Education is no different. One of the principal’s key responsibilities is to improve student outcomes, and the pressure to do so is immense. Governments, departments, parents, and the media all rely on data to judge the quality of a school. But what data is available? In most cases, just NAPLAN and ATAR.
The problem is obvious: principals are forced to value what is measured, rather than measuring what they truly value. And what matters most, the quality of teaching, is rarely measured at all.
Why Teaching Quality Matters
John Hattie’s landmark meta-analysis Visible Learning identified collective teacher efficacy as the single greatest influence on student outcomes, with an effect size of 1.57 (Hattie, 2009). To put that in perspective, an effect size of 1.0 typically advances a student’s learning by one year (or lifts achievement by two grade levels, e.g., from a C to an A). 1.57 is like a D to an A!
Compare that with direct and explicit instruction, the much-hyped “solution” to declining results, which has an effect size of just 0.59 (Hattie, 2009). Valuable, yes, but nowhere near the impact of great teaching.
The conclusion is unavoidable: if principals want to improve outcomes, their focus must be on improving the quality of teaching in every classroom. When all teachers are teaching well and believe they can accomplish great things, they will.
Principals know this. But they also know the reality. Right now, teacher shortages and burnout mean many leaders are just relieved to have “a warm body” in front of a class. Moving on underperforming staff is industrially and bureaucratically difficult, if not impossible (AITSL, 2023). And feedback systems are almost non-existent.
The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, launched in 2010 by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), were a giant step forward. For the first time in Australia a clear framework for measuring teaching quality existed. But a decade and a half later, few schools use the standards effectively. Why? Because appraisal tools are often time-consuming, resource-heavy, and unsustainable (Jensen, 2010; AITSL, 2021). As a result, most teachers receive growth-focused feedback maybe once every three years, if at all.
This isn’t about principals lacking will. It’s about them lacking access to meaningful, cost-effective data systems.
The Data Schools Actually Need
What leaders really need is reliable, ongoing data on the quality of teaching, not to performance manage teachers, but to help every teacher grow, even the highly accomplished ones.
This data should come from multiple sources to avoid bias and build reliability:
- Lesson observations
- Student feedback on their learning
- Planning documentation
- Colleague input
- Teacher self-reflection
- Assessment outcomes
Together, these data provide a far richer, more accurate picture of teaching quality than standardised test results ever could.
Without such data, principals are trapped in a cycle of guesswork. They spend limited professional development budgets on generic programs, without knowing whether they address actual areas of need, or whether they make a measurable difference. Even if a principal were to ‘direct’ all their teachers to implement direct and explicit instruction, how would they know without close monitoring?
The Solution
Imagine if a principal could see at a glance where every teacher sits against the national professional standards. Imagine they could identify trends across the school, such as a need for deeper assessment literacy or stronger differentiation, and then target professional development accordingly.
That is what schools need:
- Simple, cost-effective, scalable systems to gather and interpret data about teaching quality.
- Actionable insights that allow principals to support every teacher to be the very best they can be.
- A growth-focused culture, where data is used to lift everyone's belief that they can achieve great things for the students
With the right data, principals could make sharper, evidence-informed decisions, use PD budgets strategically, and measure impact with precision.
The payoff? Every teacher grows. Every classroom improves. And every student benefits, moving from a C to an A in a single year. Now that would be powerful.
References
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge.
Jensen, B. (2010). Measuring What Matters: Student Progress, Teacher Effectiveness, and School Performance. Grattan Institute.
AITSL. (2021). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Melbourne: Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.
AITSL. (2023). Spotlight: Teacher Retention and Workforce Challenges. Melbourne: Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership.
Vivedus has developed the technology to not only make every teacher’s life easier by reducing their workloads, but also to support them to be the very best teacher they can be. The Vivedus Platform captures, and automatically interprets data never before available, data that can lift student outcomes from a C to an A grade.
