It's a pleasure to be here today to discuss the future direction of secondary schooling in Queensland. As leaders from the major secondary schools throughout the state you're integral to the smooth implementation of the reform agenda.

As you're aware we're currently gathering community feedback on the Green Paper: A Flying Start for Queensland Children. The proposal which has generated the most response at the statewide community consultation forums is moving Year 7 into secondary school in 2014 to better meet the needs of students. This is a significant change that will require new classrooms, specialist teachers and facilities. I know this proposal will be of particular interest to each of you here today.

In most Australian states, Year 7 is the first year of secondary school. And with the introduction of Prep our Year 7 students will be turning 13, instead of 12, by 2015. Moving Year 7 into the secondary environment would impact all schools, but especially those in our rural and remote communities.

The Government is determined to encourage as many people as possible to 'have their say' on the reform proposals. So far more than two thousand participants, including teachers and students, have attended more than 75 forums around the state. The Minister has been impressed with the depth of the considered feedback at the forums, online and through almost 900 electronic submissions.

The feedback indicates support for moving Year 7 into secondary school but also acknowledges that there are issues to be addressed and students will need to be supported. Forum participants have given us clear messages around the need to have strong transition programs and pastoral care support to ensure Year 7 students successfully move into the secondary environment. Feedback on how to improve teacher training includes - more emphasis on behaviour management, cross cultural awareness and how to teach students when English is not their first language.

Participants have also called for pre-service teachers to undertake an internship year, to master the necessary skills to ensure a successful transition to the teaching profession.

There has been widespread support for the Queensland Ready Readers program and increasing awareness around the need to provide greater reading support before children start school.

The Masters Review pointed out that highly effective education systems have high expectations at every level - teaching, school and system.

The Government will collate all the responses after June 30 and publish a report summarising them later this year. This means your suggestions, ideas and feedback will be on show for all to view and comment on which is a crucial part of the process.

Giving state school principals the power to exclude students from their school is another key reform the Bligh Government is committed to. Our Government is committed to supporting schools to keep bad behaviour out of the classroom. This is demonstrated through the new Queensland Schools Alliance against Violence. Through the alliance, we're working cooperatively with the other school sectors to reduce school bullying and cyberbullying. Last month leading psychologist and bullying expert Dr Michael Carr-Gregg held the first of 30 seminars for principals, school staff and parents in Cairns and Townsville. The leaders breakfasts, school staff sessions and parent evenings will continue to be held throughout the state next term. Dr Carr-Gregg will work with you, your teachers and parents to develop policies and actions to protect children from the negative impact of bullying and to help break the bullying cycle.

A strong focus will be on cyber safety, an issue that continues to grow as online technologies and social networking become more popular with your students. Through mobile phones and the internet.,children can be subjected to abuse 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I urge you to take advantage of Dr Carr-Gregg's expertise in the education series seminars, the first major initiative of the Queensland Schools Alliance against Violence.

The development of a new pre-registration testing regime for aspiring primary teachers is progressing well. We're currently looking at extending this to secondary teachers. Teachers across the nation will for the first time be accredited against a uniform set of standards. The standards are the first step in a planned uniform system of teacher accreditation and nationally-consistent registration. This will continue to be administered by the Queensland
College of Teachers. The system will offer national accreditation and standards for teacher education courses in higher education institutions.

I'm pleased to say that the new Queensland Education Leadership Institute (QELI) will start training and professional development for school leaders next month. The institute is part of our response to the Masters' Review and will act as a lighthouse for the development of school leadership in Queensland. The QELI will collaborate with the new Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership. We've recently appointed two education experts, Professor Brian Caldwell and former principal David Sutton, to review teacher training in Queensland to ensure our beginning teachers are "school ready".

The State Government has a big reform agenda in place for Queensland education.

We also need to keep in mind that the National Curriculum will be implemented between 2011 and 2013. The Australian Curriculum will provide greater consistency for our increasingly mobile student and teacher population. It will also:

• remove duplication in curriculum development;
• provide economies of scale for efficient development of high-quality resources; and
• set uniformly high expectations for student performance.

This new national curriculum will help ensure consistency of learning throughout Australia as it will be used by all states and territories. I'm pleased to see that planning for the implementation of the Australian Curriculum is continuing to move forward. The approved English, mathematics, science and history
curriculum for Prep/K-1 0 is due for release by the end of August. And implementation of this first phase will start next year.

Consultation for the second phase, which includes geography, the arts and languages, will begin next year.

Planning for the third phase is also being considered.

The Queensland Studies Authority, Queensland Catholic Education Commission, Independent Schools Queensland and Education Queensland are working together to ensure that all Queensland schools receive consistent advice and effective support.

The State Government is determined to offer practical advice and resources and targeted professional development to ensure a successful transition. We'll build on strengths in the existing curriculum; and continue effective practice in curriculum planning, teaching, assessment and reporting.

We're working hard to implement practices and strategies to improve students' outcomes, now and into the future. I thank you for your ongoing commitment and success in this area. Our Government looks forward to continuing to work with you to achieve this common goal.

