The new work builds on the unfinished business of the early 2000s, when SA embraced:

  • Constructivist learning theory in its 2001 SACSA Curriculum framework when capabilities/ dispositions featured as a cross-curricula priority;
  • Promoted greater agency for young people in schools and more professional trust in educators, which was drawn from the work of former SA educational leader Garth Boomer of “Negotiating the Curriculum” fame.

Boomer “championed an education system that empowered teachers to make decisions based on their professional judgment, rather than being driven by standardised materials and assessments”.

The latter being the hallmarks of the current Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), which dominates education systems throughout the OECD.

Alongside this, SA is now co-constructing a curriculum that brings capabilities and dispositions in alignment with the Australian Curriculum, a move called for by industry and stakeholder groups which may also feature in assessment practices going forward.

Yet, there is more work to be done.

SA has also been the first state to embrace AI in schools, and through a state-initiated Royal Commission, chaired by former PM Julia Gillard, now leads the country in moves to enrol three-year olds in preschool, an initiative imbued with social justice intent to better address disadvantage.

SA’s World Leading strategy: an interview 

Asked about the reasons for the Department’s ‘World Leading Strategy’, Chief Executive Professor Martin Westwell said, “If people are going to make the most of a complex world, an employment world but also a social world, a democratic world, if people are going to be able to make the most of that, (they must have) that adaptability ... to get that notion, that you're doing something that’s internationally significant, that’s because you're serving your community in the best way you can. You're making the biggest difference to the kids that we have in our community”. 

He added that SA was “broadening, not shifting away from literacy and numeracy”.

“So, I think that’s a kind of fundamental step that the system has taken, shifting from a Deliverology approach (aligned with GERM) to more of a strategy, making good decisions for the system, and making sure that good decisions are being made by leaders and teachers in all parts of the system to better serve their kids. Not losing sight of some of these non-negotiables like literacy and numeracy.”

Westwell said this was a ‘change of tack’ from the GERM approach that was “based on some quite narrow targets”.

“And so those narrow targets were things like NAPLAN. I don’t think it's sufficient. I don’t think NAPLAN numeracy is numeracy.  There's more to numeracy than NAPLAN, but NAPLAN’s a really good indicator. 

“But I also want the kids to be good at … grappling with the question … constructing their response to the question … because that’s what they're going to need in their lives. That’s what they're going to need to be able to participate in society, in democracy, in work, that’s what they're going to need in life, as well as what's measured in NAPLAN.

 “And I think if you think about equity and excellence, it's ‘what do we want kids to be excellent at?” he posed.

Trust in teachers

Speaking on the issue of educator trust, Education Minister Blair Boyer asked, “how do we give our kids who are leaving our high schools the skills to survive and thrive and get a job and be happy?”

“This time we will back you (teachers) to use your skills, knowledge, and professional judgement, your understanding of your site, your understanding of your students, and your understanding of your classroom, which is better than the understanding we have of your individual kids here at head office,” he continued.

These reflections were reiterated by Westwell when he said, “We trust in the professional judgement of our teachers”.

He indicated that beyond the usual trope of standardised measures such as PISA and NAPLAN, there was a keenness to seek out qualitative school improvement measures to better capture a school’s change journey.

This would see the GERM concept of school competition replaced by ‘being the best at getting better’ and the concept of “teacher leader/accountability” with “responsibility”.

These changes represent a profound shift in the departmental discourse that dominates in most education jurisdictions.

“We are developing some measures around learner agency and this notion of being an effective learner, things like curiosity … that metacognition and self-regulation, that ability to just stop and think, not just go through the motions but go, ‘oh, hang on, how am I going to think about this?’ and take control of your thinking.  How important that is. 

“So, we’ll have some measures and there’ll be indicators. But the other measures that we’ll have will also be the stories of our schools and our kids, and what they're doing and where they're going … the qualitative measures”, Westwell said.

Noting that in the past disadvantaged schools were not sufficiently acknowledged for the hard work they do, the Minister said, “A school that’s doing really well with kids who have more challenges deserves to have its great work noted, but it's probably not going to be noted, or acknowledged, or represented in that data, so we've got to include that too. 

“And that’s what we’re trying to do, whilst keeping that focus on making sure our academic achievement improves.  And … do better compared to other states and territories in those standardised tests,” he concluded.

