a range of new initiatives designed to improve system capacity and responsiveness. At a time when the Commonwealth Government is making more signicant investments in education, the ACT Government is seeking to capitalise on this opportunity both through complementary investment and a range of policy and strategic initiatives. The vision contained in the ACT Department of Education and Training Strategic Plan 2010-2013 Everyone Matters is to ensure that all young people in the ACT learn, thrive and are equipped with the skills to lead fullling, productive and responsible lives. This plan signals a signicant shift in policy and direction for the previously centralized public education system. While some ACT public schools are already achieving excellent results, there are individual students in all schools who are not achieving at an appropriate level for a range of reasons. It is recognised that in every school and every classroom there is room for improvement. In 2010 the ACT Department of Education and Training (DET) began to implement an integrated and comprehensive approach to school improvement based on the principle that the core work of all school leaders is to improve student learning outcomes. This approach builds on the current work in schools to improve teacher quality, develop leadership capacity, introduce more consistency in curriculum provision and use valid and reliable data to monitor and report on school performance.

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Through its 2010-2013 Strategic Plan the DET has committed to developing a more systematic and targeted approach to school improvement by providing for schools to locally select all staff, both teaching and non-teaching, to ensure that specic school needs can be addressed by the most appropriate and skilled personnel. In addition, schools will be transitioning to one line budgets which will enable stafng proles to be more exible and more responsive to school priorities and program development. Other key initiatives include: . organising all public schools into four smaller networks of no more than 23 schools, each led by a school network leader (SNL); . clarifying the accountability of principals and school network leaders in order to ensure that schools can demonstrate that enhanced autonomy is delivering improved performance; . increasing the availability and use of data to inform school improvement practices and monitor progress; . providing support for principals and building capacity to ensure they are highly effective instructional leaders; and . building the capacity of teachers, particularly in the essential areas of literacy and numeracy. Strengthening school improvement Between 2010 and 2013, schools and their communities will use the ACT School Improvement Framework (SIF) to reect on the quality of their practices through the identication of strategic priorities and programs that are effective, challenging and engaging for all students. The SIF is based on the capacity for schools to self-assess through the evaluation of student progress and the resulting identication of ongoing school priorities. Schools plan for improvement through a four-year school strategic plan and an annual operating plan including accountability measures and targets. Progress is then made available through the Annual School Board Report. Schools participate in an external review process over a four-year cycle. The SIF has been designed to assist schools to evaluate their performance using evidence-informed processes and tools. Recent analysis of school performance has highlighted signicant variation in student outcomes within and across ACT public schools. The strengthened school improvement focus aims to reduce these gaps by ensuring that every student is exposed to high expectations, effective teaching and a supportive learning environment, regardless of the school they attend. This is designed to dene and promote consistent understandings of what constitutes effective teaching and learning at school, network and system levels. System priorities include a commitment to raising the bar and lifting the tail of student achievement through improvement in literacy and numeracy and school graduation rates in addition to a whole-of-system approach to identifying and teaching gifted and talented students. Key initiatives also include the setting of high expectations for student learning and the capacity to intervene early when individual maximise teaching time within each lesson and the school day in addition to using in-class coaching as a basis for professional learning to build teacher and school leader capacity. A key element of the renewed focus on improved outcomes for all is the establishment of relevant and integrated networks across the system for resource

