A view of schooling in Australia

I don’t take my motor car to a plumber for repair or service, yet I have been witness to some extraordinary appointments in Australian school authorities to senior positions, akin to placing Joe the Plumber in charge of a garage. I wonder if a Formula One driver would have a plumber in his team because he or she is a good at being a plumber.

There are hard yards to be done by teachers in Australian state schooling systems that require high measures of endurance, intellect and toughness to survive. For primary schooling, it means going out to the bush for years, living among one’s pupils and parents - in places so remote that no other government servant is expected to go - meeting the tough parent at the local pub, being expected to perform virtual miracles while teaching children with a variety of learning needs in multi-aged groupings. And there’s more. It’s a steep learning curve; but it does however, produce a cluster of outstanding leaders. Within each person who does the hard yards a cerebral metabolism develops that ensures economy of effort and a knowledge of useful processes that is denied to parvenus who take short-cuts within the system. There should be a worthy challenge at each level of promotion in most professions, and especially in teaching. For those who have been immersed in and around schools, as in other professions no doubt, the teaching-learning enterprise guides decision making naturally.

Since our country’s future is in our educational systems, we need to have the larger schooling businesses, in particular, run by people who know what they are doing, who have been-there, done-the-hard-yards, and possess that cerebral metabolism. That is the first requirement for the establishment of an effective and efficient education system.

Some Australian state schooling is in the same mess it has been since around 1990, when restructuring took place on business lines, and the language of teaching and learning was replaced by “business talk”. Groups such as school inspectors were “down-sized” to oblivion and education advice was “outsourced” to test constructors, overseas lawyers and fly-by-nighters.

Children are forced to go to school. There are millions of pupils in Australia who are compelled to attend a learning institution but there is no indication that anyone cares much for them. A Department of Compulsory Schooling for school systems over, say, 200 schools, is needed for extra care. Since schooling is divided into primary and secondary, a Director-General of wide experience [either primary or secondary teaching] and with noted entrepreneurial skills needs the assistance of Deputy Director-Generals (Primary and Secondary) who have also done the hard yards; so they can form a triad of leadership which would be familiar with the operations of schools. After all, it is the teachers in the classroom who deliver the goods on the curriculum and they need support coming from people with an understanding of the system.

A structure has solidarity if it is built from the base upwards. During the past few decades, the business structures imposed on Education Departments from the top down have been wobbly, and the learning processes in classrooms have suffered as a consequence.

Let’s try a structure operating from the schools upward. A useful design would give genuine attention to the critical elements of school operations. What sections within the Department of Compulsory Schooling would reflect school operations? The following sectors would exist in the primary division, and in the secondary with adjustments for unique features; each monitored by an Assistant Director-General.

• curriculum: (i.e. guiding children through approved learning experiences) this sector would make sure that activities are first rate. An Assistant Director will keep in constant touch with the District Inspectors who are in schools every day, flying with pollen on their wings so to speak, and feeding back to the designated syllabus sections;
• teaching: teaching techniques require regular consideration for possible upgrading. The sharing of good ideas, celebrating successes, examining innovative practices and talking about issues all require constant attention. The pursuit of excellence is the aim and qualified practitioners know what this means. Importantly, guarding school time from needless intrusions and well-meaning lobbies can entail delicate negotiation;
• personnel: location of staff, linking levels, and kinds of staffing to suit the circumstances, matching departmental requirements with personal desires, staffing remote and unpopular areas as well as organising requirements for promotional assessment are extremely taxing. Been-there experience is a must;
• finances: there is an enormous number of competing demands for the education dollar. [“Oh … for that military minute”] Compulsory education by its very nature [incarceration by law] seldom attracts as much fiscal attention as it should, so allocations have to be pupil based. During budget allocations, an experienced “schoolie” with that inbuilt metabolism would probably rely on a version of Rotary’s Four Way Test:

    1. Does it help children to learn better?
    2. Does it help teachers to teach better?
    3. Does it economise on efforts in the teaching of pupils?
    4. Does it provide the greatest good for the greatest number?

