Conference Agenda

Education is central to securing a better future for students in Out-of-Home Care (OOHC; ‘students in care’). Education is essential both for a person’s own development and well-being; and for their contribution to society. However, the educational outcomes of students in care lag well behind other students internationally (Garcia-Molsosa et al., 2021; O’Higgins et al., 2015) and in Australia (AIHW, 2015; Knight & Rossi, 2018; Townsend et al., 2020). We argue that any intervention intended to improve school outcomes for students in care has a crucial prerequisite: that these students actually are at school and in class. Previous research has shown that:

a) Double the amount of absence per term: average of 7 days versus 3.4 days (Armfield et al., 2020).

b) More than four times the amount of chronic truancy (defined as 10+ days unauthorised absence in a school term): 46.3% versus 10.7% (Armfield et al., 2020).

c) Almost four times the proportion of students suspended: 23% versus 6% (Graham et al., 2020).

Children are placed in OOHC by relevant state/territory child protection services when the service determines that they are unable to live safely at home due to risk of abuse or neglect. There are three main types of OOHC provision in Australia: relative/kinship care (with a relative), foster care (with a non-related carer), and residential care (small group homes). There are 36,084 school-aged children (age 5-17) in care in Australia (AIHW, 2022). Of these, 14,949 (41%) were Indigenous (AIHW, 2022), which is a significant over-representation.

Educational outcomes for students in care are poor. Fewer students in care meet the National Minimum Standard in NAPLAN-Reading in year 3 (82% versus 95% nationally) and the gap grows for Year 9 (69% versus 93%) (AIHW, 2015). Only 57% of young care leavers (aged 18-25) completed Year 12 (McDowall, 2020), while 85% of 20-24-year-olds nationally have completed Year 12 or equivalent (ABS, 2020).

Addressing educational improvements for our most vulnerable cohorts of learners at system, school leadership, school community and teacher knowledge and capacity levels is an ongoing but often unresolved issue in schools with indicators that disruptions due to covid have made this an even more challenging space for schools.

This innovation presentation will discuss the research work being undertaken within ARC LP220100130, Fostering school attendance for students in Out-of-Home Care and the Learning Without Barriers Education Strategy. lwb.org.au/ctfassets/2SBT8kE6V77cWne8HWZnum/ Where the author leads the national education strategy as Executive Director of Education for Life Without Barriers and is a Lead partner with the ARC team in his capacity as an Adjunct Researcher at the University of Tasmania. This research will bring politicians, policymakers, educators, and the child protection sector together to shape innovation that ensures each young person in care meets their learning potential.

The focus of The SOL (Student Ownership of Learning) foundation has been on educational culture. During previous ICSEI sessions we were able to share our thoughts and practises on how to identify the educational culture of a school or a school system. Using the theoretical framework of John Macbeath, we developed a table game that can be played by all the participants of the school community: students, teachers, and school leaders. The game is not only an excellent tool to stimulate a debate on ownership, but it also generates data about how the whole school community thinks about ownership of learning. Is the school a formal, a pragmatic, a strategic, an incremental, a competent or a cultural school? The result of the game is then used to produce graphs and charts that help the specific school define the direction it wants to follow.

Currently our research path focuses on the ‘experience of ownership’. How does it feel to have ‘ownership” This is a more psychological, a more inward-looking angle. We developed a questionnaire to find out about these experiences. This is a new tool that can be used in different schools with different educational cultures.

The most interesting question is of course: how are the school culture and the experience of 'ownership of learning' related? That is what SOL’s new research is about. The first set of schools that SOL would be looking into is a group of so called ‘Agora schools’ in the Netherlands. These schools can be described as democratic schools. In the Netherlands exist twenty schools where students not only determine their own leaning content, but also their own learning style, and pace of learning. They are an interesting group to work with. SOL wants to investigate the relation of Agora’s liberal educational system with the kind of ownership students experience.

Further on in the process, Sol will also continue the same research with other types of schools. The outcomes will help to sharpen ideas on what the effects on school culture are to the experiences of learning.

During this innovate session we will share the theoretical framework of school culture, the way we use the board game, the way we define the ‘experience of ownership’, the Agora school system and the first outcomes of our new research with those schools. We are very interested in the feedback of all members of the ICSEI community.

A strategic priority for ICSEI involves supporting regional and virtual conferences and events that build on and extend the conversations and networking between our annual Congresses. To build on the conversations from the ICSEI 2024 Congress in Dublin, we are working on a regional event for July 5-6th, 2024 in Wales that will focus on issues of social justice, central to ICSEI’s purpose: “To enhance the quality and equity of education for all students in schools in all countries.” This invited innovate session will showcase the theme of the regional event in Wales, considering different aspects of the challenge of repurposing education for all children.

This regional conference is for educators who are willing to step up and step out of their local or national comfort zone, to lead the change with others, to share knowledge and to cross boundaries by learning from others working in different education systems. This conference is aimed at school leaders, teachers, policy makers and academics, who are interested in contributing to a cross-national, international, and global community. The programme will have a deep social justice theme and will focus on the possibilities of enhancing school effectiveness and improvement for all rather than for some. The conference will also have a practical orientation and will facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experience about leading educational change at the micro and macro level.

While educational inequality and inequity persists, our collective mission must be to create a world where success for every child in every setting is not just an aspiration but a lived reality. We cannot do this alone or independently. Working collaboratively is essential. Isolation is the enemy of improvement, so it is important that we learn across systems not to policy borrow or to replicate but rather to collaborate authentically and meaningfully across educational boundaries and fault lines. The moral imperative is to ensure that now, and in the future, all children and young people learn and live well, whatever their context, setting or circumstance. Education has never been so important locally, nationally, and globally right now. Creating the right educational future for our learners to survive and thrive depends on collective learning and collaborative action to lead the way for school effectiveness and system improvement.