School Structures: Devolution and Diversity

CHANGES IN MANAGEMENT

THE growth of education since the Second World War has greatly enlarged the role of government bureaucracies in the administration of schooling.  In New South Wales in 1990 the Department of Education employed one non-teacher for every 3.8 teachers.  The comparable figures for the other States were 4.6 in Victoria, 3.2 in Queensland, 2.9 in Western Australia and South Australia, and 2.7 in Tasmania.  In Tasmania the Education Department's curriculum services staff had grown from a handful 20 years ago to 270 by 1990.  From 1988 to 1990 the number of non-school staff in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territory and the ACT all increased. ⁽¹⁾

Education has faced many of the problems endemic to bureaucratic centralism:  the remoteness of decision-makers from the people affected by their decisions;  the insensitivity to social diversity of policies applied uniformly;  the wasteful allocation of resources.  The high level of mistrust for Central Office among teachers in Western Australia, reported in a 1990 study, Good Teachers Make Good Schools, is not unique to that State.  Many teachers share the view of Western Australian teachers that bureaucrats driven by managerial concerns impose from above, in alien jargon, inappropriate school changes.  As Terry Moe and John Chubb put it, "leadership, professionalism, and clear and ambitious school missions do not tend to flourish in highly bureaucratic settings." ⁽²⁾

In England and Wales, New Zealand and Australia, there has been a welcome, if sometimes inconsistent, trend towards the devolution of administrative control.  Efforts to replace vast, inefficient educational bureaucracies with more decentralised administrative bodies are under way.  Moves have been made to create greater local autonomy by involving the community more fully in the daily life of schools, giving schools greater powers of self-determination, and curbing the managerial influence of rigid power blocs like the teachers' unions, which thrive under highly centralised school management systems.

In 1987 Western Australia launched a program for "self-determining" schools.  In the same year a decision was made in South Australia to give state schools additional responsibilities in self-management.  The 1989 Management Review, Schools Renewal, paved the way for devolution in New South Wales, basing its strategy on five premises:  the school, not the system, is the most important entity;  every school has different needs;  the best judge of these needs is usually the school's staff and the surrounding community;  schools should manage themselves within general guidelines;  and the role of the system is to provide support for schools and their leaders (e.g. at regional resource centres).

In 1990, despite opposition from the teachers' unions, the Tasmanian Government accepted recommendations made by Cresap, a firm of management consultants, to allow greater self-management by the State's schools, the creation of school councils, and the devolution of certain decision-making powers (e.g. whether to close a school) to the local level.  In 1988 the Northern Territory devolved a number of management functions to school councils.  In Queensland, devolution has been moving slowly.

Predictably, what educators around Australia have disagreed about are the details of proposed devolutionary change:  what, precisely, local school councils should do, and how their activities should be monitored;  which areas of policy-making should be controlled by school principals and teachers;  how fully parents should be involved in school activities;  whether there should be state schools with special identities, like "magnet" schools overseas or selective schools here;  how much parental choice, and therefore how much genuine school diversity, should be encouraged.

Predictably, too, complaints have already been made that change is not proceeding as it should be.  In mid-1991 the New South Wales Labor Party claimed that the promised reduction of bureaucracy had not been accomplished; ⁽³⁾  but more recently, the President of the NSW Board of Studies, John Lambert, said that the bureaucracy had been drastically reduced. ⁽⁴⁾  Observers in other States have expressed worries about the numbers of people who have moved from State to regional offices or consultative positions.  Clearly there is a danger that in States where Education Departments no longer have a major policy role, jobs for "servicing" schools will be created by and for Department bureaucrats.

THE EFFECTS OF DEVOLUTION ON LOCAL ADMINISTRATION

The Work of School Councils

Of the administrative changes made throughout the country, the establishment of school councils is the one that has been explained most fully in documents published by State Ministries. ⁽⁵⁾  The job of councils is to perform basic management tasks such as assessing the school's financial needs and setting budget priorities;  deciding whether the school will specialise in particular curriculum areas;  undertaking maintenance;  and establishing policies for community use of the school.

The principle underlying the existence of school councils is that many managerial jobs performed by remote head office officials can be completed more readily by local communities and school staff working together.  Typically, therefore, councils are composed of teachers, parents, the school head, the President of the Parents' and Citizens' Association, and community representatives from business, industry, local government, and other groups.

Critics of the idea of councils have pointed out that their presence could exacerbate social and economic differences among schools, especially if councils in disadvantaged areas are poorly supported. ⁽⁶⁾  Moreover, despite the arguments of some that devolution makes for a less politicised school administration, school councils are probably more vulnerable to capture by small but determined interest groups than are State bodies -- although the ramifications are not as far-reaching.  Nonetheless, most States have gone ahead with plans to institute the new management bodies.

