Australia Needs To Enlist Parents In Urgent Education Reform
It is so clear to me — even though I am in Canada and thousands of miles away from Australia — what needs to happen.
Within the space of one year Australia has had THREE reports that sharply indicate what has to happen.
The three reports:
– Review of the Australian Curriculum — reporting after 6 month consultation across the nation
– Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers — report on current teacher training
– What Makes Great Teaching? Review of Underpinning Research — research report on evidence
I believe the spur for this level of activity was the growing concern with the previous national curriculum, which was loaded with New Age and 21st Century Transformation narratives. As Nick Cator wrote, Jan 14, 2014, in The Australian: “Do we want educators or evangelists? Do we send children to school to ‘create texts that inform and persuade others to take action for sustainable futures’?”
The recommendations are enumerated in all reports and remain to be acted on. Will it have to come down to a heavy-handed approach for indicated changes to happen — legislation, removing accreditation from training outfits and lifting the licenses of teachers? Or will there finally be some common-sense that will magically appear?
Given that the industry of public education itself has been too often resistant and even dismissive of all this avalanche of evidence and public expectation it’s time to really bring in the troops — the consumers.
I saw a recommendation in the curriculum review that really made sense — getting parents genuinely involved. I don’t know the particulars intended, but these are some of the means by which parent muscle can be brought to bear: parental choice of schools between progressive, traditional or other philosophies; handbook on parent rights; handbook on student rights; curriculum outlines in clear language; workshops for parents on pursuing individual student educational needs; standardized accountability measures to keep schools on task; rebates for out-of-school tutoring expenses; tax credits for private schools, school-based management; etc., etc.
In the days of the one-room school house if the teacher did not teach the expected basics the parent board fired the teacher and recruited another. That’s the kind of clout that parents too long colonized by their “masters” need to regain if children are to be educated in their lifetimes for a challenging world.
I just wish that we in Canada (North America generally) had such clear signals as shown in the three reports by which we could go about cleaning up our education swamp.
[The Australian story referred to is here — http://www.educationviews.org/traditional-forms-teaching-comeback/ ]