00:00It seems like a typical first day back for students at Newtown Primary School in Southern Tasmania.
00:08And how are you feeling about going back to school today?
00:11Good!
00:12So I'm excited about having fun at school and math.
00:15And maths.
00:16I love math.
00:17And what about you Mui?
00:18To meet my new teacher.
00:20Probably having like new lessons and harder challenges.
00:23A bit nervous like always, but excited because I'm in grade 6 this year.
00:28Behind the scenes at this school, change is afoot.
00:32Newtown, Muna and Risden Primary Schools are the first in the nation to be taking part in a trial that some believe could turn around Tasmania's flagging education system.
00:44What we've been doing hasn't worked.
00:48I think we do need to try something different.
00:50This is a pretty big gamble the minister's doing. She's putting all her eggs in one basket.
00:53Now the state is trialling a UK model, where schools are grouped together as families, with an executive leadership team overseeing them.
01:02It allows schools to collaborate and share resources, while the executive team takes on a lot of the administrative burden currently shouldered by principals.
01:12Tasmania consistently lags behind the rest of the nation when it comes to education results, despite the fact it spends more per capita on its students.
01:23We've had some extraordinary reforms put in place over the last decade, but what we know is that we still don't have the outcomes that we want for our children.
01:32Former Grattan Institute researcher Jordana Hunter will be consulting on the trial.
01:38The multi-school organisation model is very good at supporting school improvement.
01:43So we're talking here about schools that might be really struggling with student behaviour, for example, or ensuring that students get strong academic outcomes.
01:53In theory, the model means that schools can share teachers or techniques to deal with things like difficult behaviours, and principals work together to pass on knowledge and avoid duplication.
02:05The aim is that higher performing schools lift up underperforming ones, and that ultimately all schools see improvement.
02:13The opportunity with the multi-school organisation policy is to really have a much, much deeper form of collaboration and coordination between schools than we've really ever seen in Australia.
02:26It was each principal is responsible for their school and trying to lift up just their own school, whereas now, how do we help everyone?
02:36Staff say the early stages of the trial appear to be making a difference.
02:41We've never worked in a way where we're trying to be consistent across schools.
02:47We've never worked in a way where we're having teachers regularly collaborate.
02:53Over the next five years, more schools will be added to multi-school organisations.
02:59Our biggest concern about the proposal is that it's a fait accompli that this is what we're going to be doing.
03:04We've grouped schools in Tasmania in different ways for many decades now, and there's nothing wrong with doing that.
03:10But it's not going to be the silver bullet.
03:13Not all the research in the UK has been favourable.
03:17A 2016 UK parliamentary inquiry into the model found there was a high degree of uncertainty around their effectiveness.
03:25The Minister's been to England. She's seen what's happening when it's going well.
03:29We need to also focus on that this hasn't worked for everyone.
03:32The trial will be independently evaluated throughout.
03:36Why would you not grasp an opportunity like this and go, you know, full bore if you had the evidence that backs this reform that says this changes outcomes for children?
03:50Well, again.
03:55You
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