• Things are changing. Many of us are not aware of why that is happening. Once you understand that, you can set up a framework for managing the change.
• Things have changed one thing at a time in education over the last 30 years, e.g a minor curriculum shift, interactive white boards, etc.  But in the outside world, everything is changing all at once.
• NB: He did not use a PowerPoint presentation. He put his websites on the screen. The addresses are in the notes below.
• http://www.i-learnt.com/
• Teachers at Work: Internet Tools for Teachers at http://teachers.work.co.nz/ is another website.
• And School V2.0 with resources is at http://www.schoolv2.net/.
• He has written 3 books on these issues: 
  • Whatever! … School V2.0. The Pedagogy of Learning in the 21st Century. This book provides the framework for teaching and learning in this new learning paradigm being driven by the internet.
  • Whatever! Next? (what competencies do we expect of young people). The Global Conceptual Curriculum: This resource provides educators with a conceptual curriculum scaffold that can be adapted to meet the needs of learners within any education system in the world.
  • Whatever! Were We Thinking?  How the Brain Learns: the story of how the brain learns, and why more intelligent people have a lower ratio of neurons than the less able.
• Reports back in 2000-2001 gave new ideas on thinking skills. Schools have assumed that the kids have these when they arrive, and they don’t help kids to acquire them.
• We need to understand how the brain learns. Learning by rote depends on the neurons in the brain, which make up only 7% of the brain - not efficient way of learning. Learning concepts (e.g. driving) is much more efficient. We learn them quickly and can transfer them to other places, and we can apply them to different contexts. This depends on the astrocytes, which make up 76% of the brain - so it is a much better way to learn than rote learning. Creativity  is when your brain take the concepts and the rote learnings and then builds new things. Watch the video by Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and schools - click here. And his latest video - Bring on the Learning Revolution - click here.
• The new Australian Curriculum will not be a concept-based curriculum initially, but will have to go that way in the longer term. It has to do that to be effective and efficient.
• Lot of what we do in schools is pretty, busy work, like PowerPoint.
• To understand where we are now, we have to go back to the 14^th and 15^th centuries. In the 1400s, who ran the planet? Not the church; it was China – read 1421 (Gavin Menzies’ book). At that time, China was the most powerful nation. It had a huge fleet of ships (up to 166 metres long), it had a banking system, it used "flying money" (letters of credit), and Bombay was the main port for them to move goods around world. The Chinese had writing and calligraphy. But China became arrogant; it attacked other countries. China wanted nothing from other places – "we know everything; we don’t need anything from anyone". This attitude led to their downfall. Slowly they were going broke. A new regime killed the Emperor. The new Emperor sank all the ships and walled China off from the rest of the world. And they burnt all the past records.
• A group of traders from western Spain heard that China had circumnavigated the world in 1437. They decided to go to Bombay and learn from Chinese, Indians, and Arabs. They spent 5 years learning everything they could there, including such "simple" things as stirrups for horses (so they could sit safely on the horses in battle). Also paper production, gunpowder, written records, and banking and accounting.
• Then  they went home to Europe and set up a replica of Bombay in Portugal – Europe was just starting to get things together. And the printing press had just been invented, which led to cheaper books. That made learning more efficient and effective – it was no longer based on oral language as in the past. The portability of knowledge led to the first paradigm shift in learning to text-based learning. People had to learn to read and write = "crossing the chasm". Only the elite in most of Europe were allowed to do that. Teachers had very high status. Then there was the beginning of the Renaissance period.
• So China closed down for 500 years. Woke up about a week ago (producing cheap goods is not the solution) – the Minister of Commerce spoke about where China is going next.
• So Portugal became the dominant force in Europe – they adopted the new technologies and the brains from the rest of Europe. So shifted the power from the East to the West.
• Read Kishore Mahbubhani's 2008 book The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, in which he talks about the re-awakening of East Asia as a global economic power.
• Your status as a Principal is rooted heavily in text – you can read or write, otherwise you would not have that job.
• Aljazeera website – mostly pictures (so we think it is for emergent readers), but the pictures are an efficient way to learn. Pictures give clues to the reader. As you go through school, pictures in books get smaller and then  become diagrams. But no one would read the website if it was all words.
• Most of the learning happens for kids when they are out of school. They power up when they come home from school; they power down when they go to school. We teach the things that we have always taught. And we have been in that place for 500 years. Learning was structured around text – books were mostly text. Text was a sort of filter. Art books had pictures, but Art is not really academic work! Biology was nowhere as a subject until they produced the Web of Life with 500 pages. It’s about status. Like humans – we are passionate and non-rational.
• Statement that learned people learn via text.
• 5 years ago, started a revolution of using pictures in place of text. A picture tells a thousand words. The picture stimulates a collation of the information.
• But we are now not in the text paradigm any longer.
• In the last 500 years, when teaching via text first came out, it was not very efficient because teachers did not know how to teach people to read and write. Gradually they became better at teaching it. In 1960s, teachers were at 98% effecienecy – they had got the teaching the teaching of reading and writing down really well - about as far as they could go.
• In the 1980s, lots of $ were spent in the USA to improve education. It was also when computers came into education. But they did not work. People blamed the computer instead of looking inwardly for the reason.
