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PROMOTING POWERFUL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING FOR SCHOOL STAFF
The following is excerpted from the book Working and Learning Together: Rethinking Human Resource Policies for Schools published by the OECD.
The staff working in schools are probably the most important resource for today’s education systems—both educationally and financially. There is a solid evidence base indicating that teachers are key in improving learning opportunities for students, likely more than anyone else in children’s lives outside their families. School leaders, in turn, play a pivotal role in raising school quality and creating the environments in which teachers continuously improve their competencies to support student learning. Beyond teachers and school leaders, there are many other types of staff whose contribution to the holistic learning of students and the overall improvement of schools is increasingly recognized across OECD school systems.
Based on the experience of the countries participating in the OECD review, below are a set of six policy approaches that may help countries address these challenges.
Policy 1: Designing career structures with opportunities for professional growth
Policy 2: Establishing salary scales that attract new entrants and reward growing expertise
Policy 3: Reviewing the staff mix and working time arrangements in schools
Policy 4: Ensuring an effective and equitable distribution of school staff
Policy 5: Adopting a broad vision of initial preparation for teaching and school leadership
Policy 6: Supporting continuing professional learning and collaboration
While the report highlights the need to consider all adults who work in schools and contribute to their effectiveness, the systematic analysis of these policies focuses on teachers and school leaders due to the limited availability of information on other staff. It is important to keep in mind that effective human resource policies are shaped by national, local and school contexts and those initiatives that work well in one context are not necessarily transferable. Nonetheless, the experiences of different countries can help distil useful ideas and lessons learned from systems that have sought for better ways to support the individual and collective impact that school staff can have on students’ learning and well-being.