The Responsibilities of School Heads

In overseas writing on devolution, particularly books and articles published in the US and the UK, the importance of the school principal in establishing school tone and setting priorities has been stressed. ⁽⁷⁾  Victoria, rejecting this view, has required principals to consult with union-dominated Local Administrative Committees on a wide range of issues, and to accept all staff and students assigned to them.  Elsewhere, in States which have agreed about the vital leadership roles of school heads (e.g. New South Wales), some of the management tasks performed by school councils, such as control of funds (subject to council approval) and hiring/firing power, have been given to the principal.

On the whole, school heads have responded well to their new roles, despite massive opposition to managerial restructuring by teachers' unions whose power has been weakened by it.  Principals have applauded their newly granted freedom to spend money on what is most needed;  to keep junior and casual staff who, earlier, could have been transferred or dismissed by remote fiat;  to suspend disruptive pupils, as independent schools have long been able to do;  and to employ teachers particularly suited to their school's ethos.

Reportedly, the major difficulty for school heads has been the burden on their time imposed by greater responsibilities, especially the burden of handling all financial transactions.  Not only are some principals not particularly good at balancing a budget;  but the process of dealing with the complex financial requirements of a school takes essential time away from academic responsibilities which they alone are equipped to tackle.  Since the range of a school head's administrative duties is awesome, independent schools have long provided necessary assistance in the form of bursars.  The state system could profit from their example.

THE CASE FOR DEVOLUTION

Despite actual or potential weaknesses in devolution, there is a strong case for it.  It fosters fuller involvement in decision-making by all key personnel, hence greater job satisfaction for teachers;  greater co-operation between teachers, parents, and local communities;  and more variety among schools -- thus, more choice for parents.  It allows government schools to compete on a more equal footing with non-government schools, and to develop their own esprit de corps.  And it caters for diverse aspirations and values within local areas.

For devolutionary changes to work, however, there must be reliable centralised checks on local and regional activity.  Standard ways of making schools accountable to the public, such as having Open Days, publishing newsletters and financial reports, and reporting the results of basic skills tests or annual HSC results, must be regularly employed so that funds are not squandered.  If obvious inequities among schools arise, they will have to be addressed by State Ministries.  For the first time, governments will be under strong pressure to phase out schools that everybody knows are not working.

A successful education system allows new schools to open and bad schools to close.  In a workable system, provision for starting State schools is flexible -- far more flexible than it was between 1985 and 1989, when 77 proposed non-government schools had their funding proposals rejected for not fulfilling centrally planned educational goals. ⁽⁸⁾  Rigid management criteria, of the kind set out in The Commonwealth Programs for Schools Guidelines, which require from schools initiatives to increase retention rates based on gender and race, are discouraged.  And the bureaucratic regulation of the operations of non-government schools -- especially, of the uses to which government grants are put -- is kept to a minimum. ⁽⁹⁾

RECOMMENDATIONS  DEVOLUTIONARY CHANGES Devolutionary changes which have taken major responsibility for school administration away from remote, inefficient bureaucracies and into the hands of those responsible for implementing management plans at the local level are to be welcomed.  It is clearly in the immediate interest of groups directly involved in schools -- parents, principals, council members -- to see that they perform well.  So far, these groups have responded well to the idea of changed roles. These are early days, however.  The effects of devolution on more local bodies will have to be carefully monitored so that the limitations of centralised control of education are not duplicated or compounded by the new structures.

SCHOOL CHOICE

The children of the rich have always enjoyed more freedom of school choice than the children of the poor.  Affluent families unhappy with their local schools have traditionally moved, or sent their progeny to independent schools with distinct identities.  They have also kept their children in school longer, attempting in this way to ensure greater job security for them.  Understandably, therefore, there has been strong parental support across a broad political spectrum for structural reforms allowing all children, but especially the children of the poor, to attend the schools of their choice.

In parts of Australia, conventional geographical boundaries prohibiting all but neighbourhood children from attending local schools are being eradicated.  School courses which encourage a wider range of options in the post-compulsory years, and which are carefully linked with community training programs and technical college work, are slowly being introduced.  The idea that more diverse programs at every level of schooling should be available to everyone is being taken very seriously.

MAGNETS AND SELECTIVE SCHOOLS

For over a decade in America, state schools with a distinctive character, called "magnets", have drawn pupils citywide or across large districts in every school year.  Some have offered specialised programs in, for instance, Science and Technology or the Performing Arts.  Others, with special selection procedures, have provided advanced work for the gifted and talented.

In Australia in recent years, most prominently in New South Wales and Western Australia, there have been strong moves to introduce similar schools at the secondary level and to retain, in greater numbers, academically "selective" ones.  Schools specialising in languages and computing, for example, have opened in these States;  and students who otherwise would not have been able to do advanced work in these fields have applied in droves for admission.  At "selective" schools, unsuccessful applicants have outnumbered those accepted by a ratio of nine to one.