• After a few years of doing that in the USA, the government asked Branson to find out why test scores were not improving. Paper – Why Schools Can’t Improve – you can throw any amount of money at it that you like, but you will not get any further improvement because the learning system is running as good as it can (at 98%). So spending more is just a waste of money.
• People started asking: Could the paradigm shift happen again, as it did 500 years ago?
• Yes, and it was inevitable. The internet had just got pictures. Modelling showed that the paradigm shift would be driven by the power of the internet. But we had to "cross the chasm", taking oral language and text language. By 2005, we had broadband.
• http://www.i-learnt.com/Paradigm_The_Three_Transitions.html
• This shift will be mature by 2020 – it will not take 500 years, as the last one did.
• Most people alive in the Renaissance period were not actually in that period – most were in the army or were farmers or 24/7 service providers. In this new shift, everyone is involved.
• Paradigm shifts change the way the brain learns. Up to the development of the printing press, learning was mainly conceptual – risk, family, job, … not much rote learning. And the brain learns concepts really well. Rote learning – the brain is not so good at it – only for less than 200 years and only for those who got a schooling. Takes years and maybe 500 hours to learn to read. Success rate = maybe 70%. Takes lots of resources and expertise.
• Learning to read and learning to drive are about the same in terms of cognitive demands. Driving takes less than 100 hours – no qualifications needed for teaching that. But driving learning = 98% of people are successful at getting their licence on the 1^st or 2^nd attempt.
• Reading and writing learned by rote learning – very inefficient.
• Driving (concepts) – learn quickly. Can’t be done by rote learning.
• What is happening at the moment is that teachers are at the edge of the chasm – what do they see? They see their students on the other side.  Marc Prensky writes about the "digital immigrants" v the "digital natives" – but that idea is all wrong. The paradigm shift is about: how good are they at learning in the new world of technology. The teachers are thinking: “They get it.” But they don’t yet. Our status is in what we know. Then someone invented Google, and that killed our status. So teachers don’t want to jump across the chasm. But they have to.
• Kids need to find ways to learn how to use their new tools more efficiently and do stuff. They know nothing about learning – you do.
• Last week, the Chinese Minister spoke about the future of Shanghai. Research report on the Chinese Internet of Things. http://www.prlog.org/10467852-research-report-on-chinese-internet-of-things-industry-20102012.html
• They saw a huge factory with only 14 people employed in it, of whom 3 were security. That single factory produces 48% of the world’s widgets. So there is no need now for cheap labour. What happens when cheap labour is replaced by cheap technology?
• That factory uses RFIDs so that the control computer knows the location of everything in the factory. "If you have data, you know stuff." Then you need to understand the knowledge to be creative. "Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader." (from Wikipedia)
• The Chinese Government will soon do the same for everything in Shanghai.
• We can build new concepts of understanding on the fly – we are the only species that can do that. Monkeys have only 4% astrocytes – not enough for learning concepts – can only know concepts that they are born with.
• Only we have creativity. Not even dolphins. Animals are not intelligent.
• The paradigm shift is China’s ticket back to where they were 500 years ago. “We will learn from anyone. We will buy technology.” Much easier when you are starting out.
• “The informisation  of Shanghai …” - extract from the paper mentioned above.
• What is their next step = learning, for the people.  In the report, she said: “Next … our schools.”
• The Chinese get the fact that their wealth will be temporary. They now have 7 years of stockpiles of iron ore as a safety precaution. Much wealth is owed to them from all around the world. They are buying clever people; then they will grow them internally through their school system. Now the school system is lifelong. But educators are not that good at learning. If educators do not learn really fast using the new technology, they will be replaced. Kids go to YouTube to learn – it has many lectures and teaching of concepts (which can be applied to new contexts).
• We have to become learners very quickly. The curriculum must be based on concepts. Must be meta-cognitive – can reflect on our own learning.
• You can use a device like the Flip video camera, and it will send the video directly to YouTube. In New Zealand, teachers are using them for assessment. Encourages kids to reflect on their learning and talk about it to the camera. Can see if they really have learnt it themselves. Can thus drip-feed reports out to the students and parents throughout the year – parents get a text message that tells them that their kid’s portfolio has been updated – they can log on and see the report. Teachers don’t write good reports and they hate doing it – they all have to be done in the same week of each year. He now has 300 NZ schools where kids write their own reports. The kids are really honest in their reports.
• The Knowledge Net website.
• Teachers can divest some of the processes that are involved in learning down to the kids. Because the kids have to be involved in evaluating their own learning to fully understand what they have learned.
•  The kids’ writing reports has been the biggest push for teachers changing their practices.
• Now they are using video reports.
• When mapping the curriculum, can go into the concept curriculum, which is divorced from the context, but we need a number of concepts so that can we can see if transfer and application occurs.
• Australia has a small window to cross the chasm.
• China will be the next powerhouse.
• NZ has a 40-page national curriculum – "mainly pointless pictures put there to make the document appear more weighty" – it is not perfect, but it is a step forward. Schools build their own curriculum. They have to do collaborative systems, as the top-down systems are dying.
• Obama won because he collaborated the best.
• We are about to enter the new paradigm – we have to cross the chasm – we have to show kids how to use the technology to learn more efficiently and effectively.
• Your job is to inspire staff and kids to be lifelong learners.

