A performance audit into the effectiveness of the Education Directorate’s strategies and activities to improve the quality of teaching practices in ACT public schools has found a lack of data has prevented the Directorate from fully understanding the impact of its strategies and activities.
In his report, Teaching Quality in ACT Public Schools, Auditor-General, Michael Harris said the Directorate’s activities to improve public school teaching practices were centred on school improvement using the National School Improvement Tool, teacher professional learning and teaching workforce management.
“While there is a clear structure of performance measures and six-monthly internal reports, baseline data has not been consistently captured and used to determine the impact of initiatives to improve teaching quality,” Mr Harris said.
“A comprehensive, evidence-based school improvement process is in place for ACT public schools to improve student outcomes, through the use of external reviews of schools against the National School Improvement Tool,” he said.
“Roles and responsibilities for the school improvement process are not well understood in schools and not all schools fully participate in Education Directorate’s school improvement process.”
Mr Harris said certain practices were limiting schools’ ability to access highly experienced teachers, including that the Directorate didn’t centrally plan or monitor the distribution of experienced teachers across the system; principals could exclude teachers from the annual teacher transfer round; and that teachers weren’t transferred to schools they hadn’t expressed a preference to teach at.
The Auditor-General said the teacher performance development process wasn’t effective in supporting teaching quality and didn’t effectively support teaching appraisals to allow feedback on classroom teaching practices.
“The performance management process for teaching staff is not implemented effectively,” he said.
“While the Education Directorate has established a range of professional learning and other supports to improve teaching practices, the effectiveness of these programs is reduced by a lack of awareness amongst teachers and school leaders.”
Mr Harris made 14 recommendations aimed at improving reporting consistency and frameworks; getting all ACT schools to participate in the school improvement program; upskilling staff; and supporting the distribution and monitoring of the teaching workforce.
The Auditor-General’s 143-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
The audit team was Kate Mest and Matthew Bowden with the support of David Kelly and Taylah Commisso.
