It is very appropriate in Youth Week 2014 that a group in Gippsland, Victoria, the “Gippsland Youth Commitment“, has developed an online architecture and business model that is designed to get agencies and organisations to work collaboratively by sharing online resources.. for the sole purpose of improving outcomes for young-people.
Yes, there are many such initiatives.
What makes this different is that it has been led from the “ground-up” by the Baw Baw Latrobe Local Learning and Employment Network, staff within the DEECD in Gippsland and their partners across many service providers and organisations in Gippsland.
This is not a trivial thing.
The project has developed an online youth services directory that will function on any mobile device, designed particularly for young people looking for services and support within Gippsland.
This is really just the tip-of-the-iceberg.
The system also has as a “back-end” management system that is designed for detailed sharing between organisations working to provide youth services in Gippsland. The business model and architecture means it really is “sustainable”, [an often over-used and misrepresented term.]
This is the key, Combining local leadership and a budget model that understands the financial and technical constraints of rural and regional communities….
The most recent report by the Victorian Auditor-General on Access to Education for Rural Students highlights the glaring challenges when it comes to deploying Government Policy on a place-based or customised basis. Readers of this blog will know my views on evidence-based-planning.
This initiative is one of a few that I am aware of that can genuinely address the challenges in the Auditor-General’s report in a positive, meaningful and cost-effective way.
Caveat/Disclosure
I have assisted in the development and deployment of this project.
I was privileged to attend the Broadford Secondary College awards night [ last night, December 18th] and witness the launch of the Delaney Family Endowment for Year 12 students studying at Broadford Secondary College. This is a $20,000 Endowment in perpetuity.
How simply the policy challenges facing the nation can be distilled in to an eloquent and most generous commitment by a family that simply wishes to see everyone have the opportunity to achieve, regardless of their personal circumstances.
Such a genuine, humble and heartfelt commitment to an entire community will, I know, have an impact for many, many generations to come. This is philanthropy in its truest form.
What a wonderful example for all communities and policy makers.
The “teachers dispute” is still not settled. Telecommunications, Climate Policy, Labour Market renewal and work such as the Gonski review appear distant references on some future policy horizon.
The treatment of education and skills as a simple cost in a budget, or some “sector” to “manage” fundamentally misunderstands the needs of a modern economy [which wishes to remain one] in this century. Envisioning future Victorian and Australian communities that are literate, numerate, engaged, sustainably employed, self-reliant and generous is the task of all leaders.
By most objective comparative measures, for many years (decades) Australia and/or Victoria have been one of the most high performing societies and economies [I place them in that order] on the planet.
The teaching workforce requires the investment and reform commensurate with the strategic “lever” that it is. Not because it is flawed [although of course there is improvement possible], but because it is one of the only truly public policy levers that can establish and underpin a competitive and harmonious society in to the future.
Yet, as my colleagues in the US would say, we have a Kabuki Dance called the Teachers EBA that suggests the most significant outcome required by Government is saving a few percentage points over the life cycle of one industrial agreement.
There could be nothing less strategic in my view.
Yr 12 Attainment
At a local level, I note that in the Shire I live in, Mitchell Shire, the Year 12 attainment rate for young people has dropped from 71% in 2007 to a startling 59% in 2010 [the fourth lowest in all LGA’s in the State].
There are a number of other metric’s I could point to, but this serves to make my point I hope.
How does anything that relates to the current position of Government to the teacher’s agreement, suggest this position will or can be improved?
How does having less skilled, less-schooled, less trained individuals in our community good for business or investment, let alone, the individuals themselves or the communities they live in?
Public debate and discourse appears to have collapsed and we have ridiculously doctrinaire views from political parties and commentators that frankly, in the 21st century, serve no-one, except perhaps the [increasingly] narrow self-interests of the few in power. The status-quo is well served.
Scanning the newspapers in New South Wales and Victoria today, provides a stunning treatise of potential corruptions, conflicts-of-interest, self-interest and just plain apparent incompetence that sadly, supports my basic premise.
We need to be smarter.
And ethical.
There appears to be genuine challenges of competence on both sides of the ever-increasingly irrelevant aisles of power.
We have a new Premier of the State and I doubt anyone understands why?
This will cover our news and air-waves for weeks.
It seems if one side of politics says it is raining, the other side will suggest it is sunny and what was once a fearless and informed fourth-estate, chooses to publish the controversy of the disagreement, rather than take the time to look out the window and report the facts.
In the mean-time, tens of thousands of public school educators remain without any reasonable commitment to the individual and profession-wide resources they require to respond to the needs of vastly diverse and rapidly balkanising communities. Evidence-led, place-based planning has never been more critical.
I am reminded of an opine from 2005 [I think from Barry Jones] when he referred to the rise of the “un-reading managerial class” in modern policy circles.
