Page 729 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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that exist. I want to say that establishing an authority like this does not automatically mean that it is going to be able to do all the things that is hoped of it.
Let us talk about that community participation, which has been an aim for education in the ACT. It is one of the reasons we set up these bodies and the school boards. Participation is always sought but it is very difficult to achieve. There are the formal links, Schools Authority, school boards, committees and the like, and there are informal links out through parents. But I know from my experience that it is very difficult to achieve the measure of participation that is claimed in philosophical statements.
Let us look at school boards. They operate within the range of guidelines and policies of the authority and within that they administer the affairs of their schools with, I might say, varying degrees of success. A few are excellent in promoting interest and vitality around their schools. Many, however, are victims of school principals - perhaps of older traditions - who run their own agenda and keep their boards busy with minor detail. I can say that in very few cases are boards or other parent groups entirely successful in enlisting the measure of support from parents that they want.
Schools in the ACT are open, they are inviting, they do involve parents, but mostly that interest from parents is geared to their children. Judging by the schools I have been in, if we want to get parents in we get all the kids in first - we do something around their children. That is fine, but it does not do a great deal for the administration of the school, for the curriculum, for work that you want to do with parents, for all those sorts of things. Simply establishing a school board does not mean you are going to get participation. I sat on different school boards in different capacities for about nine years and can state that it does not automatically do anything for you.
I want to come on to what I would regard as the most significant features of the Schools Authority, or perhaps more accurately, associated with the Schools Authority - the matters of internal assessment and internal curriculum development. These factors have had more impact on the system than anything else, more than the council of the Schools Authority, the autonomy, or the boards.
Secondary colleges are the key features of ACT education, responsible for more change than anything else. Why is this so? They reflect directly on what children do. I might add that they place a very considerable extra burden on teachers. The break from rigid internal exams with their inability to accommodate to specific student needs and abilities to a system where schools prepare curriculum to suit students, and then carry out the assessment, is the most significant advance in ACT education at any time. The
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