David Hetherington  00:06

Hello, and welcome to Hands Up, a podcast by the Public Education Foundation that lifts the lid on everything going on in our public schools. I’m David Hetherington, the CEO of the Foundation. You know all those burning questions you’ve had about what actually happens at your child’s school? Hands Up if you know whether there are children in your school who sometimes go without? Are there kids wearing uniforms that don’t fit, who don’t have much in their lunchbox or who don’t seem to go on school excursions? Maybe you’ve noticed these children. Or maybe you haven’t noticed that behind the scenes, the school is often working hard to bridge these gaps, so that the students don’t miss out.

 

Denise Lofts  00:43

So yeah, library. Year twelves working hard. Year eleven, isn’t that funny? I was thinking year 12.

 

David Hetherington  00:54

In this episode, we take a look at how disadvantage, the mere fact of which family you were born into, or the postcode where you live, can affect your educational outcomes. We speak to a global leader in education systems, Pasi Sahlberg, about the role of schools in ensuring equal opportunity for all children. And we find out how public schools and some pretty remarkable principals and teachers have developed specific initiatives to make sure no child misses out.

 

Denise Lofts  01:20

So the Toast program runs out of our canteen every morning from 8:30 onwards, and we do 10 loaves of bread, easily. We have our SRC make the toast but kids are voluntary, so voluntary kids making the toast. Our local supermarket donate all the toppings, so they do the butter and the jam for, for all our kids that come in, come in either from the buses, kids who haven’t had breakfast, because there’d be quite a few kids that wouldn’t have had breakfast as well. So that’s really basically it’s those kids.

 

David Hetherington  01:55

That’s Denise Lofts, the principal of Ulladulla High on the south coast of New South Wales, which has a high proportion of students living in poverty. Denise is a powerhouse of a principal who has set up a free breakfast program, a uniform Swap Shop, a drop in space for local Indigenous students, and extra coaching for all students who may be at risk of slipping behind. We’ll hear from Denise again later in the episode. But first, let’s meet a student who has benefited from some of the support programs.

 

Ella  02:24

My name is Ella. I’m 17 and I’m from Ulladulla High School. I’m part of the Wiradjuri mob, not Murramurang. Um, the idea behind the Gunya room is a place for like the First Nations people of our school to go have a place to like if you need food, or something like that. They can give that to you any support with work or anything to do with school. Just need a chat. It smells good. I don’t know Erica just has candles. I go to get help with like, my schoolwork. And I want to join the police force. So I go and speak to them about how to go about that. Um, the Gunya room definitely supports kids with whatever they need. But in saying that everyone around the school is supported with anything that they need. I’ve had to ask for help, like, my family’s not that well off, but no one knows. I’ve got help like paying my school fees. And like school excursions, I think. I had to go see like Miss Barry about uniforms, because I didn’t have any. They’re not the cheapest thing out there. Um, I don’t live with my parents. So it makes things difficult. Like my mum’s out of the picture, and my dad’s doing his own thing. Um, I live with my father’s sister. It makes it tough, but it’s better than the living situation that I was in before. I hope to join the police force next year or possibly the year after, like I might be a bit young next year still, I really want to do that. I want to be on the other side of the fence. As sad as it is, like police, jail, like correctional facilities, they’re all I know. But I don’t want to be in those and I want to be on the other side of the fence, helping people to stay out of them and do better. Letting them know that there’s other pathways out there just because you’ve been there, you’ve gone to jail or whatever, you can still come up from it. Yeah, my dad and my brother have been in and out of jail my entire life pretty much… which is fine. I don’t care. I think school is a different type of family. Like, I get a lot of support at home still from my aunty, and my cousin, but I guess school is an escape from reality almost, you don’t have to think about what’s going on at home. It’s just there, you with your friends, with people that can help if you need it you have a place to sit if you’re having a not so great day. When I was younger, I hated asking for help. I thought it was embarrassing, I was like, people are just gonna judge me because my parents aren’t around, or whatever. But as I’ve gotten older, take all the help you can get really, you can’t do everything on your own. That’s one thing I’ve learnt. I am very grateful for everything this school has done. And all the teachers in it, everything they do, like it’s amazing work. Like I would thank a lot of them that knew my brother for not judging me off of my brother, and just giving me a fair shot. And even like coming up from being a pretty horrible student, like, I was not the best for a couple of years. And now, like looking back on it, those teachers don’t care. They’re like, you’re doing great now. That’s all that matters. They can see how far I’ve come. And they always tell me how proud they are, like always. Miss Lofts is crying in the corner. [laughs]