Session 3: Connecting the Dots - Amanda Gore

• You are principals, but also parents to the kids, because parents don’t parent any longer.
• An exercise: Fold your arms. Reverse the hand that is on top. Swap back. Swap again. Swap back. Pick a partner. Get them to look at your arms. Make sure that the arms are exactly reversed. Go back to normal.
• Why do that? To get you engaged. It pushes you out of your comfort zone. No special reason for people crossing their arms at all or for which arm is on top – no way is the right one.
• There is a difference between content (must be relevant, appropriate, etc) and process (the magic that makes it stick).
• I do it because you need to know that the process of change is uncomfortable.
• Neuroscience tells us that when you learn something new, the pre-frontal cortex has to work very hard. Keep learning to stay young – the brain loves to learn new and different things. It also uses oxygen, which makes you tired when you learn something new.
• Repeating things makes it automatic and stores it in the basal ganglia.
• Change breeds fear in everybody. The amygdala (the reptilian brain; the survival brain) kicks in when you do new things, and it can make you stop doing it.
• (Neuroplasticity – how the brain can change – you can rewire the brain. You can teach an old dog new tricks. Just because you grew up in a family that does things a certain way does not mean that you have to things that way all your life. When you do things for the first time, you start to connect the neurons = learning. To change, you have to break down the connection. The brain is always pruning itself.)
• The secret to change:
  • Focus on what you want to change and your goal
  • Awareness  / Attention;
  • Repetition
  • Celebration.
• “I am going to FARC” – tell the person next to you. Don’t worry about feeling that others will think you’re silly – they are thinking about themselves, not about you. You also need to demonstrate learning from your position of influence. Everyone has a pilot light inside them. You can either light their pilot light (to be a spirit igniter) or blow it out (to be a “foofer”).
• Use the FARC idea to be a fun concept, and you can reframe change. Make it funny and a bit shocking, and they’ll remember it.
• Book: The Biology of Belief – Bruce Lipton. From Amazon.com: “Through the research of Dr. Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. Using simple language, illustrations, humor, and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of Epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species.”
• Lipton suggests a new idea about leadership. Also on YouTube – search for “the biology of belief” at www.youtube.com – 6 video clips are available there. Your genes are not ruling your life. Chapter 4 is “It’s the environment, stupid.” You as the principal create the environment / the health in your schools. So you need to know how people perceive you. Also how you perceive them.
• “Bright spots” – focus on the strength of your people – be a “bright spot” finder. Do you believe in the people in your school? Or do you judge them?
• Epigenetics are ruling your life. Pointing the bone worked because of the power of belief. Perceptions are reality. We don’t see reality; we all interpret and judge.
• Family = a sense of connection.
• We have to get the hearts and heads of all of us inter-connected. (Most times, we have to engage their hearts before you can convince their heads, if you want the result to be effective and sustained.)
• You probably feel like you are being squashed by all the pressures on you = tired spirits. The more adrenal exhaustion you have, the more disconnected you are at the neck – you have no feelings.
• Women are starting to have heart attacks at the same rate as men now, so we all need to get re-connected.
• The heart goes “help” and the brain goes “we have not got enough yet”. And it gets worse and worse. The heart is the most important organ in the body – no heartbeat = you die.
• One “foofer” spreads the gloom! But they don’t do it deliberately; no one wants to throw another’s spirit down the toilet. They don’t realise the effect that they have on others.
• Emotional Intelligence = know yourself, manage yourself, manage relationships. The leader’s mood rules the environment. As the leader, you can’t afford the luxury of having a bad mood. Everyone else is terrified of what your mood means for them.
• Leadership is all about feelings, and how special you make other people feel.
• Mood managers are essential for you. Get out of your head (judgment) and into your heart (feelings).
• Dean Ornish - http://www.amazon.com/Ornishs-Program-Reversing-Heart-Disease/dp/0804110387 - cardiologist. “Love and Survival” – the people who are disconnected from others and from themselves die earlier from all causes.
• From Amazon.com: “Many people know Dean Ornish as the doctor who proved that symptoms of heart disease can be reversed with a regimen of a low-fat diet, exercise, and stress reduction. In Love & Survival, he concentrates on the less tangible aspects of a healthful life. Through anecdotes and dozens of scientific studies, Ornish demonstrates that personal intimacy and other aspects of emotional well-being--all the elements that make up what we call "love"--are as important to our physical condition as to our mental health. Not only do these positive emotions motivate us to make better lifestyle choices, Ornish argues, they also have a powerful direct effect on our bodies, giving us stronger immune systems, better cardiovascular functioning, and longer life expectancies. But the benefits of opening our hearts to others go beyond curing our bodies of disease; it's also the first step toward healing our entire lives.”
• From Amazon.com: “With best-sellers on reducing stress and modifying diet to alleviate and reverse the effects of physical heart disease to his credit, Ornish now tackles "emotional and spiritual heart disease," the remedy for which consists of "love and intimacy." Ornish argues that affection is crucial to health with research findings as well as clinical-anecdotal evidence. The second of six fat chapters presents studies demonstrating that those who give and receive love are healthier than those who don't; this is intriguing and persuasive testimony that many may find squares with common sense. Succeeding chapters present the anecdotal evidence, beginning with Ornish's account of his own life-reversal (at 40, he found he was far better at giving than living his own advice) and continuing with advice on behaving and speaking so as to foster love, the story of a middle-aged physician (Ornish's patient) learning to heal his heart disease by coming to terms with anger, and the massive final chapter's interviews with other physicians and healers about their experience with the healing powers of love. Ornish conceives love broadly, bringing in the love of God as well as of mate, family, and friends, and he presents commitment as crucial to loving relationships, especially marriage.”
• Feelings: how often do you wake up in the morning feeling that you have energy; then you meet someone, and after 5 minutes walk away feeling tired. There has been an energy exchange. Some people are energy suckers (“psychic vampires”). You can teach others about energy suckers. It takes only one in the school to take everyone down. She uses the symbol of a rabbit with floppy ears = Wally the Woeful Wabbit.
• She also has an energy giver symbol = Sparky the Baby Kangaroo, with upright ears. Energy givers put the sparkle into everyone. Excited, motivated, inspired, engaged and enthusiastic = sparkle in the eyes. Your job is to do that.
• How do you do it verbally? Ask: what the best thing is that has happened to them today. Greet them differently each time. Start your staff meetings the same way (“what is the best thing that has happened to you since we last met”). Gets them full of endorphins.
• Endorphins = they have the ability to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being. Endorphins work as “natural pain relievers”.
• All of this is about changing the group dynamics.
• The No. 1 thing that everyone wants in life: acknowledgement and recognition. You must do it all the time.
• Do these things:
• 1. Say “Excellent!!” Or “Yes!!” (from the Wiggles)
• 2. From Wisconsin: Say “Ta Da!!” Little kids do it, but it becomes uncool at about age 8. we are doing it on the inside – but no one else knows. You must let them see, and see it in others.
• She ended her address by playing the song: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

...................................................................................

