Punchbowl Boys High School

Key features

The chief focus of the PAS program at Punchbowl Boys High School in 2005-2006 has been the intense, concomitant focus upon:

• an enhanced school climate: the establishment and maintenance of an amenable learning environment to facilitate greater community confidence in the operation of the school. This has been the fulcrum to drive an increase in retention rates into Stage 6 learning and an increase in school student population
• pedagogy development: the development of teacher practice that is characterised by explicit and systematic pedagogy, backward mapped from assessment that embeds numeracy, literacy and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) perspectives for the purpose of improving student learning outcomes.

This dual focus drives the School Management Plan 2005-08 and is the clearly articulated direction of the school’s amelioration process.

School context

Punchbowl Boys High School is located within the South Western Region in Sydney. It is significantly disadvantaged in terms of youth unemployment. Over 90% of the student population is Arabic Muslim, reflecting a drawing area with the highest concentration of Arabic speaking Muslims in Australia.

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Student and community population

In the period 1996-2004 the school experienced a declining enrolment from 561 to 272, with a resultant lack of representation across the full student ability range and an increasingly monocultural student population. A contracting enrolment trend and eroded community confidence indicated that the restoration and revival of the school would be an area of prime importance.

The 2007 enrolment is 368 with a doubling of Year 10 into Year 11 retention and a 35% increase in acceptances for Year 7 in 2007. The bulk of the enrolment increase came equally from comprehensive state schools, Islamic and Catholic schools.

The Arabic speaking component of the enrolment profile remains at 90%, with the balance made up of Samoan, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Afghani students. Ninety nine per cent of the school population is from a non-English speaking background and demonstrably drawn from a low socio-economic status background.

There has been widely based agreement among the staff that student disengagement and low student literacy levels were the two critical areas requiring address.

While the school has retained many outstanding teachers whose students have achieved highly in Higher School Certificate (HSC) merit listings and the English Language and Literacy Assessment (ELLA) data, there has been a history of significant staffing issues.

There has been a perception in the wider school teaching community that the school is a problematic one in which to teach. This has contributed both to low staff morale and difficulties in filling staff vacancies. At the end of 2003 all of the staff was offered a compassionate transfer, with one third accepting the offer. As a consequence one third of the current staff is in their first three years of teaching and half of the head teachers in their first two years in executive positions.

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What was the school aiming to achieve?

The clear aim was to instil a dependable management infrastructure that created a stable, settled and predictable environment in which students were ready to learn. This in turn facilitated high staff expectations of student learning and thereby made possible serious attention to quality pedagogy. This process required detailed attention to the administrative aspects of the school.

The school determined that the reduction of student absenteeism, fractional truancy, student lateness, suspensions and behaviour management issues would enhance the culture of learning within the student body and raise the level of student expectations of themselves and their capabilities.

A necessary motivator was to train staff in explicit and systematic quality teaching (ESQT) with a view to improving student learning outcomes. Additionally an evidence based analysis of school academic performance using School Measurement Assessment and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) data with respect to Secondary Numeracy Assessment Program (SNAP), ELLA, School Certificate (SC) and HSC results provided a compelling message for change.

The focus had to shift to the concentration on value adding, clarifying roles and responsibilities, formal classroom observations to monitor progress and ensuring teachers programmed and taught towards assessment. These were identified as necessary ingredients for changing the school culture.

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The improvement process

A clear nexus exists between a demonstrated improvement in the school climate and the staff’s ability to believe in the possibility and reasonableness of improved student learning through engagement in high quality pedagogical training. This rationale was well enunciated across all stakeholders in the school.

A number of strategies were employed to utilise the PAS program resources to bring about the required cultural change in the school. The first of these was the establishment of an additional Deputy Principal Administration position.

The focus of the Deputy Principal Administration team was upon creating and maintaining a supportive learning environment. This team’s proactive operational approach has significantly reduced student management issues.

Complete and thorough follow through on student welfare aspects such as fractional truancy, student absenteeism, student punctuality to school and suspensions have resulted in improved management of students and a predictable, orderly learning domain. The staff has been provided with regular feedback in all communication forums on areas of supervision by the Deputy Principal Administration team.

Aligned with this strategy was the creation of a shared Deputy Principal Curriculum across both Punchbowl and Belmore Boys High Schools. The focus of this position is upon the training of all staff in ESQT through dedicated timetabled sessions for professional training in each faculty.

A reduction in the number of teaching periods per cycle has allowed for this whole school commitment to professional learning. The outcome is to ensure literacy, numeracy and ICT characteristics are factors attended to within backward mapped programming and teacher practice.

In order to elicit enhanced communication with the immediate and wider community, an additional two days of Community Liaison Officer (CLO) time were utilised through the PAS program as a device to allow the school community to have increased direct communication through necessary translation services.

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What were the results?

The table below clearly indicates that there has been a significant improvement in literacy value adding for Year 8 students at the school. This data is among the highest value added generations in the state and has been a maintained performance under the PAS program, with every Year 7 boy in 2005 adding value to his literacy performance in 2006.

Shift in ELLA Overall Literacy Performance Year 7, 2004 to Year 8 2005

2004

Key
Blue columns are school results
Red columns are state wide results
All columns are in percentages

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Data interpretation

As the ELLA measurements are standardised between years and reported on the same scale, results from 2004 to 2005 can be directly compared between the different years. There has been a significant literacy improvement in every band level of performance.

The low and elementary proportion of students has been reduced from 60% to 35 %. Similarly, the proficient and high bands have been increased from 41% of students to 65% of the same cohort. Given that there was no discernible shift from early Stage 3 to early Stage 4, the shift to these upper bands within one year has been dramatic.

The above data were a key driving force in the school receiving Highly Commended Status in the 2006 National Literacy and Numeracy Week Awards. Some value adding has been achieved at the Stage 6 level (six subjects with positive value adding at HSC in 2005). There has been a focus on school achievement levels in 2006.

The change process with respect to the creation of a supportive learning environment has similarly produced outstanding improvement. Student punctuality has improved by 20% from 2005 to 2006, fractional truancy incidences across the school have decreased by 45% over the same period, while student attendance is tracking towards school education area averages.

Suspension data indicates a 34% reduction in Stage 6 suspensions and 42% reduction in Stage 5 suspensions from 2005 to 2006.

The predictability, stability and settled nature of the learning environment is demonstrated by the fact that school population will grow for the first time in 12 years in 2007, reflecting the increased community confidence in the school.

The population is 368 students up from the lowest point of 272 students. This figure comprises a 35% increase in Year 7 enrolments and a 154% increase in Year 10 into Year 11 retention rates.

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Future directions

The directions for 2007-08 will remain unchanged. The dual focus on enhanced school climate and pedagogy development is an entrenched aspect of the school management plan for these years.

The employment of key PAS program funded personnel will continue. The driving force of increasing school enrolment via enhanced staff training and use of ESQT in the classroom, as well as a stable and predictable learning environment will continue to be the focus areas.

Contact:

Murat Dizdar Senior Principal, Punchbowl and Belmore Boys High Schools
Jihad Dib Acting Site Principal, Punchbowl Boys High School