 

Denise Lofts  06:23

She’s pretty special, isn’t she? She’s a beautiful young person. And she’s come so far. And that’s why I was crying because I was um, it’s true. I’m, I’m so, she, she articulated it so well. You know I could always see the light in her. And even though she didn’t see her light, I saw her light. And so anyway, that’s why I was crying because I am. I’m crying because I’m so proud of her. That’s all. 

 

Ella  06:50

Thank you.

 

David Hetherington  06:52

So that’s a great story coming out of the New South Wales south coast. But not all Australian students are lucky enough to go to Ulladulla High. We know from the research that children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are up to three years behind the most advantaged students. And whatever you happen to think of international rankings, Australia doesn’t score well when it comes to educational equity either, ranking 30th out of 38 OECD countries. So how do we close this educational gap? And what countries can we look to for best practice? Finland is often held up as a world leader and consistently tops the charts when it comes to educational outcomes. Our next guest Pasi Sahlberg, is a world renowned Finnish educator and currently Professor of Education at Southern Cross University in Lismore. His most recent book is Let the Children Play: How more play will save our schools and help children thrive. He’s taught at Harvard University and held advisory roles with the World Bank, the OECD, the European Commission, and Finland Ministry of Education and Culture.

 

Pasi Sahlberg  07:54

Yes I’m Pasi Sahlberg and I’m a Finnish citizen. I’ve been here now in Australia for about four years, I studies as a school teacher in Finland, coming from the family of teachers, obviously. And then I spent a good 10 years with the Ministry of Education or Department of Education in Finland then did a lot of international work with the World Bank and European Commission. And then finally found my way here in Australia.

 

David Hetherington  08:21

Well thank you for joining us, Pasi. Teaching in schools are almost in your blood, I’d like to ask you almost a philosophical question about what is the purpose of schooling and education? We ask our children to spend 13 years of their their young lives invested in this system, we spend billions of dollars, what should we be looking for as a society from the school systems?

 

Pasi Sahlberg  08:44

Yeah, I think it’s a good question first of all. I think that this purpose of education has been changing, it has changed already in some other countries, and it’s changing globally. And it’s a kind of a telling the way you ask this, this question about that we ask our children to go to school and have an education. I think the the new purpose of education that I see emerging, is much more based on the idea that children really want to come to school and they want to have education, they kind of realise they need something for themselves to live a good life and understand more about not only the the world around them, but also realise the world within them. And I think that’s, the change the focus from educating children, about something towards helping children to realise their own potential and their own inner world. Within this traditional purpose of education we often ignore this inner world and we kind of assume that every kid has to come to school and learn the same knowledge in the same way so that they are ready for life and often ready for for work and labor market. But I think what we are seeing around now in many ways is pointing towards this, realising your own own talent and your own passion and your own individuality.

 

David Hetherington  09:56

So is it fair to say that we have a broader objective now then? We’re not, we’re not educating students simply to come out into a particular vocation or profession. But we’re educating students to be good citizens, and perhaps to understand how to pursue their own interests and their own fulfillment on their own terms.