Session 4: ASPA Address - Sheree Vertigan

• "We keep hearing about an Education Revolution. I am not sure that this one is forward looking. I feel that it is more like looking backwards down a tunnel. I am not just being negative. We need to look at where we as Principals are in this revolution. We have been sidelined, and it is partly our fault."
• We say that we are too busy with our schools; we do not engage enough with the profession. We do not engage enough with other people beyond the school gate. The vision of education is what education was like when they went to school, not today’s vision.
• Education is now very much part of the political cycle.
• The current landscape:
  • Education is nothing more or less than a set of initiatives moving through a political cycle.
  • Everything is urgent and important.
  • Community consultation but limited consultation with the profession.
  • A culture of I am right, you are wrong … in other words we do not understand our profession … . Are you sure?
• We need to understand that it is our responsibility to educate the public, the entire public.
• We need to ask: Is it really urgent and important?
• We want better consultation – not the sort of consultation that tells us what they want.
• We want the Deputy Prime Minister and others to stop telling us what our profession should be/should do. How strong is our voice? We need to change the public knowledge about our profession.
• National Education Architecture – see slide 3. Each of the three “silos” – ACARA, AITSL and ESA – has a great influence on what we do in our schools in the next few years. Each “silo” has been sent a letter of expectations by the Deputy Prime Minister. Each board is under-represented by the profession. And we will soon get a 4^th silo = governance = this one will control finance to schools.
• AITSL: It will be about high quality teaching and school leadership. The Institute is tasked with:
  • Creating new levels of teacher professionalism;
  • Empowering school leaders with strategies that support excellence in teaching in their schools; and
  • Creating a new generation of leaders that can manage and develop 21st century schools.
• So far, there had been
• The ACARA Board will not get the blame if the Australian Curriculum does not go well. It will be the states and therefore the teachers (and the principals).
• Australian Teaching Professional Framework – what is in it? We don’t know. More importantly, what do you want for your profession? The documents say that AITSL will develop and maintain rigorous national professional standards for teachers and school leaders to inform:
  • The development of a new standards-based Australian Teaching Professional Framework;
  • An agreed system of assessment and certification of teachers;
  • A new national awards program for teachers and school leaders; and
  • The development of standards fro pre service education and professional learning programs.
• AITSL will drive the development of school teaching and leadership = wonderful, but how?
• So how does this impact on us?
  • MySchool – what impact did this have on you and your school? ASPA survey
  • The proposed boycott – what impact?
  • The media – how were we presented?
  • The working party – what message do you want to give/ want changes do you want to see?
• What do you want ASPA to say to the Deputy Prime Minister about these issues? She asked delegates to take a few minutes at their tables and write down some words. These will be collected, and Sheree will collate them and send them back to QSPA. The ASPA survey said that some felt totally affronted; others felt it was positive.
• A note of caution: Be careful what you ask for. It can be cleverly misinterpreted.
• Significance to the profession? “Standards are the single biggest priority of the Institute.”
  • Standards – do they belong to the profession and form part of professional conversations?
  • Or
  • do they belong to the employer and become part of a system of certification and accreditation?
• You need to make that decision. When you look at each political party’s platform, the word “autonomy” is there – we all want it, but what does it mean to different people? And to whom do you give it – to all principals or just to those deemed as being successful?
• Professional learning – a lot of the money will be tagged to the National Partnerships. So how will the others find the money for professional learning? Where does our personalised professional learning fit into that?
• The BER: we asked for it in our election priority list. The reality? Where is secondary education? The challenge is to get secondary included in the BER. How do we get value for money with this model for government and non-government schools?
• DER: the message from the profession was very varied. The computers are still in their boxes in some schools!! Some say that laptops are a distraction and that bad behaviour is increasing.
• So where are we?
  • Buried under a pile of top down initiatives.
  • Chasing the carrot and fearing the stick.
  • Challenging the agenda – developing connections, creating opportunities for powerful dialogues.
    • For schools/by schools.
    • For the profession/by the profession.
• My challenge to you: Public and proud, public and inspirational. That is what we are, and if we are not, then we need to be.
• We need to challenge the agenda.
• We want to get public education back on the agenda – what parents aspire to. We want to say that we are proud of public education.
• We have to keep emphasising the positives – public and proud, public and inspirational.

...................................................................................