Despite the strength of community interest in academically "special" schools, powerful teachers' unions and other defenders of "comprehensive" schooling have opposed their existence.  Their most frequently voiced objection has been that they will significantly damage the reputations of schools located near them or, worse, close neighbourhood high schools which have traditionally serviced the disadvantaged.  They fear that secondary schools with high-status programs will demoralise ordinary schools with a variety of offerings, none of them particularly prestigious, and make it very hard for these ordinary schools to function.

These fears, though understandable, need not be realised.  Specialist and comprehensive schools cater for a very different clientele.  Overseas schools without academic specialties, but with distinctive emphases upon pastoral care, have thrived in a wide variety of neighbourhoods. ⁽¹⁰⁾  In practice, schools threatened by magnets often lift their performances;  and those whose ordinary academic and pastoral programs are strong, automatically attract large numbers of pupils who would be unable to handle the advanced work required at magnets or selective schools.

The alternative to schools which allow pupils to develop advanced skills in areas in which they have shown talent, once they have completed broad general studies requirements, is uniformity opposed from above -- a recipe for mediocrity.

DE-ZONING

A means of providing greater choice for Australian families is de-zoning:  that is, eradicating geographical boundaries and allowing families to send their children to any state school of their choice, provided that there is room for them.

In New South Wales, de-zoning was first tried in the late 1980s in all the state primary schools.  In 1991 secondary schools were included in the option.  Although selective schools and magnets were bombarded by applications as soon as conventional geographical boundaries were lifted, ordinary government schools have not been appreciably affected by the change in existing regulations.  A relatively small number of schools with small enrolments has closed;  but the total number of closures has not differed markedly from what would normally be expected in locales with relatively small school-age populations.

On the whole, if their children have not been accepted for specialised schooling, families have been selecting state schools within easy travelling distance of their homes.  Especially at the primary level, a high percentage of parents has freely chosen the closest neighbourhood school -- i.e. the one that would have been required prior to de-zoning.  The clearest reason for this is that in ordinary government schools, the quality of instructional provision is so similar that there is not a compelling case for sending children far afield each day.

To the extent that diversity has been actively sought by New South Wales parents since de-zoning was introduced, a majority whose children have been turned down at selective public schools and "magnets" have tried to find a place for them in the independent system.  Private schools with strong religious or ethnic affiliations, or reputations for quality equal to or better than the reputations of selective schools and magnets, are continuing to attract close to 25 per cent of the student population.

VOUCHERS

Vouchers are school entry permits designed to enhance parental choice in education and make quality schooling available to a wider range of pupils.  They have been used primarily in American cities plagued by economic and educational inequality.  Under a voucher system parents are given a permit or voucher, equivalent in value to the average per capita cost of schooling in the state system (e.g. $4,000 per child) which they can then use to enrol their children in an accredited school of their choice on a first-come, first-served basis.

To avoid managerial clutter or chaos, families are made responsible for validating vouchers at the schools where they wish their children to enrol;  and schools receive one government cheque for the sum value of their vouchers.  Underlying the system is the view that educational excellence takes many forms, some of them more appropriate to particular pupils than to others;  and, for this reason, the people who know children best, namely their parents, should have a greater voice in determining the school they attend.

Since per capita costs at independent schools are often higher than at state schools, and since tuition and other costs are met by parents, parental freedom of choice does not normally extend to the independent school system.  But under specially stipulated conditions, local boards or councils can allocate vouchers for private schools.  In America, controversial court rulings have permitted this to happen, but only in non-government schools whose per capita costs are no higher than state schools' costs happen to be.

Two years ago, a black legislator named Polly Williams pushed through legislation to allow several hundred children to attend a half-dozen non-sectarian private schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  At the time, the good Milwaukee public schools -- magnets with special programs -- took a relatively small quota of black pupils in order to maintain a racial balance;  but the inner-city independent schools accepted many more.  These inner-city private schools spent barely half what the State spent on each pupil per year ($6,000), yet they provided a better education.  By making the availability of educational quality its top priority, rather than racial balance or the composition of the group running a school, the government extended the voucher system in an unprecedented way. ⁽¹¹⁾

In selected cities in the United States, particularly those with a reasonable number of attractive schools, the voucher concept has gained strong -- though not undivided -- support.  But in the country as a whole, as in other countries (e.g. England) where sympathy for expanding parental choice in education is marked, the idea has not taken hold.  Even the persuasive and highly publicised argument for vouchers advanced by Terry Moe and John Chubb in their 1991 Brookings study, Politics, Markets and American Schools, has not succeeded in altering public policy significantly.

The Moe-Chubb view is that the best way of offering greater educational autonomy to schools and real choice to parents is to provide full government funding for new, different, self-run schools (private and public);  to close down academically weak schools;  and to give "universal scholarships" (i.e. vouchers) to all parents.  But to date, resistance to expending money and energy on closing bad schools and opening new ones has been too great in the places where radical reform is needed most to effect essential change.  So much major rebuilding is necessary that many people have rejected the prospect out of hand.

