Setting the bar
Great expectations
If you ask any school it is likely that they will tell you that they set (or want to set) high expectations for their students. Yet, for some reason the reality on the ground is that structural factors prevent this from ever actually being true.
However, while we talk a big game about high expectations for students and setting the bar high, I feel like many schools do not do the same for their staff.
Today we’re going to take a deep dive into the idea of high expectations and the reasons why those high expectations either never existed or can never be met.
Student Expectations:
You’d struggle to find an educator who doesn’t believe in setting high expectations for students in some way. You would likely also find that many educators would then present you with many caveats for why some students in their class do not, cannot or will not learn or progress throughout the year. Some of these elements are under the teachers control, while others are structural or systemic and therefore take the legs out from under the professional in the room.
Promotion Policies
While listening to the Chalk and Talk Podcast with Anna Stokke, she had a guest on this particular episode referring to the Mississippi Marathon. This episode delved deep into how the Mississippi school system had moved from almost last in student testing to one of the highest despite their lower socioeconomic background and disadvantage. One of the elements that stood out immediately to me was the way in which the state government had created a promotion policy which is incredibly strict. If students do not meet the minimum standards for proficiency in reading at that level, they will be retained for one year.
In my opinion, this should be the norm. Advocates against students repeating a school year tend to say that holding students back will negatively impact them socially as well as their wellbeing despite their being limited evidence to support this viewpoint. While simultaneously promoting these students regardless of their reading ability sets them up for failure in all future years. As Carl Hendrick says “You can’t connect the dots if you don’t have any.” I would argue that the negative impact on their social and mental wellbeing will be amplified if they are unable to access the curriculum at level.
In the Victorian context the Department of Education states the following in terms of student promotion:
However, research and evidence show that, in most cases, repeating a year usually does not benefit children, and is not an effective intervention for them to catch up in their education. A child or young person who repeats a year is more likely to:
lose confidence in their learning, develop negative attitudes towards school, have low self-esteem, and show increased aggressive and disruptive behaviours
drop out of school and become less likely to go on to tertiary education
stay behind their peers who move on, even after completing an extra year of schooling.
However when we dive into the research and evidence this policy is based on we find the following:
A small percentage of studies that have taken place recently. This might mean that the research is not representative of current practice.
A large percentage of the studies are not randomised controlled trials. While other study designs still give important information about effectiveness of approaches, there is a risk that results are influenced by unknown factors that are not part of the intervention.1
I can certainly understand why the predicted impact would be negative on Secondary age students (approx 4 months negative impact on progress when repeating) due to the awareness of the negative social stigma of repeating for the individual. However, for younger students where the knowledge and skills around reading and writing are foundational to everything that follows I really struggle to see how the effect could be so profoundly negative on the individual with effective teaching practice, universal screening and appropriate interventions put in place.
In my experience of teaching high school students I have often found that students are aware that regardless of their results, they are likely to be promoted to the next year level. This sends a pretty powerful message that high expectations do not matter because regardless of their results they will be moving on up to the next year level with their friends. Then the next year they will be sitting in classes that build on what they were supposed to have learned in the previous year/s and they will be unable to access the curriculum.
Pass Marks:
Growing up, during my university studies and in many schools I have taught at, the pass mark for assessments and units was always 50%. In The Hidden Lives of Learners, Graham Nuthall highlights that if a student scores 50% on a task that does not mean that they know the same 50% that another student does.
What has always amazed me is that where they pass mark is set really sets a bar for students which they can narrowly clear with an unbelievable amount of precision.
This can be seen in the school I currently teach within which has set a pass mark of 40% for students. If you exported all of the student learning task data you would have your mind blown by the proportion of results that fall within the 40 to 50% range that are considered satisfactory here but would be considered unsatisfactory in other similar settings. I really struggle with this pass mark at times because I could not imagine if I booked my car in with the mechanic and they were only proficient at 40% of the elements of the service.
I’ve long said that if you set the bar to the floor, not only will people still not clear it, they will bring a shovel and find a way under it.
Non-scored Pathways
This is one that I believe is fairly specific to Victoria in Australia but there is no doubt similar outcomes in other contexts that I am not aware of.
In our VCE program there is an option for students to complete their studies and gain a certificate of completion without a calculation of the ATAR they would require to access most university courses.
The policy outlined through the Department of Education states the following.
This option should only be applied in response to individual student need, and not as an alternative VCE program for a cohort of students. Examples of circumstances where it is appropriate to offer this option include the following:
illness and/or absence
mental health and wellbeing issues
clear and well-supported post-school aspirations that do not require an ATAR, for example, an offer of an apprenticeship
other specific and personal circumstances (not based on academic results).
This pathway is genuinely helpful for many students with complex medical histories or occurrences during the year as well as wellbeing reasons. However, it has been misappropriated by many schools as a way of cutting their tail off of their results. They do this by utilising somewhat of a loophole that these students who are performing poorly will be linked in with the careers team and found a viable pathway for their post school life which does not require an ATAR.
The reality of this non-scored pathway for any of these students is somewhat bizarre when you then think deeper into the purpose of school which is the sequential accumulation of knowledge over time in various domains. Students in these pathways never need to sit an external form assessment and therefore never need to develop deep learning across topics throughout a year. Once they are deemed satisfactory in one topic they will never need it again. Again, this creates a problem with expectations because although many of the students with medical or wellbeing presentations thrive in this program and continue to perform to the best of their abilities, students in the ‘found a viable pathway’ category often will do the minimum required to be considered satisfactory. “Sir, what do I need to do to get an S?” is a question that I’ve been asked far too many times and really undermines the purpose of study in the first place.