Session 5: New Levels of Excellence - Lyn McKenzie

• Local initiatives are the things that make the most difference. You need time to share those with one another.
• Outwardly looking systems are the best. We base our work on international research.
• Where we are heading in EQ?
• Education is allocated just under 25% of the state budget – a very significant investment – up again this year. There is a strong commitment to getting the best outcomes from young people’s education experiences. This places a high expectation on school leaders.
• There is a united front among governments across the country to education and a nationalised focus on education; therefore we have national targets. For our targets, see slide 3. There is a renewed focus on attendance. Academic achievement – national curriculum (aim to be the world best) – there will be adjustments to it, based on state feedback. It will be a curriculum for all students, including those below the benchmarks (there will be standards for pre-Prep). Attainment of Year 12 – we do not talk any longer about “completion of school”. We are now using certification (e.g. QCE) as the measure of success. Progress through schooling is personalised and tracked so that the certification happens. Aim to get every young person to Certificate 3 level by age 24. There is a renewed focus on youth attainment and transition to employment or study after leaving school. Plus the other things on that slide, e.g. closing the gap (Indigenous and Low SES National partnership schools).
• Lifting performance.
• See above. The Queensland government target is to be in the top 3 in NAPLAN by 2012. Feedback from schools has showed that there has been a renewed focus on teaching literacy and numeracy. We are confident that the Queensland results will improve this year. We have been the fastest improving state. An analysis shows that our kids enter our schools not as ready for schooling as in other states. It needs all parts of the system to have the same focus. We must look at dropping funding to things that are no longer needed. The teaching/learning audit procedure is now in place (it will be a yearly service for schools classified as Low Achievers). It is based on world best practice. The audit tells us where the school is at; NAPLAN tells us where the kid is at. Many schools have not had a curriculum document in English, Maths and Science – mainly because of all the changes in recent years. This is no longer good enough, and Central Office needs to appropriately support schools to do it.
• We are not as strong in differentiated teaching and in data analysis as other states. We are looking at how to support schools to improve in those areas.
• We are determined to be up with Ontario. Their ethos is: “Every child can learn.” The best place for that to take place is in the classroom with the teacher. Schools need appropriate support to make that work and to develop the leaders. We will not chop and change; we need a few focal areas, and we must stay the course. It is hard to do that when the government wants changes.
• Successful transition: We have a few schools that are working on a service guarantee for their students (e.g. Cape York State College and Atherton State High School). Young people can come back for 2 years after leaving school as a base, if they lose their job or for some other reason. It has been successful so far in those schools. Young people age 15-24 in Queensland are more likely to be unemployed or not in training than in other states. Once they leave school, they lack support for quick placement. The Australian Government has identified this as a possible strategy, and they have given funds to Queensland to continue the trial. It does not involve a large number of students; they are the ones who lack parent or family or network support. We have realised that it is easier to capture them while still at school and in transition. It will need a re-look at school funding and how we support the schools for this to be widened from the trial. We are also looking at how to support excluded students and early leavers; a team with the appropriate systems is to be set up in each Regional Office.
• Positive learning environments: Education Queensland has two of the national experts on behaviour management, and they are working in Queensland and in other places. They are working to develop Schoolwide positive behaviour, which is working well in the schools that have implemented it. It is based on defining and clarifying the expectations of kids and teachers, and it is based on consistency of approach across the whole school. This is hard to do in large high schools where there are diverse views among the large numbers on staff. P-10/P-12 schools have been able to implement it in primary and move it into the secondary area. It has been easier to implement in primary schools. We will widen the implementation, and it is part of the teaching/learning audit process. Queensland is leading the way in Australia in the anti-bullying programs.
• Leadership environment: This will be a significant plank in the future. The Queensland Educational Leadership Institute will be launched on 1 July 2010 for all leaders. It will have a focused development model, based on principal recruitment and development. We are moving from selection to recruitment of principals. The QELI will also work with aspiring leaders.

Q&A

• Alternative learning centres for disengaged kids – any plans for these?

The funding ends for some of those programs this year. we will now focus now on transition and attainment, and we will continue funding to those programs which fit that focus. We need to rethink the delivery of services to that group. There is no plan yet; that will come out with a 10-year plan in the next few months.

• Queensland is low in 15-24 transitions when compared with the rest of Australia. Have we looked at the high performers?

Not yet – that is new data. We will look at that, once we work out why our data is low.

• In the recent state budget, the allocation for education is up by 4%. This does not match CPI and teacher salary increases. Where can we expect the efficiencies to hit us – senior area?

The budget is strong in that. There will be efficiencies to be found, mainly in her office area. We are putting as much funding into regions as possible for on-ground support. Numbers of Central Office staff will go back to their schools. Youth attainment: there will be review of funding in that space; it must be targeted and focused.

...................................................................................

Session 5: 4 Things that Great Leaders Do ... And 3 Things They Don't - Steve Francis

• Stunning leaders make it look so easy. Those that struggle give us lessons as well. It is hard to say what stunning leaders do; it is easy to see what the strugglers do.
• Collinsville, in north Queensland, was his first posting in the late 1980s. From there he went to Old Yarranlea (one-teacher school in the grounds of Griffith University – under the video cameras all the time), Bajool, Mt Larcom, Gladstone West, Fig Tree Pocket, Jindalee, then to Hong Kong International School (offered the UK national curriculum) for 4 years.
• What criteria do we use to judge great leaders?
• Series of slides:
• Who was the best leader and why? Out of Hitler, Winston Churchill, Macarthur, and Colin Powell. Table work. Hitler – charismatic and got people to go with him and don’t worry about the result. Powell – overcame his racial background. Churchill – personal adversity but still tops.
• Who was the best leader and why? Out of Ronald Reagan, Joh B-J, Margaret Thatcher, Paul Keating. Thatcher – changed economy.
• So the criteria change.
• Who was the best leader and why?  Out of Wally Lewis, Vicki Wilson, Steve Waugh, John Bertrand (won the Americas Cup for the 1st time ever for a non-American).
• What are the criteria are you judged on as leaders? The criteria change depending on who is judging you.
• From the audience:
  • Staff judge you on accessibility; being valued; consistency; acknowledgement; supportive; visibility; fairness; creating sense of direction.
  • Students judge you on fairness; equity; approachability; consistency; interest (how much you care about them).
  • Parents judge you on being genuine; being available; caring about their kids; integrity; outcomes; ability to communicate.
• Different criteria. Do prospective parents look at the same things (maybe outcomes; opportunities to progress)?
• What does EQ judge you on? data; managing complaints; asbestos management.
• What does your family judge you on? time with them; recognition; valuing them.
• Roller coaster – analogy for you as a leader – you are either on the way up or the way down (improving or on the fall).
• See the sigmoid curve of change below. Learning is about improving then plateauing.
• Even when things are looking as though they are improving, good leaders know that this is the time to think about the next phase of change; resting on laurels will invariably lead to decline. This is explained by using the “sigmoid curve”. Charles Handy suggested that change might result in improvement and progress, but that progress will plateau and eventually decline. To avoid that decline, decisions have to be made about further improvement at the point where success is still growing and before the organisation starts to experience this plateau.

