An audit of how the Department of Education and NSW Education and Standards Authority (NESA) ensure minimum standards of teaching in the State’s public schools has found that they don’t.
In her report Ensuring teaching quality in NSW public schools, Auditor-General Margaret Crawford found the principals of NSW’s 2,200 or so public schools were responsible for accrediting their teachers in line with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.
“NESA does not oversight principals’ decisions to ensure that minimum standards for teaching quality are consistently met,” Ms Crawford said.
“The Department does not effectively monitor teaching quality across the State.”
She said that with limited data, it was difficult for the Department to ensure its strategies to improve teaching quality were appropriately targeted.
“The Department’s Performance and Development Framework does not adequately support principals and supervisors to effectively manage and improve teacher performance or actively improve teaching quality,” Ms Crawford said.
“The Department manages those teachers formally identified as underperforming through teacher improvement programs.”
She said only 53 of over 66,000 teachers employed by the Department were involved in the improvement programs in 2018.
“The report makes three recommendations towards NESA to improve the accreditation processes, and four recommendations to the Department to improve its systems and processes for ensuring teaching quality across the State,” Ms Crawford said.
She said the first recommendation to NESA was to work with relevant stakeholders to ensure Teacher Accreditation Authorities received adequate training before making accreditation decisions.
She advised NESA to review and improve the application and assessment processes for attaining higher-level accreditation, in consultation with NSW and national stakeholders and called on them to implement a program of risk-based reviews to provide confidence that proficient level accreditation determinations aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.
The Auditor-General recommended the Department improve its Performance and Development Framework; improve its School Excellence policy; develop and implement a strategy to use its Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers more effectively.
She also advised the Department to evaluate the Quality Teaching, Successful Students program to determine whether it was implemented in accordance with guidelines and was achieving its intended outcomes.
The Auditor-General’s 37-page report can be accessed at this PS News link.
