by Cheryl Lacey, DSJ, Take The Lead On Education™, ©2024
(Aug. 18, 2024) — The push for more school funding as the be all and end all to address falling school standards is dangerous, illogical, unjustified and just plain dumb!
Some believe children should be entitled to everything the most expensive school in the country offers.
Some are of the opinion that more resources should be poured into schools where children are perceived to be disadvantaged – because English is their second language, or because of disability, distance from a city centre, or race.
Others think greater investment in schools that teach the best and brightest students is a priority.
Not everything can be measured in numbers (quantitative) and not everything can be measured in perceived value (qualitative). Everything, however, must be measurable.
The way things are at present, there is huge gap between what the national curriculum says and what is actually taught. It’s not being measured with any accuracy.
That gap needs to be closed.
On the other hand, if we close the gap entirely, there is no flexibility.
We’d have total top-down government control. (More than already exists)
That’s too frightening to contemplate.
If we were to close the gap while keeping some options open, that would be a better way forward.
We can establish Schools of Distinction!
SCHOOLS OF DISTINCTION offer National Consistency with Local Innovation.
CAPABILITY
There are four areas of capability:
Craft: Using your hands well
Skill: Learned repeated efforts to carry out a task
Trade: Special training in manual work
Profession: Mastery of complex knowledge and skills, over time, with study and application
Every school community has people of varying capability in each area.
National Consistency
Fundamental skills and knowledge apply to all four areas of capability. It makes sense then that a nationally consistent specified measurable curriculum is available in all schools so that every child receives the same foundation. Application and the boosting of nationally consistent skills and knowledge will be possible for every child.
Whether you live in the rural Australia or the CBD, one plus one will always equal two, and there will always be 26 letters of the alphabet.
National Consistency – the teaching and assessment from an agreed specified measurable curriculum ensures equal opportunity looks the same in every school.
That’s logical.
Local Innovation
This is where creativity, community, connections and commonsense kicks in.
Schools choose from a range of elective curriculum offerings to match school and community resources – for example, Art, Drama, IT, various sciences – just about anything is possible.
The electives are decided by the school board in full consultation with the community and form the key feature of the schools strategy.
An example:
Learning to surf in the mining region of the Pilbara doesn’t make sense. Neither does expecting every school in the country to have a wave pool.
Introducing SCHOOLS OF DISTINCTION genuinely addresses equal opportunity and the first steps in reaching one’s full potential – including for our dedicated teachers.
Clearly, there’s a lot more to explain in this model.
Reach out, have a chat, ask questions and stay tuned for more…