 

Pasi Sahlberg  10:15

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I went to school, if I remember correctly, and what the promise of the system to me and my parents and many others adults was that, if you have a good schooling, if you do well, in school, you’re going to get a good job, you’re going to retire once, be a happy, happy guy. And now we know that this is not working anymore. They it doesn’t really matter what type of degree or credentials you have from the school, how your life is going to end up. So it’s much more about how well you are able to understand what you can do what you want to do. Now, I think that we need to look at much more education as something that is creating also creators, people, people who are able to create things that they don’t, they don’t kind of shut down when they realise that, you know, the all these opportunities and promises that were given before are not there anymore, that they would initiate ideas and kind of create things for themselves. And this is a very different way of looking at things than before. And you know, what we have today, around us globally, and also here in Australia, very few people could predict three years ago. Like who would know that we’re going to have deadly bushfires, or floods or COVID, or now war in Europe? And you know, all these things have changed everything. And those people who went to school with this mindset that we will prepare you for the for the world of work, or kind of a steady life, don’t find themselves in this situation anymore. And and you know, those people who have been provided this, these tools and mindsets of, you know, being more creative and making initiatives that, they are the survivors of this difficult times.

 

David Hetherington  11:49

And how agile or responsive are school systems, I guess, particularly in Australia, at responding to this different purpose or different set of demands out of education?

 

Pasi Sahlberg  12:00

That’s an interesting question because I don’t see when I look at Australia I don’t see one school system, here, we have our states and territories, and they all have their different systems. So this is like a collage, or cocktail of different types of systems. But I think, you know, during my four years here, I’ve seen one, one big difference I see here in Australia, compared to Finland, for example, is that here, what teachers are doing, what the schools do, and how they explain what they do is much more about, you know, being compliant, kind of checking boxes, and say that we are doing what somebody else asks us to do. Whereas, you know, back home, I used to be a teacher for many years and, and working with the Department of Education leading leading some of these systems. And we systematically try to help schools to be more proactive, and, you know, take a leadership and ownership of, you know, what’s going on, rather than, you know, tick the boxes. So we tried to reduce those, that kind of a compliancy list of things to a minimum, and then ask schools to, you know, feel this space and see what is best for the community and for the kids. And you know, what the school with the stuff that they have been able to do. So I think, you know, this is one thing that here in Australia, we could, we could, I would argue significantly improve the system, the quality of the system and the equity of the system as well, by trusting schools more.

 

David Hetherington  13:15

Twice in the last 15 years, the education ministers from all the systems around Australia have got together and reviewed, reviewed the purpose of education and develop these declarations. There’s a Melbourne Declaration from 2008 and there’s an Alice Springs and Mparntwe Declaration from 2020. In both cases, they’ve said that the objectives of the system, are excellence and equity. Now I think for families out there, we understand what excellence means broadly. But I’m interested in in how parents and carers should recognise equity when they see it. 

 

Pasi Sahlberg  13:48

Yeah and you know, it’s, it’s not only parents who find it difficult to make sense out of this word. But it’s also educators. You know,  I spend my time here until now, working a lot with schools and principals and you know, even even politicians and authorities and everybody finds it difficult to answer this question, what, what are we actually talking about when we talk about equity? I would say exactly what David Gonski and his first panel 10 years ago how they defined equity in education, having an education system where the students learning whatever they’re supposed to learn in the school is less depending on where they come from. In other words, the parents income and position and power in the society. And when we look at all the societies, but certainly Australia here, we can see that still pretty much students’ performance, how well they will do in the school system is determined by who their parents happen to be, where they happen to live. And that’s something that if we want to have more equal or equitable education, we need to reduce this gap and make sure that that this family background would not be such a strong predictor of student’s performance in school.

 

David Hetherington  14:57

Can you tell us a little bit about the benefits of high levels of equity in a schooling system and not just for for individual student at the individual student level, but for the community as a whole?

 

Pasi Sahlberg  15:10

Well for me, it’s a first and foremost it’s a human rights issue. You know, here in Australia, we use this word of giving a fair go to everyone. As a foreigner here or newcomer here understand same as that we value equal and equitable opportunities for each and every every child. I think that’s, that’s the starting point. You don’t need to spend much in a library of Social Sciences to realise that you know, how many other benefits the more equal and equitable education or society in general would have. You know, it has the economic benefits, it has the huge benefits regarding employment, but also the social issues like health and crime and, and many other things that correlate very strongly with the the level of equality, but particularly income inequality in the societies, but also the, how equitable and equal the education system. You know, again, I come from the country that has been now rated five, five years in a row as the happiest country in the world. And people, including here in Australia, some journalists try to kind of understand that why, you know, Finland used to be good in education, but now it’s like good in overall happiness. And again, you don’t need to have many conversation with Finnish parents or people in general there to say that, well, how can you, how can you become a happiest nation in the world, particularly when you have the climate and weather that you have? That is nothing like we have here in Australia, it’s often often people start to speak about education, that we have this feeling that everybody’s child is taken care of every child has an opportunity to become whatever they desire to be, rather than in many other places where the children’s future depends so much on you know, where you live, what your parents do, whether you have a good school around you, or whether you can afford to do those things.