Doing away with World Class ambitions 

Education systems across the OECD are by and large preoccupied with the race to become ‘World Class’. Effectively, the aim is to top the PISA rankings, a key deliverology logic of the GERM.

In 2018, the Senior Executive Group (SEG) of the SA Education Department voted to turbo charge their version of the GERM in policy and practice, at an initial cost of  $1 million, bringing the international consultancy firm McKinsey and Co inside the departmental tent.

In an international peer reviewed education policy paper published earlier this year by Bills et. al, the policy logics of World Class revealed heightened departmental technologies of command and control directed at teacher and leaders’ work.

This was to achieve ‘World Class’ status by 2028, as defined by McKinsey, with restrictive school improvement policy solutions engineered within the paradigm of the GERM.  

These techniques enforced prescribed policy demands on principals, performance management technologies, school improvement plans, standardised curriculum materials for schools, and “promoted NAPLAN as the ultimate measure of the good school, the good teacher, and the good principal”.  

For the Department, McKinsey defined the problem and offered the solution.

In 2018 journalist Tim Williams from The Advertiser reported, “McKinsey has a universal scale for comparing whole education systems,” and that the public system fell within its “good range, albeit at the lower end of that range". 

The then head of the Department stated in that same article, “Our ambition is to be a great system, a world class system within ten years.”

From then on its executives advocated for “the McKinsey Roadmap to World Class” (see table below), embedded in their ‘Towards 2028’ Strategic Plan, which along with a marketing campaign came with a complementary road map (looking very much like a game of snakes and ladders) offering an augmented reality experience and the added bonus of allowing stakeholders to assemble their own World Class cube!

Most concerningly, the paper found the policy logics of World Class incentivised inequality through diminishing the purposes of public education and the professionalism of educators.

This table captures the major differences between the former World Class agenda and the new World Leading strategy:


Table 1: Contrasting themes between World Class and World Leading

The shift reveals policymakers advocating strongly for the special character of SA public education with an innovative, equity focussed approach.

On this, the Minister said:

“I did my schooling in country Victoria, but from what I understand and I'm told, is that there was a period there where I think South Australia was looked to, certainly nationally and probably beyond that, as a great innovator, best system (in the Garth Boomer period), but we lost our way somewhere. 

“I think when we are back and there are some things that we've done – I won't list them now – that are being copied and are being looked at very closely by the jurisdictions, but I think we’re on the cusp of getting ourselves back into a position where we are looked at as the model again. 

“That’ll be the test for me, when other jurisdictions, you know (look at our) tech colleges, mobile phone bans, AI, there's a number of things we’re doing, our rollout of a three-year-old preschool, which I think we are pushing the boundaries of what we can do, and how we can do it, and be willing to take a few calculated risks on things.”

The Minister and Westwell acknowledged how context always matters in policy and practice, and argue the need to complement the current standardised measures with storied qualitative school improvement accounts.

They emphasised the need to better support the work of leaders and teachers so that young people can thrive in work and life.

“I think it's a reputation, nationally, globally, that tells our story, not somebody else's story,” Westwell said.

“…We’re seen in high regard by other people, but a reputation that we all feel proud of in South Australia, that we … can really say that we know it's challenging, and we know it's difficult, and we know we’re not going to get it 100 per cent right all of the time every day, but we’re really doing a great job, and our kids are learning and achieving, they are thriving and prospering, and we are really good at getting better,” he added.

The World Leading approach is attuned to the capabilities and dispositions the world is calling for from its young people and has Boomers’ progressive social justice education ideology woven throughout.

However, the big tester will be how well it transfers into the practices, learning and well-being of educators and students.

For it to take hold, stakeholders across public education will need to ‘live’ the change, a much easier said than done proposition.  

World Leading is therefore fragile and fraught if not carefully led and well managed.

A change of government could see it quickly dismantled and replaced with the GERM default, unless substantial improvements are made in student attendance and achievement, and teacher and leader professional growth and retention.  

On the policy front, opportunities exist to strengthen teachers and school leaders’ belief in the strategy by redesigning the policymaking cycle from a linear to an ongoing iterative approach – one where teacher, student and leader voice is given greater priority via a democratic school to head office policy making conduit.