What are schools for, anyway?

Let me start with a quick answer to the question posed: No, this post is not going to suggest that school is superfluous – there are already plenty of commentaries and opinions on the superfluousness of school as we know it. Despite the failure of distance education during the pandemic, however, some have suggested that it presented an opportunity to rethink education (Vegas & Winthrop, 2020; Zhao & Watterson, 2021), but I’m a little more skeptical. I do think there is an opportunity to re-examine schooling, but that opportunity existed before Covid and will continue to be present for those of us who think our children deserve better than the current state of schools. In other words, I don’t think there is ever not a good time to re-examine what our students are learning in schools?

What I plan to argue in this post is that schools don’t have a real purpose. Similar to what I mentioned in a previous post  there are many stakeholders in schooling and most of them have varying agendas.  When an integral institution, such as a public-school system, has so many stakeholders and goals that are incompatible (outlined in this blog post), we get to a point where the myriad goals of the institution are such that a balance cannot be achieved. What we need is a system where achieving all the goals with maximal intent is possible – where we are not sacrificing what is important to satisfy all stakeholders to the detriment of students.  

When a schooling system has a clear set of goals, such as those in the Mparntwe Education Declaration (2019), one might think that teachers, in particular, should have a clear vision of what they are trying to accomplish in the classroom; however, the goals of Australian schooling are complex and, I argue, unable to be attained at a level compatible with expectations. To reiterate these goals from a previous post, they are:

1. The Australian education system promotes excellence and equity.

2. All young Australians become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community.

The goals are as diverse as they are admirable, but the real question when examining these goals is how they manifest in the classroom and transfer to student learning? In other words, are they actionable?

The first goal is that the schooling system promotes excellence and equity.  How does this manifest? One might suggest that it manifests through the myriad of school choices available to students? One could argue that private schools offer choice, but that choice is only available to students who can afford that choice or the academically gifted who achieve a scholarship. Does a $40,000/year private school promote equity? What about the 50% of students in schools that in 2016 were deemed under resourced (AEU, 2017)?  Are these schools and students experiencing equity?  What we have is a two/three-tiered system of schooling that, in my humble opinion, doesn’t promote equity, but rather ensures inequity.

The school system definitely attempts to promote excellence, but much of that excellence is situated in academically selective and private schools. When one examines the top 150 schools in NSW, for instance, and 131 of those schools are either academically selective government schools (26) or independent schools (105), that leaves 15 in the top 150 in the public/non-academically selective sector and only two of these make the top 50. What does this say about equity and excellence?

For the most part, the Australian schooling system has been falling in international rankings of student achievement for over a decade. In the 2012 PISA rankings, the range of scores between Australia’s lowest performing and highest performing students is comparatively wider than the OECD average, thus illustrating that our goal to be equitable, is as necessary as it is important. In addition, fewer than 42% of students attained the agreed upon baseline achievement for Australian students:  Level 3. What is even more shocking is that 20% of students did not reach Level 2, the internationally agreed upon baseline. That’s right, 20% of students in Australia performed lower than the international baseline, which is considered an acceptable minimum standard.

These are not good results, but these form the basis of analysis for the performance of Australian students. While I may not agree with the use of standardised testing in this way, these are the markers used to ascertain achievement of educational goals. 

So, what about the second goal of schooling promoting confidence, creativity, life-long learning and active and informed community members. One would have to ask how these are being measured? With the focus on literacy and numeracy to raise achievement, is the second goal in the Mparntwe Education Declaration (2019) taking a backseat? In the most recent National Report on Schooling in Australia (2018) reporting on the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008), one can see that any improvements over previous years was miniscule, and in most cases, results went down. In regards to Goal 2 though, a goal that is difficult to evaluate quantitatively, there seems to be no key performance measures (KPM), which are used extensively to measure success in regards to achievement. Without a valid measure of success, how can it be expected that these manifest in the classroom?  That is not to say that teachers don’t want their students to become creative individuals, successful lifelong learners and active and informed members of the community, but in the absence of performance measures, many schools concentrate on what can be measured and focus their attention on measures such as literacy and numeracy and the ever-important NAPLAN (National Assessment Plan: Literacy and Numeracy) tests that take place in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

So, this takes us back to the original argument – what is school for? If the goals of schooling are to be equitable and excellent, which both seem to be aspirational, rather than goals that are being actively pursued, and the second goal is to create students who are creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community, but there are no measures by which to assess these – then the goals of schooling are simply rhetoric.

I’m not suggesting that the Australian school system is a failure, although by its own measures it does seem to be failing, but rather that few come out of school inspired by what they have experienced. What does the high school graduate/finisher achieve after twelve to thirteen years of schooling, beyond the ability to read and write and do some simple mathematics? Or a better question is what can we say ALL high school graduates/finishers have that can be useful to them after twelve to thirteen years of schooling? 

This is not a rhetorical question.  I’ve asked many people this question and very few have good answers. What jobs are available to the high school finisher?  What bankable skills do they have? Of course, there are jobs available, low-skill, low-pay jobs, but many of those jobs are the same ones available to junior workers who don’t have the same level of education as the high school finisher: supermarket stocker, fast-food worker, wait-staff, barista, store clerk and many, many more. I guess what I’m really getting at is what jobs are available to the 18yr old high school finisher that aren’t available to the 15yr old year nine student, except for possibly those that require a driver’s license?  Are we teaching our students any valuable, bankable skills in the second half of high school that help them to secure employment? And if not, why are we keeping them in school until they are 17 if they are not going to go on to further education? Or a better question is, why aren’t w teaching them skills that will get them gainful employment?

Coming from the US, I have to say that I was stunned when I first came to Australia and started teaching and found out that many students took their School Certificate exam at the end of year 10 and left school.  No, they didn’t drop out of school – year 10 was the end of compulsory schooling. I didn’t understand how a modern western country would allow 15yr-olds out into the workforce. But that was my own naivete, born from my own experience. An experience that that was born of the idea that you go to school, get good grades, go to college/university and get a job. Those who know me, know that I took a more circular route in my own experience, first through the USMC and then a few odd jobs before landing back on that path, but that path was always there – laid out for me, like a stretch of highway with a determined destination.

What I didn’t realise is that that path is not for everyone. My own son took that path that I so stunned me in my early years in Australia. Although the rules have changed slightly and students must now stay in school until they are 17, they can leave at the end of year 10 if they have an approved alternative program of study.  My son decided he wanted to be a carpenter and eventually a builder and therefore left school, at the ripe age of 15½ to pursue that goal.

While I applaud Australia for having alternative avenues for students that are not on the path to further academic study, I don’t think this should let Australia, or any education system off the hook for having a school system whose purpose does not serve the majority of students who are mandated to go to school. In far too many of these systems, the goal is to prepare students for the next phase of academic study – college/university and not for the realities of the world they enter at the end of school. School systems need to serve the greater society. If in that society the majority of people do not continue on to further academic study, then those systems need pathways that offer viable options for alternatives. Although these numbers are on the rise, in both Australia and the USA fewer than 40% of people hold bachelor-level qualifications. Additionally, in Australia only 56% hold any post-school qualification.  In the US, the same statistic doesn’t exist, but roughly 66% have some college, but fewer than half have either an Associate’s or Bachelor degree qualification.

No matter how you look at it, fewer than half of students are being served by a high-school system that focuses on preparing students for further academic learning, so my question remains – what and who is school for?

• I’ll pick up on the who school systems serve next week – until then