I’ve been listening to an ABC podcast, a Background Briefing, that says the Australian public primary school system in real danger of disappearing - small state primary schools to be replaced by bigger schools, a new kind of primary school coming - ready or not. Bigger schools, different ways of learning, more special interest groups in class. Not just the three Rs, and computers, but character, and your place in society, taught in all schools across the country, and a chaplain to help with behaviour and mental health.
Changes that are coming will challenge what we think education is. A scary time for parents and teachers. Emphasis on creativity and innovation. Inter-disciplinary learning.
Schools are becoming businesses: R-12 super schools, 3,000 children or more, schools that compete with each other for funding, budgets of $30-40million. Primary schools not included in this restructuring are in danger of being left behind. Policy makers talk in terms of early years, middle years, and senior years.
The interview/article talks about teacher stress, tired children, over-crowded curriculum, principals who’ve lost control over what happens in their school, political pressure to produce educated and useful citizens.
Listen for yourself at http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/bbg_20071118.mp3
Background Briefing page is at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2007/2089122.htm
The page contains handy links to the following
- National Goals for Schooling
- Charter on Primary Schooling
- In the Balance: The Future of Australia’s Primary Schools
- National Curriculum
3 Comments
Thanks for the pointer Kerry.
I just hate the effects of economic rationalism and industrialisation on ‘education’.
It is interesting to think about what the determinants or motivators of school change are. There have been calls from school reform for a long time now, but it doesn’t seem to me that they often come from within. The changes that teachers and/or parents would like to see happen rarely seem to win the day. I guess when they do, it is the result of some accidental coincidence with an economic “push”. Teachers have protested for a long time about the overcrowding of the curriculum, which has often happened in reaction to pressure from influential “community” groups, and about the fact that pedagogy seems to be almost the last consideration. Those who pressure for schools to pick up yet another element that has traditionally been a community responsibility, rarely know enough about the education system or about pedagogy to appreciate that what they want will included at the expense of something else, often what teachers see as core content.
When I did my Dip. Ed eons ago in the early 1970s one of the topics we covered in educational sociology was all about de-schooling. And we had that rash of alternative schools like Summerhill.
As you say teachers have protested about curriculum crowding and the way systems react to pressure groups - you just wish that the decisions made were always made to the right reasons, rather than as the result of political/economic pressure.
I think what this article is getting at is that we are being told that schooling must be re-defined, and of course there is also then the question of whether “future schools” will look anything like the sort of 19th century industrial model that we have had for the last century and a half.
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