The impact of middle leadership practices on student academic outcomes in New Zealand secondary schools

Abstract

It has been reported in the literature that disparities in student achievement within schools is often larger than the disparity across schools. This study draws upon the existing literature on middle leadership and within-school variation to establish the relationship between effective middle leadership in secondary schools and student academic outcomes. Student academic outcomes are compared across and within 41 urban Auckland schools over a three year period to determine the extent of within- and across-school difference in English, mathematics and science for 15-year-olds. The academic results for students are then compared at department level for a subset of 10 schools where the middle leadership practices within each of those departments has been investigated. In the New Zealand secondary school context, the public examination system for 15-17 year olds is the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). This qualification system provides publicly available assessment data that can be used to compare student academic outcomes within and across schools and make comparisons to national norms. The New Zealand school 'decile' system, which groups schools on the basis of the socioeconomic status and student cultural background, is used for comparative purposes. The first phase of this thesis describes the steps taken to determine the extent of within school variation for 41 New Zealand secondary schools over a three year period. This was achieved by comparing the academic results for 15-year-olds from the English, mathematics and science departments within and across each of the schools and comparing those results to national averages. In some schools the results across departments with the same student cohort show considerable variation by subject and in other schools the results across departments are similar. The comparison of department results to national results categorised within a socioeconomic group provides insight into the extent of 'added value' at whole-school and department level. These data reinforce the argument that student achievement below expected results is not confined to schools working in poor socioeconomic circumstances. In the second phase of the study, 10 of the 41 schools in Phase 1, self-select to take part in an investigation of middle leadership practices within their school. This involves members of the English, mathematics and science departments completing a quantitative questionnaire on the middle leadership practices that are known to impact positively on the quality of teaching that inevitably impacts on student achievement. The results of these questionnaires produced five factors of middle leadership: Collegial working environment, Goals and expectations, Focus on student academic results, Management of resources and Positive learning environment for students and teachers. The questionnaire responses from each of the 30 departments across the 10 schools have been compared to the student academic outcomes data at three levels of the qualification to test the relationship between middle leadership factors and academic outcomes. Statistical tests were performed to substantiate evidence of the patterns and relationships and found that some factors have strong positive correlations with academic outcomes and others are negatively associated. Middle leadership practices had no relationship with the NCEA Level 1 (15-year-olds) results but had a strong relationship with the academic outcomes at the higher level of the qualification. The multiple regression for Level 2 NCEA student achievement shows that decile of school can account for 62% of the variance in student achievement and when middle leadership practices are included in a simultaneous regression, 84% of the variance can be accounted for. Decile of school was a less important predictor for Level 3 NCEA student academic achievements (46%), but as with Level 2 when middle leadership practices were added the ability to predict student achievement rose to 62%. Therefore, a combination of school decile and middle leadership practices were a good overall predictor of student academic achievement at Levels 2 and 3 NCEA. The positive predictors for student academic achievement were the factors Goals and expectations, Management of resources and Positive learning environment for students and teachers. Identifying the successful leadership practices evident in schools and departments that predict academic student outcomes will provide direction to policy makers and professional development practitioners working in the field.