 

David Hetherington  16:55

So of course, there’s different ways that you can measure or try to test the equity of a system. But on international comparisons, Australia hasn’t fared well of late with different measures of equity. If you look at the performance of students from different socio economic groups in the PISA tests, that the gap is increasing here in Australia, I think there’s a statistic out there that we’re ranked 30th of 38, from the OECD, on, on measures of equity. What are the drivers of this in the Australian system? What are some of the things that might be making our equity performance deteriorate?

 

Pasi Sahlberg  17:30

Yeah, first of all, I would like to warn everyone to use these rank numbers, like you say, the 30 whatever it is, they’re very dangerous. So they don’t really tell, tell anything. It’s almost like, uh, you know, looking at the marathon runner, and then you look at this, it may be that there’s just a second difference between the 30th and 20th. If I have to say one reason why we have been slipping here in Australia during the last 20 years, very clearly, downwards, in this equity performance is this increasing emphasis here, kind of education as a marketplace. We had a Federal Minister few years ago who said to parents that if you’re not happy with your children’s early childhood education, or kindergarten, go shop, shop around. So it’s like a, like, it’s a parent’s responsibility to find a good education. And that has been the sentiment here in Australia for too long. If you see education, like a like a free marketplace, this is exactly what happens. So in one way here in Australia, the system education systems are running exactly as they had planned to run. It’s exactly based on the design. Exactly. But then the question is that is this the best way to do what we need to do if we had more careful leadership, leadership that tries to avoid these side effects that this shopping this, this school choice and freedom of choosing schooling, everywhere, where we leave education as a run as a marketplace, exactly these things happen that we have seen here, that the gap between, particularly the most disadvantaged students and more affluent students remains here, it’s at the age of 15, is about three and a half, almost four years of schooling, which is huge. But I think even more kind of a painful and difficult thing here is if we look at the our Indigenous children’s performance, we have now according to the OECD, 43% of all indigenous students are low performing students. And it’s a it’s a, how can we tolerate something like this, and this has only been you’re not getting worse during the last 20 years. Partly, this is as the result of this reckless kind of a market-based thinking in running the education system. But we can still pull brakes and ask ourselves what type of education we need and want to have here in Australia.

 

David Hetherington  19:45

It’s good to hear that you retain hope, that we’re not beyond the point of no return. 

 

Pasi Sahlberg  19:49

I wouldn’t be here if there was no hope, I would go back home.

 

David Hetherington  19:53

Fair enough. It does lead to to the obvious question of what can we do differently?

 

Pasi Sahlberg  20:00

One thing that we all can do is to you know, listen, listen to this, this podcast and others, and then have conversations. You know, start start in the family because that’s, I’ve always said here that what what Australia needs to do before any significant change happens is to have better conversation better informed conversations about what’s happening in schools, you know, what’s the purpose of education? Why do we, why do we educate kids? And what what are those outcomes? We both know that all these students, so-called students that have special needs of any kind, and this includes our indigenous children as well. About 80 to 85% of those go to public schools. And as you say, that the public schools are basically all of them are underfunded. So they are not funded up to the these points. I’ve seen very wealthy, independent schools here, and very remote poor public schools. And I think that what what needs to happen with this additional money is to carefully think about how it’s spent, how it could be spent for serving those children with special needs. You know, it break breaks my heart here in many schools, when I realised that, you know, the school that is catering, you know, most of the students are, what are called the disadvantaged, have some type of disadvantages. And then the school doesn’t have a psychologist, doesn’t have a social worker, or the school doesn’t serve healthy meals for these kids on a kind of a daily basis. I went to see one of the one of the special schools here just a couple of years ago. And I was kind of a heartbroken to realise that the school didn’t even have a specialist stuff there to work with these kids that came from extremely difficult circumstance, mostly kids who were not able to handle the normal mainstream schooling. So in this conversation with the principal, I asked that so if you were given $250,000 extra to do you know, different things, what would you do? And before I finished my sentence, she said that I would hire a psychologist. And my response was that, so you don’t have a psychologist in a school like this with the number of there are kind of a range of, of difficulties and challenges that the kids have? No we don’t, we have sometimes somebody coming in, but we don’t have a personnel. And, again, I had to ask myself, Is this really Australia?

