Nothing to see here, yet, move along.

Wait patiently, gentle grasshopper.

Discoverable evidence (runs on the public board), peer ranked (she’s a top operator), reputation as a go to person (have you checked with Good Ol Bill, he shares his exo resources) oh and obviously happy successful kids, have long been used within schools to apportion professional value. Complexity creeps in when controllers crack the profession with accountability exhaustion. For misguided motives. Outcomes based, Naplan, MySchool, National Curriculum, Some Ok, too much not OK, Ok? The balance is fine.

There are only so many nationalised accountabilty patches that can be applied before the last holistic, trusted, responsible, creative human teacher who believes best learning should be messy and stems from confusion, questions why, as they turn the lights out, on their way out.

Believe it or not though, internationally, Australia sits in a very conservative teacher accountability place. We’re doing fine, comparitively. Until the Leaning Tower of PISA rears it’s head. We now haz Global Standards to Rank Ourselves Against. Oh joy, moar accountability patches have now been invented. That fun will eventually wean and then we haz Mars, Venus and Saturn to go.
Do we want deskilled autotrons doling out meaningless national content, or humans contextualising complex problems actually worth solving? There is a case to be made for a global curriculum with local flavours. Who’ll solve climate change, who’ll stop the war, who’ll cure infanticide? Yes schools should play a part because their clients are gunna live it.

Which way generationally visionless leaders go will be intriguing. I sense they’re biding their time right now as previous edu-leads have proven regressive and got those “leading” countries into more manure than the ventilator can spread.

The addition of the complex, open and digital network really doesn’t do anything to change that, it just amplifies.

Schools will never disappear. In fact the best ones likely to prosper are addressing the following right now.

Space and time structures must change to reflect a far more flexible knowledge/insight emergence rather than the industrial construct for which they were built 200 plus years ago.

By this I see innovative blended school models emerging that harness the anywhere, anytime affordances a digitally empowered student is now able to demand.
Although the required skill set for the majority of students is still nascent, once offers are made by innovative schools to cater to those user choices for a more compelling engagement, the flood of alternative school offerings may happen quite quickly.

The same with teacher time. Always of the essence, it was, is and always will be time priorities rather than an absolute lack of time. What becomes essential and what becomes window dressing?
My concern is for liberal arts and extra curricula being crowded out by “proper” subjects with high stakes accountability and school name resting on comparitive MySchool data. Especially once we are nationally federated under one curriculum.

The major restructure started in innovative schools centuries ago is now creeping into mainstream. Why? Because digital not only allows it, but prefers it.

We’ve had distant ed, school of the air, home schooling and narrow philosophy schools as long as schools have been with us.
The great freedom coming is the student as the empowered network centre and they can design, seek and forage a blend of time and space (and cost) providers that suits them exactly.

Harvard Tutor, tick. Oxford peer mentoring, tick. Sydney uni physical class, tick. Midnight to dawn study, tick. Part time job, tick. Granular and discreet just like the network.
Admittedly higher ed focused but it has filtered to virtual blended and physical schools in communities that are comfortable with that model. Teacher’s will adapt and comply, they always have.
Teacher’s will undoubtedly remain time poor, we always have been. But the less whiney ones will be networked, open and digital, letting the network flow pull the best stuff to them whilst they reciprocate.
Loving this new job BTW. So provoking.

When I write a learning and assessment program, it gets approved for 3 years. Fantastic – I can spend three years teaching the same stuff in the same way, assessing using the same methods. Boring as batsh*t if you ask me. I write a new one for each subject every semester – unless it is a full-year subject.

At a recent curriculum meeting, it was shown I was one of three staff members doing this. The rest of the staff were using programs that were approved for a 3 year cycle. When we examined this, the problem itself was time.

When do teachers get time to review their own practise? If you teach 25 out of 30 periods of week, you’re going to be short on time. How can this be done in the 5 free hours a week?

Successful leaders who also displayed innovation and creativity was once considered a bonus.

More recently, the mandatory nature and greater transparency of these leadership traits has transfomed them into expected basic litmus. Hence good ones get head hunted.

Lets trust we get heads and HR plays until we do.

I agree, the next step is high stakes. Possibly one of the most crucial rationalisations yet. As State wide ICT demands, including the wide load education/health barrows, fight for their diminishing crumbs I’d prefer a CIO who has The Importance of Public Education as a personal core value.

Innovation and creativity stagnation within the public sector is not an option. Do your best NSW HR in finding us one who is worthy.