I don’t see what has changed.
While I can be considered a “partisan” [in the broader meaning] when it comes to supporting state education, I do consider myself rationale and collaborative, [Bruce, please don’t snigger..] and thus able to see areas of reform that require all stakeholders to be prepared to compromise the tactical, to achieve a shared strategic vision.
As yet,as far as I can tell, such a vision has not been articulated nor necessarily sought.
Management appears easier.
Nevertheless, the signal to noise ratio is such in public debate, that I simply add my voice to the ocean of noise, if only to satisfy myself and the few hundred colleagues, here and abroad that I share my views with.
Settling the teacher’s Enterprise Bargaining Agreement would be the first indication that we can and want to get smarter.
It appears from contact with family and colleagues at what appears to be the largest state-wide teacher stop-work action ever held in Melbourne, Australia today, we are still very much in the cycle of what I like to call “retail economics and policy planning”.
It is sad to see such limited public debate about what is REALLY happening in schools, not just in Victoria, but across the country.
At a time when we have more information, data and knowledge about both TEACHING and LEARNING, we are still destined for what appears to be a policy debate that does not get much beyond either “kicking a teacher” or demanding unlimited funds with little or no accountability.
It is an insult to offer those in the service of educating our young such limited salaries, career structures and resourcing. Likewise, this will always appear to be the case as long as the teaching service allows a quasi-profession to be externally controlled, cajoled and manipulated because it does not manage and oversee its own standards and status.
It seems, the major actors in current policy are happy to frame the debate in terms of choices that perhaps even Faust would not consider. Although such policy positions play well on TV and Radio i.e “We need to reform teaching”, “we need to get rid of poor teachers” or “our schools are crumbling”, ” our rankings are falling”, we seldom discuss the opportunities a bi-partisan, multi-party commitment to education would bring to the country as a whole.
The half-truths and selective reasoning for political-gain, [at all levels] while well-crafted, is simply that, well-crafted. Our lack of cohesion and focus, our lack of collective support for the teaching service as one of the key strategic industries of our country’s current and future prosperity, is the key to many other social and economic policy dilemmas. Just ask the residents of Hackney.
We have in fact seen enrolments in non-government schools reach approximately 34% of total enrolments and yet concurrently, we have seen the rise of policy and public debate about “falling standards” and “falling rankings”. The shift of student enrolments to non-government schools [without apparent academic improvement] and the concentration of lower-performing students in many government schools is a challenge often simply ignored, it appears, by many policy makers.
Spending & OECD Performance
A lot has been made of discussions about spending and OECD rankings in the last few weeks and months. Here is a little chart that shows spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product and the OECD Country Rankings in PISA Tests in Maths, English and Science.
Dear reader, I would simply ask you to look closely at this graph below and ask yourself a few things about Australia’s rankings, mindful of the fact that MOST of the TEACHERS that were responsbile for the PISA results in 2000 are still in schools now.
Question. What has changed?
Question: What should we do now?
This chart requires flash.
Could you pick two of these? Education, Competitiveness, Civil Society
Structurally, this has been coming for a while and I can see some value in this if it is done correctly. There are dangers however, most notably in setting a price hurdle that will stop many from undertaking the very skills path they need because the risk/reward equation of deferred loans in this sector will be based on a lower average income stream over time than those in degree and higher ed pathways…
Farah Tomazin in The Age writes:
TAFE students could soon pay for their courses through a HECS-style loan scheme under radical plans by the Brumby Government to tackle the skills crisis.
As part of a massive shake-up of vocational education and training, the State Government is considering whether to introduce an income-contingent loan scheme similar to the HECS system offered at universities.
In back-to-back issues of the Curriculum Leadership Journal, educational communities from our LLEN area have been featured. This time it is the Year 10 Applied Learning Program at Kyneton Secondary College that has been featured. Richard Donker and Glenn Davey shared their work with us at the recent Future Minds Forum in Melbourne.
The Abstract says:
This year Kyneton Secondary College has introduced the option of a new program for Year 10 students. The Applied Learning Program aims to develop a positive approach to lifelong learning, improving communication skills, emotional literacy and self-efficacy. The intention is to enable students to stay at school and then decide which pathway suits them best. The program leads into the VCAL, without closing off the options of VCE or VET courses.
Kyneton Secondary College is a 7–12 coeducational school in central Victoria. The school draws students from Kyneton, a semi-rural town of about 5,000 people, and neighbouring areas.
Demographically the school is coeducational. The student population is almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon in background. Student numbers have remained stable at around 730 students and the proportion of young people is projected to remain steady for the next 10 years. The school is 100 years old and our neighbouring Kyneton Primary School is one of the oldest in the country, celebrating 150 years in 2006.
The project has developed an online youth services directory that will function on any mobile device, designed particularly for young people looking for services and support within Gippsland.