 

David Hetherington  22:14

That’s fascinating, because as I think about public schools in Australia, those kinds of things, I think, would have always been seen as almost luxurious add ons, not not an integral and fundamental part of what what public schooling should offer. So I think that’s a really practical and concrete example. And of course, that kind of support in a school, takes the load off teachers and allows them to spend more time teaching and learning. 

 

Pasi Sahlberg  22:40

Yeah and you know, my grandmother told me many wisdoms, and one of them was that prevention is always cheaper than repair. Just just, you know, invest in in prevention, and early intervention, and in the long run, it will pay off. And in Finland, you know, we have we normally trust what our grandmothers who are saying and their wisdom. And we have taken that to heart in a sense that many of the public services and systems are designed exactly the same way that it’s cheaper to invest early on and try to prevent these things. When it comes to young people and young people and teenagers, sometimes it’s too late to, to do anything at all and we have already lost these individuals in a way.

 

David Hetherington  23:18

We’ll Pasi, I think you’ve given us a great conversation or kickstarter for that dinner party. And thank you very much for joining us today.

 

Pasi Sahlberg  23:25

Thank you for having me.

 

Denise Lofts  23:31

So come on in. So it’s just having… So it’s really great, we’ve got Amanda here, who is actually doing an evolve coaching session with Richie.

 

Richard Howe  23:44

I’m Richard Howe. I live in Manyana and I’m 16 years old. I’m just writing down stuff that has happened through school and what’s going on, like stuff that’s made me happy and stuff and what I want to do when I leave school and how I can achieve that and stuff. I’ve been in a bit of trouble. I guess you could say. And um, she’s helped me get back on track. I want to be able to get my grades up so I can get into the career I want. I either wanna go in the Army or the Navy. As uh, in the Navy, I’ll probably just a diver, or in the Army, like an infantry soldier or combat medic. So at school, I get support, like, with Miss here, helping me with my work, like how to get on top of my work and just structure things. At home I have my Nan, she’s, she’s a teacher, so she helps me in my work at home. She tutors me a little bit. Yeah, I live with my mum, my nan and pop and my little brother. Some subjects are easy, some are hard, because I’m ADD as well. So I struggle, especially when I was undiagnosed. And same with my dyslexia. I struggled heaps growing, growing up. And since last couple of years, I’ve started to get more help with, like, um, support teachers in class and stuff and that’s probably helped me a lot and I can concentrate better, especially when I’m pulled out of the classroom and I do my work on my own somewhere else. It just makes everything so much easier than trying to do it on my own. While I get distracted all the time with my mates and stuff in my class. Normally when I get home I’ll either go surfing or spear fishing or go for a run. It’s pretty much just the ocean that does that for me. So I do pretty much anything that involves the ocean. That’s like my happy place it clears me. I feel pretty confident that I reckon I’ll go alright, because I’ve got a lot of support around me. So it’ll be pretty good, I reckon.

 

Denise Lofts  25:38

Richie – going to help him get his goals, hey? You feel more confident or more determined.

 

Richard Howe  25:44

Like having this because at the moment I’m missing out on a lot of school from like, sporting stuff, as well. Yeah.

 

Denise Lofts  25:51

Yeah, keeping on top of those things here in Year 11 and 12. Alrighty.

