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Jonathan Walter, Principal of Carey Baptist Grammar School in Australia, considers the way forward for schools

An education system that genuinely caters to individuals is something I’ve thought a lot about during my 28 years as an educator. For some time, I’ve felt that Australia’s current system is not meeting the needs of our students as well as it could.

Across the country, nearly a third of students are chronically absent from secondary school and one in five students don’t complete Year 12. Additionally, a 2019 study by O’Connell, Milligan and Bentley showed that one in four young people at the age of 24 are still not fully participating in education or employment. It is clear that not all students are connecting with our current schooling system.

Our system ranks children against their peers and doesn’t place enough value on the skills and pathways beyond school that reflect the needs of society or the interests of the individual students. It is outdated and needs to evolve.

What are the skills our students need?

There is increasing acknowledgement from a growing number of educational professionals, leading educational researchers and writers, as well as authorities like the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, that the current model of education has limitations when it comes to preparing our students for the future. The current emphasis is on high-stakes testing, which reveals achievements and progress in only a narrow set of skills, particularly those that lend themselves to the recall of information under time constraints. The existing assessment tools do not provide scope to acknowledge the broader range of strengths a student has or wishes to develop, and, in many cases, suppresses an individual’s creativity and imagination.

Students must develop capabilities that include but go beyond literacy, numeracy and the use of information technology. This requires authentic, challenging learning tasks that are relevant and engaging for the student and develop broader social skills of communication, collaboration and ethical behaviour.

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it is that the capacity to be creative, caring and empathetic are important skills that society needs. Students need to have the ability to solve problems, think critically and find creative solutions to previously unseen problems, and they must learn to do this in a genuinely collaborative way. All students have varying skills, strengths, perspectives and experiences to bring to the table which are all important, all have a place in society and all need to be valued.

By rethinking our approach, we have the ability to redefine excellence – to have all students strive to be the best they can be in their area of passion, that space where they will find their own sense of purpose and belonging and be able to make a positive difference in the world.

The way forward

At Carey, we are fortunate to be in a position to support the development of multiple pathways for students that are equally valued for the contribution they will make to society. One of our greatest strengths is the breadth and diversity of experiences we offer, alongside our great ability to support each student to reach their potential and strive for excellence.

Every student should be able to start their learning journey in the place that suits them, where they can progress at their own rate and experience a sense of success, even – and especially – in areas where they need more support and those where they naturally thrive. We can provide a suitable education for each student without compromising the achievements of the more academically minded students, but in doing so, we will need to redefine the set of desired outcomes for our students that are embedded in our current programs. Our students’ goals should be based on the needs of the world of tomorrow, rather than priorities we have set in the past.

I believe the true purpose of education is to support the development of well-rounded, independently thinking young people who have a strong sense of self. To support all Carey students now and into the future, we are further developing the extent to which we personalise and individualise the instruction for our students; our priority is to ensure that all students experience excellence in instruction and coaching. We are also embracing the experiential, real-world components of our program to ensure that, wherever possible, students are having the experience of actually doing and applying, making and creating, as well as theorising and practising.

Our focus must remain on striving for excellence; however, it is widely accepted that the ATAR, while a useful measure of academic progress, is a limited summation of an individual’s abilities and fails to help many students understand their strengths and what pathways they should follow. If students are to leave school with recognition and understanding of their true value, we have to consider a different approach which accommodates all students.

This is why we are involved in the New Metrics for Success program with the University of Melbourne. This is a two-year research project with 40 Australian schools and is focussed on developing a new way of assessing the whole student at the end of their time at School. This provides a solution to the shortcomings of the ATAR, which does not adequately show future employers or tertiary institutions who these individual people are and what they are good at. The New Metrics program aims to develop a robust measure of student achievement, and we are very excited to be a part of it.

An education at Carey is a journey of ever-expanding opportunities; one that opens up multiple pathways and supports our students to find and develop their independence, strengths and value as a member of society.

This article also appears in the 2021/22 edition of John Catt's Guide to International Schools, which you can read here: