Australian Journal of Education

Students who have parents deployed to a war zone are more vulnerable to an increased level of stress and anxiety, health problems, behavioural disorders and academic under-achievement. Yet, little is known about the processes employed by schools to support these students. This study investigated the deployment support work conducted by Defence School Transition Aides who are employed in some Australian schools to support students from Australian Defence Force families to manage the transitions associated with school mobility and parental absence for service reasons. Fifteen parents, 17 teachers and 15 Defence School Transition Aides were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe students’ responses to parental deployment, how their schools supported students and what specific processes were employed by Defence School Transition Aides to assist students’ coping during parental deployment. Findings from qualitative analyses, suggest that Defence School Transition Aides assist school communities to build their schools’ capacity to support students with deployed parents by raising the school communities’ awareness of these students’ specific needs.

This study evaluates the capacity of a school-based family referral service to support school personnel in connecting at-risk students with appropriate community agencies. Through a partnership between New South Wales government departments and a not-for-profit counselling organisation, the family referral service was piloted at four regional, government schools. In phase 1 of the mixed methods evaluation, 135 students completed an online version of the Student Engagement Instrument. In phase 2, 32 primary and secondary teachers participated in four focus groups. Four principals and 19 key stakeholders participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Findings showed the service increased the schools’ capacity to manage students who were at risk of underachievement and poorer educational outcomes and reduced the workload of principals and teachers. While high Student Engagement Instrument subscale scores were obtained for extrinsic motivation and relationships with teachers, family support for learning received the lowest scores. Recommendations for the wider promotion of school–family partnerships focussing on locating flexible, family referral services within schools are discussed.

This study examined the structure of the Best Start Kindergarten Assessment (Best Start) of literacy and numeracy, with the aim of confirming a two-factor measure of attainment at school entry comparable in structure to standardised measures of literacy and numeracy administered in later school years. Administrative data from the 2009 Best Start were obtained from the New South Wales Department of Education for 37,734 children aged ∼5 years (i.e. as they entered their first year of compulsory schooling) as part of the New South Wales Child Development Study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the 11 Best Start scales using a split half methodology, with the findings supporting a two-factor solution underpinning literacy and numeracy attainment. The availability of this two-factor Best Start measure of literacy and numeracy at school entry, which precedes the repeated national assessments conducted later in the primary and high school years, facilitates research to examine pathways of academic performance over time.

Debate about teacher gender balance in primary education is a constant. This debate is fuelled by recommendations to increase recruitment and retainment of males into primary education. In parallel, 10-year trend data indicate a continual decrease in male primary school teachers. Although many factors contribute to the decreasing percentage of male primary teachers, one factor is the gender-related challenges they face in their profession. Previous research has identified some of these challenges; however, a limitation of these claims is contextual and individually bound data derived from qualitative research methods. Large-scale interventions have not been realised as current trends are unable to be generalised to the wider population of male primary teachers. Thus, the aim of this paper is to expand upon previous literature through discussing the development and validation of a scale which quantifies the gender-related challenges faced by male primary teachers.

Scholarly articles and the Australian media claim that 30–50% of Australian teachers leave teaching within their first five years in the role. The figures are considered to be well established although some articles acknowledge that they are estimates. In reality, there is no robust Australian evidence, and figures do not agree. What evidence there is, nationally and internationally, suggests that attrition is dynamic, varies by school level and location, and is not always negative and not always due to the school environment. In the absence of Australian evidence, articles should be more cautious about figures cited, and about causation. Attention should be paid to the classification of attrition types and a typology is outlined in this article, based on the teacher supply pipeline, along with what evidence exists on teacher exits at each level. This typology may facilitate greater transparency about levels of early career teacher attrition, leading to a broader and more nuanced policy and research conversation in the area of teacher supply.

This is a compilation of three items comprising first a commentary on “What are the effective public schools? Insights from New South Wales’ secondary schools using a stochastic frontier analysis with a panel dataset” (Diane Dancer & Vincent Blackburn, Australian Journal of Education, 61(2), 2017. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004944117713555) followed by two responses to that commentary. The commentary by Rob van den Honert examines whether an appropriate measure of efficiency has been used to interpret the results in this study. He also fields the question: ‘is using resources more efficiently more important than achieving superior educational outcomes? In the second item, Diane Dancer and Vincent Blackburn respond to Rob van den Honert’s commentary. The third item by Petra Lietz is a brief response to Rob van den Honert’s commentary.