In a country like Australia, where disparities between rich and poor are not overwhelming, and where independent schools resembling magnets already receive government subsidies, implementing a plan like Moe's and Chubb's would not involve changes as radical as those required in many parts of the United States.  Subsidising pupils currently attending independent schools at the same level as those attending government schools would increase Australia's total education budget of $11.5 billion by approximately $1.6 billion.  But because schools with poor results would not attract pupils or funding, long-range financial profitability could well be greater.

If Australian States were willing to introduce a voucher system, school entry permits would have to be means-tested.  The higher the parental income, in other words, the less an individual voucher would be worth.  Since parental interest in genuinely distinctive schools, private and public, is obviously strong, the prospect of the very best schools being open to all the children suited to them, not simply to those whose parents have a good income, merits serious consideration.

RECOMMENDATIONS  GREATER DIVERSITY IN SCHOOLING Selective schools and "magnets" with distinct identities and programs for enrichment not otherwise available, of the kind already operating in New South Wales, should be encouraged, scrutinised with interest, and carefully monitored regionally.  This will create broader opportunities for more children to attend schools which will fully develop their special talents and interests once they have received a solid Arts/Science grounding. De-zoning, which removes conventional geographical boundaries and allows parents to send their children to any state school which can accommodate them, is another desirable means of making more diverse options available to families -- though to date, where it has been tried in Australia, demand is greater for selective and "magnet" schools than for ordinary state schools. The voucher concept proposed by John Chubb, Terry Moe, and others, and designed to promote greater parental choice in schooling by extending a family's options to private as well as public schools, should also be given serious attention.

GREATER FLEXIBILITY FOR TEACHERS AND PUPILS

TEAMWORK AND COMMUNITY

Overseas, and in a small number of schools in Australia, structures which encourage greater teamwork in the implementation of programs of study and much more personal, collaborative work for children and adults have worked extremely well for a decade or more.  Team programs have enabled ordinary staff to assume greater school leadership, to design more flexible programs of study, to work over a period of years with the same pupils, and to work with school heads, parents, community workers, and specialist consultants.  Their corporate efforts have all succeeded in making pupils want to work well, and in building structures which encourage everybody, old and young, to help others as a matter of course.

Community Schools in Hamburg and Cologne

In urban centres in Germany, where as many as 50 different ethnic groups may be represented in one school, a major effort has been made over the past 17 years to transform schools into communities.  For as many as six years, in large community high schools in Hamburg and Cologne, teaching teams of six to eight persons have been handling the total education of the same 80 to 90 pupils.  Children of all abilities, bound for jobs or college, coach one another on a solid core curriculum.  To date, their academic achievements have surpassed those of all other comprehensive schools in the country.

In all the schools which have adopted this team plan, administrators play a comparatively small role in policy-making and policing.  Staff from each team meet with colleagues from other teams to determine the syllabus in each core area.  Imaginative teachers exert most of the leadership, and weak links can be removed from a school if the other team members agree.  Since there are no school bells or set blocks of time for each subject, teams decide individually how much time will be devoted to Science or Social Science, Maths or Language, each day.  Because teachers and students know each other very well, problems can be spotted and solved before they get out of hand.

One German community school which has received favourable international attention is the Köln-Holweide School in Cologne. ⁽¹²⁾  Compared with a national average of 14 per cent, only one per cent of Holweide's 1,800 pupils drop out.  Sixty per cent do well enough on high school exit exams to be admitted to a four-year college.  The school suffers from no teacher absenteeism, almost no truancy, and only minor discipline problems;  and it has more applications for its 220 annual new places than it can fill.  Less workable structures everywhere in the world are characterised by much higher annual staff and student turnover.

Köln-Holweide's success, for close to two decades, in attracting and keeping good staff and in providing a fine working model for trainees demonstrates the importance of an organisational structure anchored in corporate responsibility, flexible work arrangements, solid networking, and pastoral commitment.  "Lead" teachers for each subject and grade see the head weekly.  Periodically the entire staff meets to discuss issues affecting the whole school, and teachers in a grade also get together -- often, at people's homes -- to shape policy.

Because it combines a highly personal approach to all pupils with academic imaginativeness and seriousness, Holweide produces children who feel confident about their own capacity to learn.  Pupils feel cared for in a way which promotes strong academic growth.  Even though many (especially, those of Turkish background) come from families suffering from chronic unemployment, most develop better work habits than they came with.  Clearly, their accomplishments have influenced the thinking of many overseas educators who are interested in combating the alienation so common in inner city schools with large migrant populations everywhere in the world.

