Page 2262 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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A lot of this debate has been configured around small schools. I wish to put on the record here that I do not believe the “big schools, bad; small schools, good” definition, as Mr Barr asserted in his remarks this morning. However, I believe that an argument needs to be mounted for small schools, as the government’s 2020 strategy makes this an explicit reason for closing schools. So it has to be addressed.
Small schools provide substantial benefits to many students, particularly those who are deemed at risk or those with most particular needs and capacities. For many kids who are deemed to be at risk, it is the personal care and supervision that can come with a small school—it does not always come with a small school but it can more easily—that gives them, then, the security of place that they need, that they feel safe there and that they know there are people who care about them. That is what keeps many kids going to school.
I was very concerned to see the high level of indigenous children in some of the schools that are slated for closure and the concern that teachers have that they are not going to do those extra yards to get to the next school. Rivett school argues very eloquently for the integration of children with special needs. Having all schools big and busy is not the best thing for all students.
It is also true that combined classes across age range can help some kids, that the connection that comes from working across ages does bring its own rewards in primary school and in high school. The kids in smaller schools argue that they find the environment less bitchy, more inclusive and more tolerant. I have heard that said in my visits to schools.
We should also understand why there are differences in school sizes. In the competitive school environment of the past 10 years, some schools have given themselves an edge by marketing gifted and talented programs usually to middle-class parents but obviously aspirational parents who are not middle class but who want their kids to have more opportunities then they might have had. This has led to the growth of some government schools at the expense of others.
Furthermore, it is quite wrong to presume that young students with particular gifts and talents need a larger setting to flourish. Gifted and talented students need, more than anything, to have those gifts recognised and extended. This is more likely to occur in the setting where teachers can get to know the student individually and holistically, to know that person’s background and the extra input they need at the school to help them develop that skill and that talent. This has certainly happened in my children’s schools.
The continual assertion that small schools make for poorer education is a classic Howardism: the continual repetition of an untrue statement in order to establish it as uncontested fact in support of an ideological position. It can work very well as a way of dividing communities. It is true that the family-community approach of smaller schools might not suit all teachers. They are usually less institutional and require a more flexible approach to students and to their families than larger, more conventional schools. This can be a strength to communities but perhaps is less welcomed by departments.
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