 

David Hetherington  25:58

That’s Richie, a year 11 student, and Denise Lofts is principal and Ulladulla High. The school is highly regarded in the region where students perform above average for the state compared to other schools with similar socio economic backgrounds. This is testament to the work the school is putting in to support those students. Equity, and fair access to education for all students is the primary motivator for Denise. She’s introduced not only really practical supports to Ulladulla High, but also some more esoteric approaches for students such as regular mindfulness practice. In her very limited spare time, Denise is also the deputy president of the New South Wales Secondary Principals Council, and is currently doing her PhD on philanthropy in education.

 

Denise Lofts  26:42

So my name is Denise Lofts. I’m the principal of Ulladulla High School, a large, secondary High School on the south coast of New South Wales, we have 1256 students, 12 support classes, we are the only high school in our town, the next High School is 40 minutes away. We sit on the lower percentile, I think it’s 48%, are on the lower percentile, not the lowest percentile, but the lower middle percentile. So if so, you know, really, half our kids are disadvantaged, but then you add on rurality. So we live a long way from any you know, services and, and from the city. And also, you know, we have 9% Aboriginal students. There’s no big industry here. And so therefore, people, you know, part time workers, casual workers, think about hospitality, a lot of casual, casually employed. So that that has its disadvantage. So what the bushfires did is, you know, if you’ve got, what we had is we’ve got disadvantaged in our community, and that was just another layer on top of those, like a big black blanket that came over some people. And they were already feeling the strain of, of disadvantage. And then when that happened, that just kind of pushed some real trauma into some families, where they were just going okay, and it took a lot of optimism away a lot of hope, initially, and you know, when you’ve got families layered on families, which then layers on students, you know, when they come into school, and it was really highly traumatic for a lot of families.

 

David Hetherington  28:17

It’s a full and varied load that you’re juggling there, and I know your school supports students experiencing different types of disadvantage. Can you tell us a little bit about the types of disadvantages that you see, and what that looks like in terms of educational need?

 

Denise Lofts  28:34

We deal with all extremes. You know, from, from kids that have been couch surfing, and you would hear this, but I think when you see young people when they come to school to just sleep or be fed, then you know that without us, and without the caring kind people that we have, that they those kids wouldn’t have anywhere to go and…

 

David Hetherington  28:57

By couchsurfing that you mean, essentially homeless,

 

Denise Lofts  29:01

Yes, yeah, homeless, the fact that that their own family might be so dysfunctional, that they can’t actually be there. You know, the fact that, you know, maybe domestic violence, maybe, you know, abuse, alcohol abuse, so therefore their home is not safe. That’s one extreme, but there’s also where there’s a breakdown in, in families where parents’ mental health, they’re not caring for their, their children. And, you know, for example, a girl had a really bad case of head lice. Well, you know, we were calling Mum and we’re saying you have to do this, we have to do this. And she did and this is in the high school setting. But what we were able to do is get a hairdresser to come in and deal with that, but she ended up having to have a head shaved and it was awful, really. And you know, I think, I think we forget that that happens for people and they can’t manage a situation that you would think every ordinary person would be able to manage. And that was heartbreaking. This is a beautiful young person. I have also, you know, having a support unit, what we call disabilities, both physical and, and cognitive. And you have those, those students who, mum and dad are blue collar workers working all the time, they don’t have time to pick up their student after, after school tutoring. So for example, we offer after school tutoring, we have, we use, have a homework center, and students come there, but some can’t, because our, you know, we have a boundary of, you know, 30 K’s North, 30 K’s south. So, you know, a young person can’t access that. How is that fair if one parent can pick up and deliver a person? And then another young person can’t? 

 

David Hetherington  30:42

Denise, can you tell us a little bit more about your support unit? Does does every high school have one? How does that work? How is it structured? And what are the specific kinds of support you’re giving to young people in that context?

 

Denise Lofts  30:54

So a support unit has a range of classes. So you might have what’s called intellectually moderate, which is an IM, you might have IO, which is again, a higher disability. So we are doing what’s called stage two and stage three, literacy, but they’re yet they’re 16. So…

 

David Hetherington  31:16

So stage two and stage three is kind of year, three, and four and year five and six. 