Teacher Expectations:
Teachers are not immune to having low expectations set for them. Since the pandemic in our state the PDP process for teachers has become little more than a checking the boxes activity and it is very possible for teachers to roll out the exact same curriculum and resources year on year without ever needing to improve regardless of student outcomes.
Meetings that could’ve been an email
I am strongly of the belief that any meeting should create something that is instantly actionable for a staff member. If it is possible to successfully sit through a meeting for it’s whole duration without thinking a single thought then that meeting was likely a waste of time.
Across leadership teams I’ve worked within I’ve noticed a rising thought that “staff don’t read emails” and this becomes the rationale for why meetings become information delivery. This sends a blaringly loud message to staff that they do not need to read their emails but also that their knowledge and expertise is not valued.
There is a challenge that does exist in many schools that there are simply too many channels of communication that staff are overwhelmed or unsure where the most pertinent information is found. This however is not a reason to delivery all information in staff meetings. What it should do is send a message to leadership that they need to streamline communication and ensure that there are high expectations for staff to remain up to date.
The new normal in the Victorian context will be one hour of meetings per week moving forward and this means that if we want meaningful improvement for students in our schools then what we do with that hour and the expectations set outside of it need to be sky high.
Principles vs Practice
Dr Haili Hughes has recently written numerous posts on the way in which evidence-based teaching practices can often lethally mutate into a checklist of strategies which need to be included within a lesson.2 Jamie Clark then used this to create a concise and clear DistillED post on the topic.3
In schools we tend to think in actionable steps which can impact student learning as soon as possible. This often means that we will default to delivering staff a toolbox of strategies they can deploy which are evidence-based with absolutely no understanding of why those strategies are beneficial to learning.
Principles in this instance refer to why we do things. What is their overall purpose? When we use mini whiteboards in class to check for understanding is it simply an activity we use to mix things up? Or is it a barometer to measure overall student understanding to provide the teacher feedback on the effectiveness of instruction and inform the next steps in teaching.
Practice is then what we do. Our strategies which we use in class. The strategies that teachers deploy and when cannot be too rigid. Teachers know their students better than anyone else and often have the expertise to know what strategies to utilise and when. This does not mean that a teacher shouldn’t use high quality shared resources with checks for understanding embedded within them, but how a teacher delivers those resources and the additional strategies they utilise throughout the delivery (eg. cold calling, choral response, additional scaffolding etc) can vary significantly.
When practice becomes too prescriptive it can be constraining to the expertise of the teacher in the room. If they are being observed by leadership who check boxes based on what was and was not present rather than comment on the actual effectiveness of the teaching taking place it reduces teacher instruction to a lower baseline. This effectively places a ceiling on teacher practice because they no longer have the ability to deploy the strategies they feel will be most effective in the moment.
Engaging with research
Alongside the reduction in expectations for staff in their Professional Development Plan in schools in my context it means that the likelihood of staff engaging with current research is more often than not going to fall on the individual enthusiasm of that teacher.
We live in a glorious time where high quality educational research is more available and accessible than ever. Incredible experts4 share their expertise and experience online in ways that is far more palatable than journal articles would ever be such as Substack posts, YouTube videos and podcasts all of which are freely available to improve the professional knowledge of teachers.
There is also a danger here that for just as much high quality information is available there is equally as much dangerously unhelpful information presented in highly seductive ways which can negatively impact the development of new teachers.
What is most important for schools is that staff are able to collectively engage with research that informs the shared vision of that organisation. That may differ in different schools and that is fine but it is able to validate the practice of individuals in the organisation to know that their work is in line with best practice and not a fluke.
By not engaging with research at an individual and school level we are telling staff that whatever they have always done is good enough. I have no doubt that whatever they are doing is good. No teacher enters the classroom intending to have a negative impact on learning, but engaging with research allows staff to build on their professional knowledge and schemes related to teaching practice and facilitate the process of continued improvement.
High expectations for staff and students often gets misinterpreted as micromanaging or being too authoritative when this is far from the case. High expectations for students exist to ensure that when they complete their journey through our school that they have the opportunity to explore whatever pathway they wish. High expectations for teachers ensure that as professionals we are always improving, there are always avenues for career development and that we know that our actions are having a positive impact on the youth we come into contact with.
The moment those expectations start to slip it can be a downward spiral into seriously negative impacts on school culture.
These high expectations don’t mean that we are perfect all of the time. Teachers may have periods where they are overwhelmed and therefore are just treading water. Some students may have extenuating circumstances that circumvent the promotion policy.
Unless we set the bar high we will never know what people are truly capable of.
Evidence for Learning, Teaching and Learning Toolkit (2021) Repeating a year – Negative impact for very high cost based on limited evidence, The Education Endowment Foundation, accessed 2 October 2025.
https://newsletter.jamieleeclark.com/p/strategies-vs-principles
And people like me shouting into the void
Congrats on the human writing. I just copied and pasted my last 10 articles in to a new post as I was intrigued. 8 Human, 1 Assisted AI and 100% AI generated.
People are so not ready for the conversation on unscored pathways...