deployment, school improvement and professional learning. While schools are expected to use the school-based autonomy that is being provided to create local solutions there is also a need to provide system support through increasing School Network Leader (SNL) collaboration within and across schools by working in partnership to identify, share and resolve problems of practice. The SNLs are charged with the role of developing effective and purposeful partnerships within and across the four school networks. Partnerships are designed to be exible and innovative and are informed by high quality local, national and international practices designed to improve the performance of every school. It is fundamental that school network leaders and principals will engage in honest and open discussion about the individual and collective performance of their schools. Through authentic collaboration in networks the SNLs prioritise common areas for improvement and develop and articulate these in network improvement plans. These are based on joint analysis of data gathered from all schools in the network, with improvement strategies and actions identied collectively. At the heart of the departments school improvement agenda is the principle that accountability applies across all levels of the system and involves a collective responsibility to work together. Principals are required to share their school accountability and performance data openly and collectively work on solutions to individual and network problems. Principals from high performing schools are expected to share their schools successful teaching and leadership practices. SNLs are responsible for overseeing continuous school improvement. They are accountable for the overall performance of their network, including the performance of each school, and ensuring effective planning, resource allocation and support at school and network levels. Network leaders, however, are not super principals and therefore do not have a heightened line management role to over-rule appointed school principals. The school network leaders and the departments senior executive are accountable to the community and government for establishing the conditions that can support sustained improvement in schools and for overall performance of the system. Principal performance and development The principals appraisal process has been rened to complement the strengthened school improvement agenda, including the responsibilities of each principal beyond their school to the network. It is imperative for school leaders to be able to operate effectively in an autonomous environment and to receive reliable and targeted feedback on their performance and ongoing development. Each principal works with theirSNL to identify school and network priorities that will be the focus of their individual work. They devise an agreement based on a frank analysis of their leadership strengths and developmental needs, and the support they will require to achieve the identied school targets. In drawing up the Principals Performance and Development Agreement (PPDA), the principal and SNL agree on a clearly identied set of criteria to monitor the principals performance. The PPDA outlines the leadership strategies and personal and network professional learning the principal will undertake. The School Leadership Framework provides a reference to support discussions. The performance and development process includes systematic self-evaluation, and the provision of constructive feedback. SNLsprovide principals with objective, and constructive written feedback on their performance, and

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professional growth at the mid and end points of the cycle. Feedback supports both school, and system-wide improvement. To monitor progress at a system level the ACT benchmarks improvement against other high-performing systems, and seeks opportunities to share practices and learn from others. To support this approach, Michael Fullan, an international authority on large-scale reform in school education, acts as a critical friend for the department to help build a more strategic and targeted approach to school improvement. As Fullan states:
System change will not occur one school at a time. Schools and the district must work together to change a system. A good indicator of this is a district in which individual principals become almost as concerned about the success of other schools in the district as they do about their own school. Collective work increases shared commitment and shared knowledge to alter the context for all schools (Fullan, 2003, p. 16).

Preliminary indicators of success During the rst 12 months of the 2010-2013 of the Strategic Plans implementation, there has been an array of initial evidence that indicates that school improvement based reforms are impacting positively across the system. The NAPLAN results for the ACT in 2010 have continued to improve and are among the highest in the country and within the three highest performing jurisdictions along with New South Wales and Victoria for all assessment domains and year levels (Grace, 2010, p. 2). In addition to the high achievement gains in student performance, for the rst time in a decade the number of students attending the public system has increased along with a signicant increase in the average number of applicants for school principal positions. The willingness of a greater number of aspiring school principals to apply for school leadership positions could be interpreted as support for the enhanced focus on systemic consistency in relation to school improvement strategies. SNLs also report that for the rst time all school principals are now regular participants in network meetings, which is an indicator of the willingness to engage in the collaborative culture that is emerging. Further evidence of enhanced practice across the system was provided by the consultancy rm The Leadership Practice which conducted an independent review in November 2010 of the ACT public school External Validation Process. As noted in the Executive Summary of the report, A change in focus to an evidence based approach to school improvement and the requirement to report outcomes as the key information in school reviews has seen a substantial change in the strategic leadership and the professional culture of schools (Bywaters and Boucher, 2010, p. 2). Discussion Achieving alignment among policies and practices to lift achievement for all students is particularly challenging for countries with federal systems like Australia, Canada and the USA, which have an additional level of government compared to countries like New Zealand and the UK with their unitary systems. There has, however, been considerable progress in Australia over the last three years through a series of national partnership agreements that gave effect to new federalism or cooperative federalism. Two jurisdictions (Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory) illustrate how this has worked from a state and territory perspective.

An important strategy in securing alignment has been to achieve a higher level of autonomy at the school level than has traditionally been the case. The ACT moved early in the early 1970s but plateaued for more than three decades, accelerating again from 2010. Victoria made steady progress over four decades to the point that it is now the most devolved of any system of public education in the nation. The major political parties at the federal level accept the need for a more decentralized approach around the country to achieve a heightened level of alignment. Australia now has a national system of tests with a high level of transparency on a school-by-school basis through the My School web site. There is no doubt that schools and their principals are being held to account in unprecedented fashion. However, the missing link in the policy-practice-accountability chain in most jurisdictions has been a lack of authority at the school level to take action in matters such as the selection of staff and the allocation of funds. The case for higher levels of autonomy has a sturdy evidence-base. A study of PISA 2003 results conducted for the OECD by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Department of Human Capital and Innovation, was concerned with accountability, autonomy and choice, focusing on level of student achievement:
On average, students perform better if schools have autonomy to decide on stafng and to hire their own teachers, while student achievement is lower when schools have autonomy in areas with large scope for opportunistic behaviour, such as formulating their own budget. But school autonomy in formulating the budget, in establishing teacher salaries, and in determining course content are all signicantly more benecial in systems where external exit exams introduce accountability (Womann et al., 2007, pp. 59-60).

