Consider this scenario:
A family chooses the local public school as the ‘primary school’ for their 5-year-old child. This school is like many other local schools. It specialises only in the core curriculum. Subjects include English, mathematics, music and gymnastics. Passes in these subjects are the pre-requisites for future core subjects and electives.
It is understood that this ‘primary school’ cannot provide every opportunity to meet the child’s full potential.
The family chooses two elective schools, therefore, to complement the ‘primary school’.
This family has a thorough understanding of what each school offers and what it does not. Each school endeavours to ensure everything possible is done to fulfil its own clearly stated capabilities.
Over time, where necessary, the family employs other qualified service providers and elective schools, to support the education of their child.
The government provides the family with an annual financial contribution, to be applied to the schools and service providers of the family’s choice.
This scenario isn’t far-fetched. It can be achieved. Before such a scenario can be considered as even a remote possibility, however, 5 key pre-requisites must be agreed upon:
- Schools become education providers of choice
- The construction of more bureaucracies ceases
- Development of a balance between top-down, bottom-up and holacratic (decentralised) structures
- There is a balance between unions’ access and influence, and free enterprise
- Parents choose how the government’s financial investment in their child’s education is spent.
There doesn’t have to be industrial and organisational chaos.
What is really needed is a school system that makes sure a balance of craftsmanship, skilled labour, trades and professional options is always available.
What is really needed is a school system that values its teachers, nurtures its students, supports its families and delivers what it promises.
We really need to take the pathway from industrial chaos to an enterprise full of choice and possibility.
Copyright © Cheryl Lacey 2019
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Cheryl Lacey is an educationist and advocate of agitating change in Australian education to face global challenges facing Australia and Australians.
If you would like to learn more about the outcomes achieved by educational leaders and teams who have worked with me, contact me at cheryl@cheryllacey.com or visit www.cheryllacey.com
