The Smarter Schools National Partnership

1. The Smarter Schools National Partnership Evan Arthur Group Manager National Schools and Youth Partnerships Group

2. The origins of the National Partnership Approach • The key starting point was the need to address Australia’s position as, in the words of Barry McGaw, a high quality/low equity education system • PISA results for Australia show a higher correlation between student achievement in reading and mathematical literacy and student characteristics such as low socio-economic status • compared with countries such as Canada and the Nordics • The Partnership is a Commonwealth/State activity • Its primary purpose is to use dollar flows between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories to affect educational outcomes in schools • The Partnership is an element of the school reform agenda set out in the National Education Agreement • Which is in turn a component of the Federal Financial Relations reform agenda

3. Key features of the Partnership Approach • As a ‘reform’ NP, the LNNP involves agreements between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories on improvements we want to see in outcomes in schools • It does not focus on changes or increases in services in schools • It assumes decision making on ‘inputs’ is best made at a level lower than a Commonwealth/State negotiation • As a Commonwealth/State document it generally only contains elements relating to actions by the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments • It assumes that the details of involvement of non-government schools in partnership activities will be settled at a State or Territory level • Funding is provided to facilitate improvement in outcomes • And, in two of the three elements of the NP, additional funding can be provided if agreed improvements occur

4. Components of the NP • There are three sub-elements of the NP • The Literacy and Numeracy NP • The Low Socio-Economic Status School Communities NP • The Improving Teacher Quality NP • Taken together they attempt to address major issues affecting the quality of Australian schools • The first two involve selected schools in all States and Territories • The third concentrates on system wide improvements • The LNNP and the Improving Teacher Quality NP run until end 2013 • The Low SES NP runs to end 2015 • How they are progressing and how we are reporting on progress is dealt with by Mary Anne • How the NPs are operating within a State is dealt with by Jenny

5. Advantages of the NP approach • The Commonwealth has a long history of establishing funding programs to address particular issues in schooling, including equity issues • An early example was the Disadvantaged Schools Program • Whatever the strengths of such programs they risk creating the impression that the issue addressed by the program is more of a Commonwealth issue than a State or Territory issue • The key aspect of the NP approach is that it represents an agreement across levels of Government that a particular issue must be addressed • And the outcomes focussed approach and the provision of rewards provides an incentive to mobilise focus and resources across all levels to deliver change • The inclusion of targets and public reporting of progress on targets assists public scrutiny of the effectiveness of NPs • All too often with pre-existing programs the most that could be said was that the Commonwealth money provided was indeed spent on the purposes of the program • This is important but hardly sufficient