Personalisation, diversity, enterprise and sustainability

As the mercury rose to herald the start of a school year, boys and girls throughout Australia began the process of shifting minds from the internal and intimate to engagement with the world beyond. Such alignment demands fitting setting, and along Morrison Street, boys and staff, new and seasoned, stepped into a campus bristling with colour, life and vitality thanks to our exceptional Grounds and Maintenance teams. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags joined the Australian and School flags as expression of Scotch’s continuing commitment to the embracement of our national identity. Teachers and boys stepped jauntily into class, refreshed with new experiences and ideas, as the dance of the next generation found its starting beat.

Both fruits and challenges of our connectedness (to environment, and to those with whom we share it) had been to the fore over the summer months, from time with friends and family in exploration of new horizons to the horrific fires and deeply troubling outbreak of COVID-19. Consideration of the nature and effect of our interactions, and points of balance between benefit and cost, rest at the heart of a liberal education and formed the founding premise for schools in such tradition. It was, and remains, a tradition of bringing young people together amidst those skilled in the art to share and advance passions and hone mastery, by pondering why things are as they are and how they might be made better.

It is an approach to education that, in seeking to develop the whole person, requires a nurturing of learning relationships forged in the arts and crafts that connect individual thought to a social setting (the arts, reason, language and sport) and some prescribed rigour to facilitate the quest. Alas, as we have learnt more about the world, our part in it and the power of education, such prescription, now referred to as curriculum and qualification, has become dominant in the development of each child to the person he/she could become, leading, in an ever more connected world, to the defence of learnt positons over reflection, debate and consensus.

So minded, schools of the liberal tradition need to consider what it is alongside such premise that makes them different and fosters belonging. At Scotch much is defined by our faith and heritage, our beautiful single campus, our non-selective entry, our values of egalitarianism, purpose and service and the belief that we are not as good as we could be. Perhaps most importantly, it has been (and is) defined by the people of our community, and, in particular, that number, who, since our foundation, have deeply loved and cared for the School.

Such schools must continually revisit how the liberal premise is reflected in that which makes them different and in their principles and practices. Such bond can be seen at Scotch through our foundational teaching and learning principle: The inherent dignity and value of each person; our foundational teaching and learning question: How did the world evolve to be as it is and how might it be made to evolve for the greater good?; our commitment to the nurturing of passions and honing of mastery; our commitment to relational learning in a conversational context; our diversity and commitment to each boy; and our confidence, desire to improve and commitment to the evidence of good research.

That all must be cognisant of the times was the prominent theme as I joined 19 other participants at the Judge Business School as part of Cambridge University’s 18^th Advanced Leadership Programme, to ponder the change upon us: its causes, nature and impact across sectors, societies and nations, and how we best prepare to grasp and forge opportunities in sustainable manner. Theory, case study, individual experience and wisdom, and healthy group and class debate provided the framework.

Key areas of discussion included: Strategy under uncertainty – narrative and optimisation; Technology and artificial Intelligence; Data is king; Usage over ownership; Service over product; Globalisation; Risk appetite and entrepreneurship – the need for experimentation and cleverness over outcome and continuous improvement; Changing workplace – flat hierarchy and culture, identity and routines in self managing teams; Protecting workers not jobs; Ethics (mention was made of Prof Peter Singer (’63)); Innovation; Sustainability and the circular economy; Alternative finance – block chains and asset tokenisation; Social purpose and competition; and Unknown unknowns and Black Swans.

In an educational context, I suspect much can be grouped into four themes: Personalisation, Diversity, Enterprise and Sustainability. Working amongst the leadership groups of the School, over the coming year we will consider,

• Personalisation: how might technology, including AI, better improve learning relationships and outcomes in a Scotch context; and how might we better match the interests and talents of individual members of staff to those of individual boys?
• Diversity: how might we better engage with, learn from and serve communities and agencies beyond our immediate bounds?
• Enterprise: how might we better prepare boys for the densely connected low hierarchical environment of wealth creation and the melding of social and economic enterprise?
• Sustainability: does a circular economy have opportunities at Scotch? What are we planning under the theme of sustainability?

In addition to these key programming themes, we will be continuing our close association with the Australian Childhood Foundation, in this, the middle year of our three year accreditation as a Safe School. In line with our master plan for campus development, we will be bringing current works to fruition in the ongoing pursuit of our educational strategic intents. The Keon-Cohen Dining Hall and St Andrew’s Square will deliver a marketplace of interaction at the heart of Scotch life surrounded by 12 House Home Rooms. English will move to its new home in the Lithgow Centre, further fuelling identity and belonging, as, similarly, the Language department occupies the top two floors of the Language and Culture Centre. Continuing the theme, the new home for OSCA and Archives, and the new Scotch (Uniform) Shop, will open along Morrison Street.

The end of the year will bring the completion of the first round of projects from the Teacher Action Research and Career Development Programme launched at the start of 2019. Education will be provided for boys, staff and parents on the impacts and uses of technology, including presentations by American educational and clinical psychologist, Dr Adam Cox.

We will further advance the Scotch Educational Reading Group, established at the end of last year under the guidance of Director of Research, Teaching and Learning, Dr Peter Coutis, to discuss seminal education research articles. Partnering with the Crescent School, Toronto, and Dr Michael Reichert, and supported by the International Boys’ Schools Coalition, we will further develop the recently launched International Special Interest Group on relational teaching and learning, which connects interested schools into clusters to share expertise and advance their relational teaching practice.

In the Junior School, focus on development themes of Embracing difference and An attitude of caring for others will be given structure with the introduction of a Peer Support model involving all boys from Prep to Year 6. Alongside the ongoing rolling out of the iPad programme across Years 4-6 and further development of offerings in science and technology, there will be a major literature focus on the creative power of poetry.

In the Senior School, new structures and positions relating to operations (Dean of School Operations, Stephen Kong), boys (Dean of Students, David Brown) and the Middle School (Deputy Head of Middle School, Rob Blackmore, supporting Head of Middle School, Katrina Stalker) will be honed and bedded down.

Elsewhere, there will be continued emphasis on boys’ voice (including the website Newsfeed facility), and respectful relationships; a Staff Experience and Engagement Survey will be developed and a new sports uniform will grace ovals, pitches, courts and rivers at home and away.

Of the many seeds for thought of my time at the Judge Business School, one that continues to resonate is economist Dani’s Rodrik’s proposition that we can have at most two of national identity, globalisation, and democracy. I put this to the boys in an Assembly early in the year, following it up at another by suggesting that in their immediate lives they could, perhaps, see national identity as their desire to be part of a group they feel has characteristics that distinguish it from others; globalisation as their desire to move between and connect groups for mutual advancement; and democracy as their desire to protect the needs and advance the prosperity of the many, while understanding that this often necessitates doing likewise for the few or the one.

The connection of the intimate, personal reflection of an imagined world, with all we observe and those with whom we observe it, rests at the heart of a liberal education, as does, perhaps, any progress with Rodrik’s conundrum.