Schools are made of people. Schools are all about people. Schools are made from the connections between people. Schools exist to serve people and make the lives of all people better.
These are the fundamental truths which underly every aspect of education and schooling. They are inescapable, undeniable and they should be self-evident.
It is easy to lose sight of these fundamental truths. To allow the many layers of minutia to come between our actions and the people who are at the heart of the matter. We may not set out to do so but we allow distracting agendas, organisational structures, policies and processes to act as proxies for the people we are meant to be serving. We might be meeting all the requirements of registration, standards and accountability and yet somehow we have lost that direct connection to the people.
Curriculum is very important. A well written curriculum should make it clear what is worth learning. It should detail the knowledge, skills and dispositions which the people we serve will need and which schools can develop and promote. Curriculum writers should constantly be connecting what they plan for schools to teach with the people that will be most directly affected by that curriculum. Essential questions such as “What is life-worthy learning?” should echo around the rooms in which curriculum planners work. To be clear, the people that education serve should not be politicians or non-human entities in the form of businesses or global conglomerates. Somehow though our curriculum seems to be a product of many forces and all too often the people most directly affected by it seem to be forgotten. Schools contribute to this dilemma when they measure their success or compliance against the number of tick boxes they achieve in the curriculum.
Assessment too is important. It should let people know how they are progressing with their learning. What they have achieved, what they are yet to achieve and what they need to revisit or seek assistance with. Assessment should always tell someone who cares, something valuable about someone they care about so that they can take actions to help that someone learn. Assessment should not be about league tables. It should not be a tool for comparing nations, states or schools. It should not be about grading people; let’s save that barbaric process for cattle. Sadly, assessment becomes a measure of the wrong people, used to adjust the behaviours of the wrong people or to validate a decision which fails to take into account the needs of the people who are meant to be served by it.
Pedagogy might be thought of as an area where we get our priorities right. Pedagogy should be a set of decisions made by a teacher which result in a learning experience suited to the needs of the people that they serve. Unfortunately, pedagogy is often a construct of other forces. A response to a particular philosophy applied too rigorously. A set of actions which have always been taken in such a manner that the pedagogy remains the same even as the people and their needs change. Pedagogy should never be dictated by anyone’s and especially not a politician’s emotional attachment to their school days. Pedagogy should be alive, responsive and in service of the people who experience it most directly.
Policies, procedures, measures of accountability, routines, timetables etc. all subtly and confoundingly come between us and the people we serve. We implement measures to ensure that we are doing our jobs and they become what we serve. Each layer of structure and procedure sees us become one step removed from the people who matter most.
As we serve multiple ‘masters’ we forget about the fundamental truths at the heart of education; that schools are made of people, for people and by people. At every level, in every decision, with every idea we implement and with every cent we spend, we need to ensure that we are focused on meeting the needs of the people we serve.
By Nigel Coutts
For Belinda, who ensured it was always about the people.