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An important issue is the extent to which expectations can be achieved within a traditional school improvement paradigm. These expectations may be cast as high levels of achievement for all students with a narrow gap between high- and low-performing students. There is a strong case to be made that years of effort at all levels have led to only marginal improvement. Such may be the case in England where dramatically increased levels of funding, an unrelenting stream of reform initiatives, one of the most extensive re-building initiatives in any country, and demanding accountability driven by high levels of transparency in school tests have led to debatable evidence on the extent of improvement. It may be that current efforts in Australia may lead to similar disappointment. System improvement in education may be viewed as a comprehensive and consistent effort to achieve improvements in student outcomes within an existing paradigm of schooling. There may be limits to what can be achieved within that paradigm which includes organisation of schooling in different levels and classes, curriculum, pedagogy, technology, facilities, relationships with other schools and with the community, and role of teachers and other professionals. While noteworthy changes have been made, the place called school is still recognisably the same place it has been for decades. It may be that transformation is a more appropriate term than improvement in the decade ahead. At one level transformation can be described as an outcome along the lines of signicant, systematic and sustained change that secures success for all students in all settings (Caldwell and Harris, 2008). Australia falls well short of such an outcome at present. At another level is the specication of elements that make up a transformation paradigm, re-shaping and re-aligning elements in the improvement

JEA 49,6

paradigm. Victoria is planning to change the language and the way these and other elements are aligned in its next blueprint. This takes us into the territory of futures thinking in school education and work in this area is now taking place at all levels (see Caldwell and Loader, 2010 for how this work can be undertaken in schools). New alignments will be required. Summary It is clear that, in a world that grows smaller every day as the digital environment connects us in ways that were previously not considered possible, educational success for all Australians will involve the establishment of productive partnerships and active collaboration. As former Secretary of State in the UK Estelle Morris argued: there is little place anymore for the stand alone school (Morris and Beare, 2007, p. 12). Schools not only need to be networked, they have to be able to integrate their activity and authentically learn from each other in ways that have not been mainstreamed in the past. Within this networked school environment however, we must recognise that just like students, every school is unique. The history, teacher prole, culture, demographics, size and a range of other variables in each school demand that local solutions must be developed to address identied problems of practice and performance. It is therefore abundantly clear that the one size ts all approach to systemically controlling all schools will not move the nations educational performance consistently forward. While we must share wisdom, knowledge and practice to improve schools within a network, enabling school leaders to innovate and provide exible strategic direction is essential to improvement at the local level and for the nation as a whole.
References Altshuler, A. (1970), Community Control, Pegasus, Indianapolis, IN. Banks, G. (2010), Advancing Australias human capital agenda, Ian Little Lecture, Monash University, Melbourne, 13 April. Barber, M. (2003), Deliverable goals and strategic challenges a view from England on reconceptualising public education, Networks of Innovation: Towards New Models for Managing Schools and Systems, OECD, Paris, Chapter 7. Barber, M. and Mourshed, M. (2007), How the Worlds Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top, McKinsey & Company, London. Bentley, T. and Wilsdon, J. (2004), Introduction: the adaptive state, in Bentley, T. and Wilsdon, J. (Eds), The Adaptive State: Strategies for Personalising the Public Realm, Demos, London, Chapter 1. Bywaters, L. and Boucher, S. (2010), Report on the ACT External Validation Process for 2010, ACT Department of Education and Training, Canberra. Caldwell, B.J. (2008), The Power of Networks to Transform: An International Perspective, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, London. Caldwell, B.J. and Harris, J. (2008), Why not the Best Schools?, ACER Press, Melbourne. Caldwell, B.J. and Loader, D.N. (2010), Our School Our Future, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), Melbourne. Caldwell, B.J. and Spinks, J.M. (1988), The Self-Managing School, Falmer, London. Caldwell, B.J. and Spinks, J.M. (1992), Leading the Self-Managing School, Falmer, London.