James P. Comer's Community School Program

Of the reform structures in America which have encouraged broadly-based teams to work together over a long period, Yale professor James P. Comer's has probably been the most highly publicised and acclaimed.  Begun in disadvantaged areas in New Haven, Connecticut, and implemented in similar areas around the country, the Comer Plan has brought school principals, teachers, community workers, specialist consultants, and parents together both to plan and to implement programs designed to bridge the gaps between home and school often suffered by the children of the poor.

Besides creating workplaces whose atmosphere is distinguished by unusual warmth, liveliness, and co-operativeness, the Comer Plan has solved major problems plaguing schools in disadvantaged areas, notably, delinquency, vandalism, truancy, and classroom disruptiveness.  By involving entire communities in the daily lives of their children (for example, as part-time teachers' aides, weekly readers, or resource persons in the teaching of Cooking, Music, Mathematics, or Craft), it has significantly raised the scores of large numbers of pupils on standardised numeracy and literacy tests.

Through enlightened leadership -- much of it black -- at every level required by individual schools, Comer Plan youngsters who were once regarded as impossible to teach have accomplished more than many of their teachers imagined they could.  Focusing on the personal as well as the academic needs of every child, and influenced greatly by the personal example of enlightened school heads like Dietra Wells at the Katherine Brennan school in New Haven, ⁽¹³⁾ staff without special training or unusual talent nevertheless achieve impressive results.  To date, there are 150 Comer Plan schools in America, and, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, attempts are being made to expand the program. ⁽¹⁴⁾

The Essential Schools Coalition

For over a decade, Theodore Sizer's Essential Schools Coalition has been attracting funding -- recently, a $2 million grant -- and very great interest across the United States. ⁽¹⁵⁾  Introduced in Providence, Rhode Island (the home of Brown University, where Sizer is a professor in the School of Education), the program has encouraged entire primary and secondary schools, or -- less ideally -- groups within large secondary schools, to organise both pupils and teachers in teams of no more than 80 pupils working together for a period of years.  Staff share responsibility for teaching language skills, techniques of inquiry, and study habits to all the pupils on their team.  Over 200 schools alike, in disadvantaged areas and in more affluent ones have been involved. ⁽¹⁶⁾

The striking features of the Essential Schools Coalition are a curriculum which concentrates on the three "essential" subject areas of Maths/Science, the Arts, and History/Philosophy;  a flexible timetable, on the Holweide model, which allows teachers to decide each day how much time is going to be spent on each subject;  a personal approach to schooling which enables teachers and pupils to get to know each other extremely well;  an emphasis on active methods of teaching and learning, particularly coaching and Socratic discussion;  a community service program conceived as an integral part of each student's education;  and a program of assessment including portfolios, "exhibitions", and oral examinations, which pupils must pass in order to be promoted.

Typically, "exhibitions" require students to do highly individual and creative work in combined core subject areas.  Pupils might, for example, be asked to write a formal essay on one human emotion (fear, envy, humility, joy, anger, greed), rendering the same definition by using at least three of the following terms of expression:  (a) a written language other than English, (b) a piece of drawing, painting, or sculpture;  photographs, a video, or film;  a musical composition;  a short story or play;  a pantomime;  or a dance.  Then they could prepare a set of examples of other people's arresting definitions or representations of the same emotion.  Finally, after roughly four months of independent work, they would be expected to present the exhibition and answer questions about it.

Sizer argues that assessment of this order, which follows naturally from the reformed school structure, helps to produce individuals who are reflective about basic human traits, thoughtful about continuities between past and present, able to act on considered, practical definitions of human needs, and capable of synthesising diverse notions.  As well, it gives pupils the knowledge that their efforts are going to be taken seriously, the chance to use their knowledge, and the time to produce solid, serious work which they really enjoy and value.  It encourages teachers to develop ingenuity, scholarly breadth, and judgment as they team up to evaluate exhibitions.  And it fosters the development of better libraries and resource centres within schools.

Ideally, friendly and informed outside observers, roughly equivalent to the UK's Inspectorate, can monitor an Essential School's progress by visiting classes, inspecting portfolios, reviewing "exhibitions", and comparing portfolio or exhibition work with such standard assessment measures as exam grades or scores on national tests in reading, writing, and mathematics.  In this way, local schools become accountable to the community they serve and, if the work pupils do is worthy of wider dissemination, to a larger community beyond it.

PAIDEIA

In 1982, with a large team of distinguished American educators, the eminent philosopher Mortimer J. Adler introduced a program of school reform in disadvantaged schools in Chicago which has been slowly implemented in many other American cities and towns and several Australian ones.  Called Paideia, from the Greek word paidos, meaning the growth of the child, it works on the assumption that all children, not just those with professional aspirations, deserve to be exposed from kindergarten onwards to first-rate material. ⁽¹⁷⁾

In schools everywhere, the Paideia team argue, far too much time is given to didactic instruction and far too little to Socratic discussion and coaching, techniques which are described in some detail in Chapter 1.  To overcome the passivity common in classrooms around the world, school staff need to encourage children to use information in the service of ideas, and to provide regular opportunities for corporate, as well as individual, learning.