• in-service: constant, well-articulated programs for a rapidly changing knowledge-based world are essential; and
• special: this section would care for children with special needs of all kinds. Separate schools and buildings with specially trained teachers is a basic requirement and this section would have to make adjustments in terms of all other sectors.

So that would be the general shape of a school-oriented department. Returning compulsory schooling to its owners should help governments to be proud of scholastic and cultural outcomes.

However, there are other messy items that could be fixed in a wink if there is a will to do it. We need to set some boundaries … such as:

• age of compulsory attendance. There is an obvious need for mandated ages of attendance. Why there is even the slightest variation between them from state to state bedevils logic.
• first year at school. It is difficult for the ordinary parent to understand why, after entering a school, states have different names for the first year at a school, attendance at which is sometimes voluntary. It seems unbelievable that NSW and the ACT call the first year Kindergarten; Tasmania and Queensland call it Preparatory; South Australia calls it Reception; Northern territory calls it Transition; and Western Australia calls it Pre-primary. Voluntary organisations have no place in the proposed model.

One is compelled to ask: what is so difficult for a country as small as ours to have a standard age of entry - such as turning five years of age by a set date - and to call the child’s first year at school Year One … and for each child to progress year by year to the end of school ?

Child care facilities now abound for parents who wish to enrol their children for pre-school activities before five years of age. At the other end of schooling, the provision for vocational preparation is wide-spread. These voluntary-attendance sectors of schooling receive far better treatment than do regular schools in between.

While this mess persists, it must make things awkward for schools to tolerate. The compilation of a national curriculum and the conduct of third party blanket tests before stabilising the boundaries is quite crazy. First things first, one would think.

In summary some sincere, experience-based thought is required and two major issues stand out :

1. while there may be some positive arguments for a national curriculum, its introduction while structures are so wonky defies belief. The age-grade factors needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
2. there is no plausible reason for consuming time, money, and teaching effort on fear-based tests and the consequential dumbing-down of healthy curriculum enterprises. Such tests are [A] Unnecessary. Teachers know their children well. Sharing the evaluation of effort is a three-way constant contact and there are now some wonderful shared evaluation techniques available [B] Immoral. Yes. Immoral. Forcing children to go to school and then creating a threatening environment is immoral and cruel. An undemocratic government in totalitarian mode did not ask for the parent’s permission in writing; and parents still need to be informed that they can request that their child spend the time learning something instead of partaking in the contest. Present day Principals are at legal risk, as well. They have a duty of care. Forcing children to endure an out-of-school influence that creates a stressful situation is surely firm grounds for litigation. To place employees in such a situation compounds the felony; and liability will also fall further up the chain of command in any system of schooling. [C] Wasteful. Apart from occupying useful learning time, a school that is jealous of its reputation will practise for the tests as much as possible. Out goes the baby with the bathwater. [D] Costly. Test-construction and administration requires high spending on personnel, offices, and equipment. It is money that has to be diverted from learning resources. If the tests are purchased elsewhere, they are very costly. It is reported that the test-construction sector of the Washington Post is its most profitable section. [E] Curriculum spirit is destroyed. Learning is on-going, developmental, and joyful. Schools make plans in terms of the cope-ability of its clients. The natures of children’s backgrounds vary from school to school, so curriculum plans cater for local needs. Third party control ruins the pupil relationship at all stages.

I am truly fearful for Australia’s future.

Try this for a comparison. New Zealand recently imported an English teaching guru whose specialty is “Learnacy”: a vogue word that encompasses other -acy words but means that children need to develop their skills of learning. He, Professor Claxton, suggests that we should narrow the gap between the way we learn at school and the way we learn in the outside world. His views go hand-in-hand with NZ’s “new curriculum”. Australia imported a New York lawyer whose specialty is “Payment by Results” fear-based testing. They are presently being imposed on unwilling “inmates”. Failure is punishable. I shall not be around long enough to compare the outcomes, but I have seen it before. Sad. Really sad.

Australia has hundreds and hundreds of truly outstanding school-based experts; probably superior to any imports. They are called Principals. Someone should listen to them and maybe even do as they suggest.