 

Denise Lofts  31:20

Yes, that’s right. So they where it’s primary school, yet they’re adults, you know. And we have autism, or multi categorical, whether they have mental health or cognitive, which is kind of combined. You have such a range of disabilities, but also the fact that we do have for each class, you have a teacher, and you have a Learning Support Officer, which is not a teacher but supports the class. And they’re there to, you know, because we need the extra, you know it’s one on one.

 

David Hetherington  31:49

So is it fair to say then that, that some of the support that you’re offering for disadvantaged students is is structural in the context of the Support Unit, and you have a, you have an organised and systematic way of supporting disadvantage. But then on the other hand, you have this ad hoc need to respond to individual cases, as you mentioned, with the person with head lice, and and you have to kind of tailor an intervention or a solution specifically, is that how the balance looks?

 

Denise Lofts  32:15

Yeah. And I think when I talk about the support unit, so they’re diagnosed disability, but you have what’s called imputed disability, where they’re sitting in normal classrooms. But it’s where they’ve actually got a reading disability or a cognitive disability that’s not diagnosed, but we’re actually noticing, so it is actually a what’s called imputed disability. So we have almost 250 students that sit at that range. So again, you know, if we know Finland, David, they say every kid has some sort of disability that we need to address. 

 

David Hetherington  32:53

Really? I didn’t know that. 

 

Denise Lofts  32:54

Yes, yeah. And so at some time, someone would have needed a bit of a helping hand. And, you know, it’s not how we approach it here. So the disadvantage falls on those young people that probably sit in that 250 category, if they’ve got support, they’ve got double income family, you know, resources at home, etc, they’re going to be so much more advantaged to be able to meet their disability, as opposed to those families that are not as well resourced. And that’s where you start to see the greater divide of achievement or performance or development. Actually, I want to probably use the word development performance is kind of that an end product. But you know, development is, as you’re growing this human that’s developing that’s ongoing.  

 

David Hetherington  33:47

It’s a journey.

 

Denise Lofts  33:47

 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. And I think what happens in um in a system who is hell bent on performance, and not on development. Yeah.

 

David Hetherington  33:58

That’s a really neat way of about thinking of kind of differential abilities, isn’t it? In that in every, every child has has some kind of stronger and weaker abilities, and therefore you’re not categorising a particular group as having a disability? 

 

Denise Lofts  34:12

That’s right. 

 

David Hetherington  34:13

I thought it was also interesting there. You mentioned the ability of the household in a home with dual incomes and perhaps higher educational levels, the student with disability gets good support. But in the absence of that, it’s maybe the school that is picking up some of the load and supporting that student through their learning. I guess one of the one of the critiques of public education in Australia over the last decade or so has been the need to channel more support or resource to less advantaged students and, and there’s, there’s a school of, of argument that we haven’t done that as well as we could have, is that how you see it and what additional structures or supports might we put in place to, to reduce the effect of disadvantage to reduce the effect of inequality?

 

Denise Lofts  35:07

Wow. Yes. So if you think about a young person who comes, and so they’ve got a nicely ironed uniform, they’ve got a lunchbox that’s full, they’ve actually had Mum and Dad would have, you know, helped them with their homework. And then you’ve got Student B, who possibly has three or four other siblings, their uniform, they kind of had to share, because some do share, and the fact that they probably don’t have lunch, and that’s pretty common. And so therefore, you know, that does fall into school. So we have our toast program in the morning, we have the fact that we have, you know, our Swap Shop, which is always access for uniform and things like that. But if we think about also our really gifted kids who are coming out of disadvantage, as well. My students last year that did really well, at the HSC, there were three of them that I believe were really disadvantaged, you know, and they just blew me away. And so there, it is a possibility. But they’re number one, they had really good connections with their teachers, they accessed to our homework center all the time. And they banded together as a cohort and worked really well together. And so, you know, there’s, there’s some ways that you can really start to support kids, you know, when you can work with them one on one. And so if they’ve never had help, then then they have this learned helplessness. And so, you know, we kind of want to get them to the point where they can actually be supported to, to start to have some success. And so that’s, that’s where we’re, I think, you know, the intervention is for us is, you know, getting kids to a point where they believe in themselves.

