Media Release: APPA Releases TRIPS Study

The Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) today released the report, Targeting Support for High-Need Students in Primary Schools: Report of the TRIPS study. The report was prepared by Professor Max Angus and Harriet Olney from Edith Cowan University for the Australian Primary Principals Association and was funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).
The report examines the allocation of money which flowed to primary schools from the more than $2 billion COAG National Partnership funding to improve educational outcomes for students, particularly those who need it most.

Click here to download the report (PDF file).

Click here to download this media release (PDF file).

The study involved schools from government and non-government systems in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

APPA President Norm Hart said today of the release:

“This is the first study of its kind in Australia. Other studies have looked at national carve-ups of Commonwealth funding. This is the first of its type that follows the money to see where it ends up in schools.”

The study tracks the passage of the National Partnership funding as it passes through several stages: the point at which it was allocated to States and Territories, the selection of schools which would receive the additional funding, the classrooms in a sample of 33 schools that were expected to receive the funding, and finally the targeted students in the classrooms who were struggling to reach minimum standards.

Mr Hart said that the study highlighted several issues that require more policy focus.

“APPA believes very strongly that funding should be allocated according to need, not on the basis of whether schools and students are likely to reach cut-off points that are linked to reward funding.”

Mr Hart said that the Study found that in some systems, schools were encouraged to focus only on those students likely to reach the required target, placing those difficult cases which required a lot of intensive support into the ‘too hard basket’ until after NAPLAN testing was completed. Mr Hart said that

“…such ‘triage’ approaches draw into question some of the critical decision-making steps taken at the system level and the integrity of those decisions. It will do no good brushing this under the carpet.

“Most of the decisions about how the funding was to be used were made away from schools and school principals. In some cases schools had no say in how the funding was to be spent and other schools did not receive the extra support that they needed. While schools that did receive the extra help made good use of it, most principals in the study believed that they could have achieved better value if they had more control over how it was spent.”

Disturbingly, teachers expected less than quarter of the target students to reach or exceed minimum standards by the time they completed primary school assuming that the level of support available to them was unchanged.

“Many of the students have very real difficulties. Despite the rhetoric there is no obvious, simple solution. We have a complex national system of schools and a messy set of school funding arrangements that arise because of the separate funding streams of the Commonwealth and state governments. I am hoping that the school funding review panel will look at this matter and recommend what needs to be done.”

APPA believes that there are several important implications arising from the Study. They are that additional support provided to a school should be tailored to take account of what is already in place; there is a better match between the support needed and the support provided when a school’s leadership team is actively involved in the negotiations around its students’ needs and the delivery of the support; and, that principals and teachers should have opportunities to present their insights about the efficacy of the reforms.

APPA was pleased that a significant part of the Study identified the range and forms of support which came to students as a result of the National Partnerships. This would inform Australia’s primary school principals as they allocate resources into the future to meet the needs of students below minimum standards.

APPA will use the TRIPS findings to inform its next submission to the Funding Review.