By planning Socratic seminars at least once a week for all pupils -- which is what Paideia schools do -- teams of teachers can engender in students a contagious enthusiasm about books, reflection, argument, and collaborative problem-solving.

Even very young pupils who are habitually involved in whole-class discussion and coaching exhibit an uncommon liveliness of mind.  In seminars, students considered dull or slow-witted by their classmates can make observations more imaginative and penetrating than those offered by star pupils.  Visitors to Paideia schools often comment about everybody's attentiveness as they listen to others, pose searching questions to one another, and explore large, open-ended issues.  In schools committed to the seminar/coaching program, teachers soon find that they are as keen to mull ideas over with others, and attack intricate problems in class, as the children are.

In Paideia schools, "ordinary" teachers have regular seminars with each other which enable them to fill in gaps in their own reading.  In regular weekly meetings they help one another to grapple with difficult concepts, and to plan better discussions.  And, with the assistance of the national Paideia centre, they fine-tune their curriculum -- for example, by regularly revising and updating school reading lists.  Many spend vacations at colleges, universities, and training centres which offer degree or in-service courses designed to acquaint them with a wide range of imaginative and discursive literature, and to sharpen skills in conducting dialogues.

Basic to the entire program is the conviction that the most able teachers demonstrate in their own persons the joy of learning.  This means in practice that Paideia teachers habitually observe one another in class so that they can improve their own methods of instruction, and they encourage parents to take an informed and eager interest in the work their children are doing in and out of school.  Although sceptics have called the Paideia philosophy too idealistic for tough schools, it has worked particularly well with disadvantaged youngsters.  Some of the better Alternative Certification Programs for teachers, such as Houston's, incorporate its basic teachings in their training courses.

SPECIAL STRUCTURES WITHIN SCHOOLS

Vertical Grouping

In some Paideia schools, and in others where teachers work very closely together, vertical grouping in seminars and whole-class coaching lessons is often used.  At an Australian primary school whose academic achievements are outstanding, the Launceston Preparatory School in Tasmania, four- to eight-year-olds and eight- to 12-year-olds work alongside one another in total harmony for long periods.  Staff know individual children so well that they are confident about who can be asked to help whom in daily coaching sessions;  and they trust the older pupils to help the younger ones, or vice-versa, when unpredictable needs arise.

Although there has been a national reluctance to group children in ways which ignore conventional age boundaries, Australian schools prepared to take the risk -- as more and more are doing in carefully selected subject areas -- are discovering that the entire process extends pupils in many directions, not simply the predictable academic ones.  Vertical arrangements help children to build a wider circle of friends, to appreciate more fully both the personal and the cognitive strengths and limitations of older and younger children, and to begin to think automatically and spontaneously about the needs of others. ⁽¹⁸⁾

Flexible Progression for the Gifted and Talented

In all likelihood, the increased incidence of vertical grouping in our primary and secondary schools will make it easier for schools to institute flexible progression for gifted and talented pupils -- that is, promotion to a higher grade than age alone permits.  In New South Wales a policy statement published in 1991 by the newly constituted Board of Studies specifically recommends flexible progression for such pupils and makes provision for them, notably in the more senior years of school.

So that they are suitably challenged, unusually able New South Wales children are encouraged to complete the conventional P-12 program in less time than is usual and, when they have done so, to enrol in specially designed, advanced school subjects and/or approved university courses.  Elsewhere in Australia, for the very small percentage of students who qualify, similar moves are in the offing.  It is widely recognised that very gifted pupils have long been bored by, and held back in, conventionally structured school programs.

Programs for the Learning-Disabled

Children with special needs, especially those who are learning-disabled, have suffered even greater neglect in ordinary Australian schools than have the gifted and talented.  On the "egalitarian" premise that nobody should be singled out as "different", children with learning disabilities have been mainstreamed in every school subject.  Whether or not they are neurologically equipped to handle letters and numbers, lines and sequences, and spatial operations, ⁽¹⁹⁾ they have been asked to do the same work as normal children.

Profound ignorance about the developmental implications of cognitive disorders has produced the ruling that schools cannot receive Commonwealth grants in Special Education for pupils with average, above average, or high IQs.  Yet even in children with IQs as high as 140, poorly functioning nervous systems can engender incapacities which cripple many facets of their school performance. ⁽²⁰⁾  Because regional policy-makers responsible for developing Special Education programs are aware of this basic fact, State money is at last being put into government school programs for bright learning-disabled youngsters.  Resourceful independent schools -- e.g. Tintern CEGGS in Melbourne and Knox Grammar School in Sydney -- are also deploying major funds for this purpose.

