From the Principal

Last Friday I attended a breakfast meeting arranged by the NSW Association of Independent Schools. The breakfast was to promote the issuing of a report commissioned by AISNSW entitled CEO Perspectives: The Future of Schooling in Australia.

The event brought together CEOs and Heads of NSW Independent Schools. The report was intended to gather together the views of CEOs as to why they believe that our current education system was designed for an age which has passed and why it should be reinvented. The report summarised the views of these business leaders and their summary of the forces which are driving change in a new era of work and what schooling should be doing in preparing students for this world of the future.

There was common agreement that the existing model of schooling and of method of assessment to measure what students have learned is now inadequate. In a panel discussion which wrapped up the program, educational leaders in the panel welcomed the changes which are being proposed by NESA with regard to the HSC, and questioned the value of ATARs as the major means of providing access to post-school education. They also welcomed the focus from the CEOs who contributed to the report which categorised areas of school learning under Foundational skills (literacy, language and numeracy), Technical skills (relating to particular disciplines), Enterprise skills (creativity, problem-solving, collaborative teamwork, communication, a global mindset and community mindset) and Career Management skills (based upon continuing lifelong learning).

It was very affirming for schools such as Redlands with our Vision and our learning ambitions for our students, clearly articulated in our Redlands Learning Platform, our goal to have a culture of thinking and our strategies for teaching and learning to see this connection to what business leaders are looking for in their future staff members.

Some of the implications in the report for schools will certainly require some associated changes in how schools are permitted to operate and will require significant changes for schools in terms of structure, curriculum and curriculum delivery, tension between integrated learning and discipline-based learning, to mention just a few. But educational leaders and those who control and fund schools must accept that the world is certainly changing and that they will have to respond to the need for change in schooling to ensure the children of today and tomorrow are fully prepared for their future.

Dr Peter Lennox

Photo caption: Preparatory School students “finding their treasure” during Book Week.