• The diagram to the right illustrates the concept. Follow the blue line. Initial change is likely to result in a dip in progress as the organisation comes to terms with the change, but eventually, progress will be made. Without further change, the organisation will eventually see a decline in progress around point Y. For many organisations in a rapidly changing world, this may be too late. But if the organisation looks at its position at point X, it can look back to see how far it has come and could sit back and reflect on its success. If it looks ahead, it can try to forecast the likely dip in progress and begin to implement changes that will take it onto a new sigmoid curve (the gold line). This period (indicated by the shaded area) is a very difficult time for leading change. There may well be anxiety, confusion and cultural change required before the successful transition to the new curve.
• Four things great leaders do:
• 1. Great leaders are always learners. They know where they are on the sigmoid curve, and they want continuous improvement. You need to get off the curve before it starts to drop. But how do you tell when you are near the peak. And you have to know what the next strategy will be. You need a can-do approach.
• 2. Great leaders make a difference.
• What was the legacy of: Bill Clinton, George Bush, Greg Chappell, Allan Bond? Some people remember them as leaving legacies that are not good. What will your legacy be? What will be the long-term memories that your students have of you – strong and fulfilling? Kids remember the connection with you, the personal stuff.
• What will your reputation be? Do you know what it is? You can find out – be brave.
• Live the reputation you want to have. Professional, punctual, ready-to-go with all materials; never have a harsh word about anyone; always being positive.
• Write down 3 things that you’d like your reputation to be.
• 3. Great leaders spend their time doing what they say is important.
• Pareto Principle = the “80-20 rule” = 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. A few critical things make a big difference; a lot of small ones don’t. How does this apply to your school?
• 80% of the work comes from 20% of the people. Same with complaints, bad behaviour.
• What are the critical ones for you – the ones that give you most of the results from your role?
• You need a filter to come up with your critical few. And then you need to align that with your vision.
• Leadership and management: people need leadership; the rest of the things need management.
• Great leaders persist and find ways to have that particular impact.
• One gap not mentioned so far: feedback. We are meant to be experts on learning. Is not feedback part of the learning cycle? We don’t have a culture of providing feedback to teachers. But we must. People might feel threatened, but if we are to have a focus on teaching and learning, we must do that. But it must be real feedback based on evidence. He wrote a rubric of what good teaching looked like (good v better v excellent) and then worked with the teachers on lesson observation. It puts pressure on your relationships with the teachers; that relationship must be based on trust. You have to work on a differentiated model of supervision – lead through others.
• From Amazon.com: “Trust is so integral to our relationships that we often take it for granted, yet in an era marked by scandals and a desire for accountability, this book is a welcome guide to nurturing trust in our professional and personal lives.”
• 4. Great leaders get results in ways that build up trust.
• 3 things great leaders don’t do:
• 1. Whinge and complain.
• The biggest factor for successful change = positive attitude. Your attitude is what you are.
• 2. Jump on every bandwagon. (From Jim Collins “From Good to Great”). Jumping from one thing to the next without building up enough momentum to get sustained change so that you can move to the next step.
• 3. Busy doing the wrong things. Everyone is busy for long hours, so you must know what the critical things are.
• Avoid DHS (Deferred Happiness Syndrome). I’ll be happy when … I get home; I go fishing; I win Gold Lotto, etc, etc.
• On the card on your table, write 4 goals for the four areas: a place to go; a thing to do; something to learn to do; something to be better at … and put a time line for each one.
• Good intentions are not enough! It’s what you do that counts.
• What will you do differently when you go back to school?
• This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

...................................................................................

Session 6: The School of the Future: what does it look like? - Stephen Heppell

• For each soldier in Afghanistan, we can build 20 schools at local (UK) prices. To provide a basic education for 1 billion kids who do not have it would cost $US6 billion. Current Bank of America / Merrill Lynch annual bonuses = $US5.8 billion.
• We are only prepared for the expected, not the unexpected.
• We can mend it with learning.
• Last century, the lawyers were the most important people around. Then it became the era of the computer/ICT geek. Facebook has overtaken Google as the busiest website on the internet. Now it is all about belonging and mutuality and, above all else, being prepared for the unexpected. So the learning professionals will be the most important people in the next era. And we need to share the good ideas about learning.
• We are using super-classes now more and more in schooling – 80-100 kids with a primary-role teacher leading the learning, with bigger blocks of time, with assistants. Another teacher does the job of differentiation, breadth and depth. A third teacher is in the group doing the remedial work for the kids who are not getting it. The teachers are doing their job in parallel.
• He showed a photo of a class area at the New Lyme Academy (spelling?), where they use a pod-style setup for classes (primary school).
• They are getting their ideas from all around the world.
• www.teachers.tv – commissioned programs by teachers for teachers about teaching and learning. Give the name of a UK school, and it will let you into the site. the surprising thing is the number of kids watching teachers.tv. In 2007, had over 400,000 kids watching the video clips.
• This is also happening in secondary schools – different ways of using of space and embedding technology. You have to do both at the same time.
• He suggests the Rule of 3: never more than 3 walls; no fewer than 3 points of focus (can then break into smaller groups); able to accommodate at least 3 teachers and a group of students that is 3 classes in size (80-100 kids; a big enough space).
• Learn3k.net
• We live in the Post-Appropriation Age. Ordinary people have appropriated the technology. We used it well in the 1980s. Then it was taken over by IT network engineers, and the kids were expected to learn the tools of the office, and they lost the creativity possibilities of ICT. Now we (teachers) can’t appropriate the ICT. Every device and every kid has its own connection that is better than the school’s and not locked down.
• New school organisation requirements (vocabulary): agility (rapid reconfiguration; not flexibility, i.e. the so-called movable walls that always stick and won’t move!), playfulness (helps with engagement; tactile-ness), global, learning, us-ness, ambitious, affordable, small scale, vertical.
• The UK nationwide testing program produced an initial improvement, then after a couple of years, results plateau-ed. The UK is now rethinking the improvement strategies. Australia is following the UK , but some years behind.
• We have to be ambitious about what kids can learn. We must remove the barriers to learning and let them go as far and as fast as they want to / can.
• We must build the place around the learning.
• Do your school signs say what you can’t do or what you can do? Example: “Here is some student work in poetry.”
• Schools have a larger group of highly educated people talking about education than anywhere else. Sometimes we lose sight of that.
• Bandwidth problems = a problem of density (all the kids are doing the same thing at the same time), so spread out the kids and differentiate the learning = solve many of the bandwidth problems.
• The challenge for us is to combine equity of access and how to move things quickly enough to keep up with the technology (e.g. classrooms in parts of the US can’t be built without the infrastructure for TV sets in the corner, but no one uses TV in the way that they used to when the rule was put in place).
• The old world of “legislate – reflect – move on” has gone. The world is moving too fast for that slow process.
• You can’t be told; you have to be asked what is effective now – the only people who can do that are other education professionals.
• Heppel.net

