2013 Annual Review

GENERAL REPORT MS NATALIE SMITH DEAN OF STUDIES AND PLANNING

SCHOOLS ARE AWASH WITH DATA

Brisbane Girls Grammar School is proud of its philosophy to provide a broad, liberal arts education that encourages students to select subjects that provide a balanced, holistic education. However, the School is always conscious of the tension that can be created in the wider educational environment where the focus on matriculation results and student Overall Position (OP) scores seem to promote a narrowing or limiting of this liberal education.

However, to quote Brookes (2006), ‘Data aren’t an answer, they are only the beginning.’ Perhaps data is only one piece in a very large puzzle. In their paper, Data-driven accountability in Australia: an unfolding story with lessons for leaders (2011), Smeed, Ehrich, Kimber and Perry, put forward eight key messages from research and literature for school leaders to consider. Two of these are particularly relevant to our context at Brisbane Girls Grammar School: … there is some research that suggests that there is a link between the effective use of data in decision making and improved student performance outcomes (Alwin, 2002, as cited in Park & Datnow, 2009). … using data from high stakes testing is likely to hold great potential for diagnostic purposes as it provides educators with valuable information on how to plan for improvements in student learning at the classroom and school level (Smeed et al., 2011). During 2013, much attention was paid to the increasing importance and collection of Academic Achievement data that specifically informs the teaching and learning programmes within the School – the creation of a data literate culture. As part of a focus on building data literacy, a series of professional discussions among the staff were convened. Through these discussions, shared understandings developed about the information that could be drawn from this academic data. This in turn facilitated cross-faculty discussions and collaboration around how we could improve what we are already doing.

One can be forgiven for thinking that the world today is driven by an obsession with continual measurement and benchmarking. Even the term ‘big-data’ has been coined to indicate the amount of data and data sets that are collected by numerous organisations around the world. Education has not escaped from this phenomenon. The current educational debates focus on the analysis of ‘data’ gleaned from The Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) which aims to evaluate educational systems worldwide or The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) which tests skills in literacy and numeracy. In this current climate of increased accountability and transparency, it is important that we continually question the value we place on increased measurement. Do we measure what we value, or do we come to value that which can be measured? More importantly, what does this mean for the teaching and learning that goes on in the School? What can this data tell us about how we can improve the teaching and learning in our classrooms? Too much emphasis placed on the collection of data can create the situation outlined by Hargraves (as cited in Robertson, 2013): Data-driven instruction ends up driving educators to distraction – away from the passion and enthusiasm for rich processes of teaching and learning in classrooms and enriched relationships with children, into a tunnel- vision focus on manipulating and improving test scores in literacy and mathematics by any quick fix available – more test preparation here, after-school classes there, concentrating on cells of children who fall just below the line somewhere else. All this does nothing to enhance the actual quality of teaching and learning.

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BRISBANE GIRLS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 2013 Annual Review