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Caldwell, B.J. and Spinks, J.M. (1998), Beyond the Self-Managing School, Falmer, London. Caldwell, B.J. and Spinks, J.M. (2008), Raising the Stakes, Routledge, London. Elmore, R. (2007), School Improvement in Victoria, Department of Education, Melbourne, available at: www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/staffdev/schlead/Richard_ Elmore-wps-v1-20070817.pdf (accessed 25 November 2010). Fesler, J.W. (1968), Centralization and decentralization, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 2. Fraser, D. and Petch, J. (2007), School Improvement: A Theory of Action, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Melbourne. Fullan, M. (2003), The Moral Imperative of School Leadership, Sage, London. Fullan, M. (2004), Leading the Way from Whole School Reform to Whole System Reform, IARTV Seminar series no. 139, Incorporated Association of Registered Teachers of Victoria (IARTV), Melbourne. Fullan, M. (2005), Leadership Sustainability, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA. Fullan, M. (2008), The New Meaning of Educational Change, 4th ed., Teachers College Press, New York, NY, and London. Fullan, M. (2010), All Systems Go: The Change Imperative for Whole System Reform, Hawker Brownlow in partnership with Corwin and Ontario Principals Council, Melbourne. Gonzales, P., Williams, T., Jocelyn, L., Roey, S., Kastberg, D. and Brenwald, S. (2008), Highlights From TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of US Fourth and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context, available at: http://nces.ed.gov (accessed 27 November 2009). Grace, T. (2010), Final Report from the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), Doc ref: 2008/02908, ACT Department of Education and Training, Canberra. Groves, M. (2008), Regenerating Schools, Network Continuum, London. International Institute of Administrative Sciences (1996), Governance: A Working Denition. Report of the Governance Working Group, The Global Development Research Centre, available at: www.gdrc.org/u-gov/work-def.hrml (accessed 1 May 2006). Johansson, y. (2003), Schooling for tomorrow principles and directions for policy, Networks of Innovation: Towards New Models for Managing Schools and Systems, OECD, Paris, Chapter 9. Keating, M. (2004), Who Rules? How Government Retains Control of a Privatised Economy, Federation Press, Sydney. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) (2008), National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy. Achievement in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions and Numeracy, available at: www.mceecdya.edu.au/verve/_ resources/NAPLAN_2008-Full_Report.pdf (accessed 30 November 2009). Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) (2009), National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy. NAPLAN Summary Report, available at: www.naplan.edu.au/verve/_resources/2009_NAPLAN_Summary_Report.pdf (accessed 4 December). Morris, E. and Beare, H. (2007), Directions for schooling in the twenty-rst century: two perspectives, in Morris, E. and Beare, H. (Eds), Leading the Education Debate Volume 2, Centre for Strategic Education, Melbourne. OECD (2003), Networks of Innovation: Towards New Models for Managing Schools and School Systems, OECD, Paris.

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Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (2006), Executive Summary, available at: www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/13/39725224.pdf (accessed 30 November 2009). Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (2007), TIMSS Results 2007, available at: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/results07.asp (accessed 27 November 2009). Womann, L., Ludemann, E., Schutz, G. and West, M.R. (2007), School Accountability, Autonomy, Choice, and the Equity of Student Achievement: International Evidence from PISA 2003, Education working paper no. 13, Directorate of Education, OECD, Paris. Further reading Caldwell, B.J. (2010), Glacial progress on school autonomy, Directions in Education, Vol. 19 No. 8, p. 2. Council of Australian Governments (COAG) (2008), National Partnership Agreement on Improving Teacher Quality, agreed to by the Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers, December. Department of Education and Training (DET) (2003), Blueprint for Government Schools: Future Directions for Education in the Victorian Government School System, DET, Melbourne. About the authors Jim Watterston is Chief Executive Ofcer of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Department of Education and Training. His previous appointments include Regional Director (Eastern Metropolitan), Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (Victoria); and Director of Schools (West Coast Education District), Department of Education and Training (Western Australia). He has also served as Superintendent of Schools and School Principal in Western Australia. He is a Director of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and is President of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL). Brian Caldwell is Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Educational Transformations and Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne where he served as Dean of Education from 1998 to 2004. His previous appointments include Head of the Department of Educational Policy and Management at the University of Melbourne; Head of the Department of Teacher Education and Dean of Education at the University of Tasmania. He is Deputy Chair of the Board of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and was President of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (formerly ACEA) from 1990 to 1993. Brian Caldwell is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: brian@ educationaltransformations.com.au

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