End of conferenc e report.

Local initiatives are the things that make the most difference. You need time to share those with one another.

 

Outwardly looking systems are the best. We base our work on international research.

 

Where we are heading in EQ?

 

Education is allocated just under 25% of the state budget – a very significant investment – up again this year. There is a strong commitment to getting the best outcomes from young people’s education experiences. This places a high expectation on school leaders.

 

There is a united front among governments across the country to education and a nationalised focus on education; therefore we have national targets. For our targets, see slide 3. There is a renewed focus on attendance. Academic achievement – national curriculum (aim to be the world best) – there will be adjustments to it, based on state feedback. It will be a curriculum for all students, including those below the benchmarks (there will be standards for pre-Prep). Attainment of Year 12 – we do not talk any longer about “completion of school”. We are now using certification (e.g. QCE) as the measure of success. Progress through schooling is personalised and tracked so that the certification happens. Aim to get every young person to Certificate 3 level by age 24. There is a renewed focus on youth attainment and transition to employment or study after leaving school. Plus the other things on that slide, e.g. closing the gap (Indigenous and Low SES National partnership schools).

 

Lifting performance.

See above. The Queensland government target is to be in the top 3 in NAPLAN by 2012. Feedback from schools has showed that there has been a renewed focus on teaching literacy and numeracy. We are confident that the Queensland results will improve this year. We have been the fastest improving state. An analysis shows that our kids enter our schools not as ready for schooling as in other states. It needs all parts of the system to have the same focus. We must look at dropping funding to things that are no longer needed. The teaching/learning audit procedure is now in place (it will be a yearly service for schools classified as Low Achievers). It is based on world best practice. The audit tells us where the school is at; NAPLAN tells us where the kid is at. Many schools have not had a curriculum document in English, Maths and Science – mainly because of all the changes in recent years. This is no longer good enough, and Central Office needs to appropriately support schools to do it.

 

We are not as strong in differentiated teaching and in data analysis as other states. We are looking at how to support schools to improve in those areas.

 

We are determined to be up with Ontario. Their ethos is: “Every child can learn.” The best place for that to take place is in the classroom with the teacher. Schools need appropriate support to make that work and to develop the leaders. We will not chop and change; we need a few focal areas, and we must stay the course. It is hard to do that when the government wants changes.

 

 

Successful transition.

We have a few schools that are working on a service guarantee for their students (e.g. Cape York State College and Atherton State High School). Young people can come back for 2 years after leaving school as a base, if they lose their job or for some other reason. It has been successful so far in those schools. Young people age 15-24 in Queensland are more likely to be unemployed or not in training than in other states. Once they leave school, they lack support for quick placement. The Australian Government has identified this as a possible strategy, and they have given funds to Queensland to continue the trial. It does not involve a large number of students; they are the ones who lack parent or family or network support. We have realised that it is easier to capture them while still at school and in transition. It will need a re-look at school funding and how we support the schools for this to be widened from the trial. We are also looking at how to support excluded students and early leavers; a team with the appropriate systems is to be set up in each Regional Office.

 

Positive learning environments.

Education Queensland has two of the national experts on behaviour management, and they are working in Queensland and in other places. They are working to develop Schoolwide positive behaviour, which is working well in the schools that have implemented it. It is based on defining and clarifying the expectations of kids and teachers, and it is based on consistency of approach across the whole school. This is hard to do in large high schools where there are diverse views among the large numbers on staff. P-10/P-12 schools have been able to implement it in primary and move it into the secondary area. It has been easier to implement in primary schools. We will widen the implementation, and it is part of the teaching/learning audit process. Queensland is leading the way in Australia in the anti-bullying programs.

 

Leadership environment.

This will be a significant plank in the future. The Queensland Educational Leadership Institute will be launched on 1 July 2010 for all leaders. It will have a focused development model, based on principal recruitment and development. We are moving from selection to recruitment of principals. The QELI will also work with aspiring leaders.

 

Q&A

 

Alternative learning centres for disengaged kids – any plans for these?

The funding ends for some of those programs this year. we will now focus now on transition and attainment, and we will continue funding to those programs which fit that focus. We need to rethink the delivery of services to that group. There is no plan yet; that will come out with a 10-year plan in the next few months.

 

Queensland is low in 15-24 transitions when compared with the rest of Australia. Have we looked at the high performers?

Not yet – that is new data. We will look at that, once we work out why our data is low.

 

In the recent state budget, the allocation for education is up by 4%. This does not match CPI and teacher salary increases. Where can we expect the efficiencies to hit us – senior area?

The budget strong in that. There will be efficiencies to be found, mainly in her office area. We are putting as much funding into regions as possible for on-ground support. Numbers of Central Office staff will go back to their schools. Youth attainment: there will be review of funding in that space; it must be targeted and focused.