 

David Hetherington  36:50

If as a school of your size, you were given perhaps an additional $500,000 to your annual budget. And this was directed at supporting disadvantaged students or students facing inequality, inequity or lack of access. What would you do with that? What are the first things that come into your head in terms of how best to use an amount like that?

 

Denise Lofts  37:13

Great, that’s a really good question, because we did get a little bit of disaster support funding. So what what we did with that, which is what I would stretch was, again, I was probably focused on a disadvantage, but we set up which we call The Sanctuary. So essentially, it’s a it’s a net, that kind of picks up those students who were really out the door, you know, for one reason or another. So so I’ve got a teacher on that. He’s an amazing science teacher, he mentors, the group is quite small. At the moment, we’ve got six students there. The other one is I set up which we call Gangala, which is a Dhurga word for uplift. So…

 

David Hetherington  37:57

Dhurga is the local Aboriginal language?

 

Denise Lofts  37:59

Yeah, our local, yeah. It’s spoken from Jervis Bay in the north to Wallaga Lake in the South. It’s almost like an intense Literacy and Numeracy Program, where we pull them, yeah where we pull them out. But we also work alongside them, to bring them up to where they’re, you know, try to bring them back to where their peers. Because sometimes with with learning, you know, literacy numeracy, sometimes it’s almost, I’m a give up, I’m too far away from the point. So if you can actually uplift them to a point where they can actually reengage, that, that’s what we’ve done. And what I would absolutely love to do is actually have two teachers in a classroom, we’re better together. And so co teaching, so co planning, co teaching, co assessing, and so that you are actually teaching alongside each other. And we’ve done a little bit of experimenting with that. And really, it’s been teachers feel supported, you address all the needs of the students, you can have masterclasses within the class. So you know, you can also address your your top end, so you can identify what’s going on across this greater range of assessing. So you know, that that’s what, that’s what I would like to see. And of course, then was time for teachers to mentor young people. Not all kids are going to need it as much as others, but it’s also an enabling those more able kids to be able to help the other kids. And so I talk to my every one of my students about, do not turn your, turn your face away from poverty, disability, you know, Aboriginality, racism, you have to turn and look at it because by looking at someone in someone’s eyes, you will understand and therefore you will you will be able to make change. And so, you know, that’s, we talk about all the time. And I think people who never see that, how can you make change if you’ve never if you’ve never experienced it or sat next to it?

 

David Hetherington  39:48

Denise, your passion for for your school community and for public education shines through. And we’re really delighted that you’ve been able to share some of those insights with us today. Thanks so much for joining us.

 

Denise Lofts  40:00

Yep, thank you. Thank you. Thanks Public Education Foundation too. Wow, fantastic. Thank you, bye!

 

David Hetherington  40:11

That was Denise Lofts, the Principal of Ulladulla High. And before her we spoke to Pasi Sahlberg, Professor of Education at Southern Cross University and Lismore. We also heard from two inspiring Ulladulla High students, Ella and Richie, with some of their peers in the background. My name is David Hetherington, and you’ve been listening to Hands Up, a podcast from the Public Education Foundation that answers all your burning questions about our public schools. You can find Pasi’s book, Let the Children Play, in all good bookstores. Our website is public education foundation.org.au where you can learn more about our work supporting young people with scholarships and advocating for a high quality well resourced public school system. Hands Up was produced by Jennifer Macey and Olivia Roseman with editing for Holly Forest. Sound engineering by Jason Nicholas and research by Melanie Morrison. We’d like to acknowledge our former colleague Janine Miguez-Shaw, who was a source of inspiration for this podcast. A big shout out to the students and staff in the instrumental music program at Fort Street High School in Sydney for composing, performing and arranging our wonderful theme music. Thank you to the New South Wales Teachers Federation for their support and for providing us with this excellent podcasting studio. This podcast was produced on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the first and original teachers and knowledge holders of this land. Thanks so much for listening.