Recent research in the United States has attributed the difficulties of children with learning disability to inadequacies in handling light (and, sometimes, sound) with the same speed and facility as normal children.  To date, however, knowledge about how this malfunction can be corrected is incomplete.  What is known is that learning-disabled pupils, like ordinary ones with specific reading difficulties, often have visul attention spans which cannot assimilate letters properly.  Remedial programs currently being developed by Dr Byron Harrison, Jean Zollner, and other major researchers in Australia, the US and the UK can transform such pupils into able readers. ⁽²¹⁾

Typically, learning-disabled children have major problems remembering instructions, following directions, performing relatively simple physical operations like skipping or catching a ball, concentrating properly, foreseeing the consequences of their own actions, or coping with such typical school tasks as reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic. ⁽²²⁾  These limitations in their daily function have social and emotional consequences, not simply academic ones, since they prevent such children from being readily accepted by others in the ways well-functioning youngsters take for granted.

In every Australian State, schools flexible enough, and well enough equipped, to offer special programs for learning-disabled children are badly needed.  At the moment, hundreds of youngsters with learning disabilities are failing in class and suffering incalculable frustration and rejection for not being able to do what their IQs suggest they should.  Because they can be very good at some aspects of the usual school program, but atrocious at others, adults -- including teachers -- often call them lazy, lacking in will power, and immature, without realising that influences beyond their control are responsible for their poor showing.

If learning-disabled children are diagnosed early enough, they can be helped in areas of neurological impairment by teaching methods which enable them to build learning strategies appropriate to their actual cognitive development.  Ideally, they can be mainstreamed in school subjects they can manage well, and given special teaching in areas of serious weakness.  By concentrating on the educability of such children, encouraging them to by-pass conventional ways of learning which they cannot handle in favour of those which reward effort, specially trained teachers can slowly bridge existing gaps between their performance and that of normal youngsters.

RECOMMENDATIONS  PROMOTING GREATER SCHOOL FLEXIBILITY The worldwide structural reforms of the past two decades, which have encouraged greater community involvement in schools, stronger teamwork, less rigid scheduling, more collaborative methods of instruction, more supportive contexts for staff development, wider leadership opportunities for heads and teachers, and more exciting programs of instruction for all children, are to be welcomed. The more successful reforms all have something to offer Australia.  So that we can do more for all our children, but especially those who have not been adequately provided for in our conventional programs (e.g. learning-disabled and gifted and talented children), we need to attend very closely to the more flexible and imaginative innovations introduced in Hamburg and Cologne, New Haven, Providence, Chicago, and Houston.

PROGRAMS FOR THE POST-COMPULSORY YEARS

POSSIBILITIES

Before the publication of the 1991 Finn Report recommending required education and training for 15- to 19-year-olds, a wider range of course options for students not headed for university, and much closer links between TAPE and school programs in Years 11 and 12, ⁽²³⁾ there was already strong feeling in many parts of Australia that more should be done for our late-adolescents -- not least because, during the past decade, more than two in three instead of one in three have been staying in school to complete Year 12.

A strong sentiment has been that after Year 10 there should be more varied program options both within core subject areas and outside them, particularly for pupils whose interests are not traditionally academic, and a wider range of credentials to represent the full range of student abilities and aspirations.  Employers, policy-makers, politicians, and teachers have argued that our senior pupils need to be given a range of reliable skills -- "key competencies" -- to prepare them for the work-force and mature adulthood.  But the difficult question of how these skills can best be taught has not been satisfactorily answered.

In the Finn Report itself, the importance of a general education program fostering competence in language and communication, maths, scientific, technological, and cultural understanding, problem-solving, and personal relations is stressed.  The competencies to be imparted include skills which schools have been working on for decades:  speaking, listening, reading, writing, accessing and using information, analysis, critical and creative thinking, and decision-making.  What the new role of schools might be in imparting these competencies within programs for senior students headed for the work-force, the Report does not say.

Many public spokesmen have agreed with Finn that a sound program for the post-compulsory years should include courses in general education, as well as vocationally oriented courses.  In reports like Aiming Higher (September 1991), business leaders have argued that a "broadly based" educational program is preferable to a "narrowly vocational" one. ⁽²⁴⁾  But in recently published documents, the emphasis has been on competency-based training.  The credential proposed in the Carmichael Report released in March 1992, an Australian Vocational Certificate which distinguishes four skill levels defined in the Australian Standards Framework, is aimed at 20-year-olds entering the work-force.

Although Laurie Carmichael favours the existence of senior colleges with varied two-year programs, some of them linked with TAFE and industry, and shorter "bridging" courses or work schemes giving students greater subject and topic "choice" as they prepare for jobs, the Report does not explain how "curricular" work can be linked with "work experience" or "higher education". ⁽²⁵⁾  The vague term "contextual learning" is used to describe an ideal, "relevant" approach to "generic" subject areas such as Language and Mathematics;  "national measures" for developing literacy and numeracy are recommended;  and there are references to the Mayer Committee, which is developing "key competency profiles" for all senior students.  But the means of generating "generic" and occupation-specific competence are not described.

At the national level, there has been an unfortunate blurring of the distinction between training and education.  Clearly there are vocational needs in the 15- to 19-year-old age group which must be met;  and the National Board of Employment, Education and Training has been working hard to set up more varied and useful training options for them.  But if senior colleges or their equivalent are expected to give students headed for the work-force "key competencies" in "generic" areas such as Maths, Science, and English, the nature of the general education which it will be their duty to provide must be fully indicated.

A major reason for blankness or confusion about general education programs for older pupils is philosophic:  there is widespread ignorance about their nature and aims.  Fundamentally, the purpose of the Liberal Arts -- the staple of general education -- has not changed in 2,000 years:  it is to develop students' reasoning powers, to liberate and cultivate their minds and stimulate their personal growth, by helping them to form good intellectual and moral habits.  This is best done, not by stuffing their heads full of unrelated facts, but by exposing them, through lectures, discussions, tutorial and laboratory work, to what Matthew Arnold called "the best that has been known and thought in the world."

For 15- to 19-year-olds who are not going on to university, there is a strong case for a sound program of electives in the Arts and Sciences:  i.e. courses designed to fill in major gaps in their knowledge of the great ideas which have shaped civilisation, in ways suited to their capacities.  The Contemporary English course in New South Wales, which promotes real enjoyment of literature and language in senior students whose background in English is weak, nicely illustrates how much can be done in a major discipline by creative course designers. ⁽²⁶⁾  Similarly solid and enjoyable courses of study could easily be set up in History, Biology, Computing, Art History, and the other core subject areas.

Although TAFE offers Year 11-12 Arts/Science coursework to students without a Year 12 credential, it relies heavily on an impersonal lecture format which is unsuited to many of them, particularly those with remedial needs in Language and Mathematics.  It is problems like these which need to be examined much more carefully.  Programs for the young unemployed which specialise in individual or small group instruction -- and, at the community level, such programs are becoming available for voluntary as well as paid workers -- can help young people to feel cared for at the same time that they provide them with essential imaginative, technical, and interpersonal skills. ⁽²⁷⁾

To raise the educational level of would-be school-leavers without academically strong backgrounds, to increase their general knowledge and ensure that they possess competencies which will help them to live decent lives and obtain gainful employment, we will need course designers with appropriate teaching backgrounds and a foundation of knowledge which can be readily applied to adult curriculum design.  For we will want to offer a range of courses containing material of substance which is manageable, interesting, and broadly illuminating.

SOME EXISTING PROGRAMS

Community training programs, such as ITeC's (Information and Technology Centres), which provide intensive practical instruction for the young unemployed in vocational areas with reasonably secure job prospects -- in electronics, computer programming, and the hospitality industry -- have received large grants from the Commonwealth, commerce, and industry, and considerable support from both major political parties. ⁽²⁸⁾  But for innumerable other senior pupils, little is available.  There are at present too few TAFE courses to accommodate all the young people eager to undertake them, and no school courses comparable to ITeC's, which prepare for the workplace those who can handle skilled or semi-skilled jobs.

Existing secondary courses and Year 12 credentials are geared either for students undertaking traditional tertiary study or, as in Victoria, for "all" students -- but without being sufficiently differentiated or solid to satisfy large numbers of job-seekers or their bosses.  Increasingly, employers, parents, and teachers are asking for more far-ranging, rigorous, imaginative, and practical offerings at the senior school level.  What is sought are programs capable of assisting the thousands of senior students who want and need forms of higher-level training which will encourage the individual and corporate responsibility, the determination, and the thoughtfulness required on the job.

In the UK, an innovative program for 16- to 19-year-olds which issues in a top credential -- an A-level -- is the Wessex Project, begun four years ago and involving local education authorities from five regions.  A bridge between secondary and tertiary education of the kind recommended by Finn, Wessex now offers 13 Science and Humanities courses for students with diverse vocational interests.  "Core" knowledge of subjects like Economics or Chemistry is supplied in a highly investigative program of study. ⁽²⁹⁾  The elective work required by each course is devised by teachers working with consultants from commerce, industry, and academia;  and students are carefully supervised by individual staff members as they complete research in areas of strong personal interest.

In Germany, too, opportunities for the post-compulsory years have attracted worldwide attention.  Apprentices divide their time between three days a week in-company training and two at a vocational school.  Teachers in the vocational schools are specially trained to provide general education courses and a highly specialised range of practical studies.  Committed partnerships among vocational schools, industry and commerce, and employers and unions exist;  and accreditation requirements for training companies are widely agreed upon by the regulating bodies involved.  Hence programs are highly successful.

With Year 11 and 12 retention rates in Australia rising, and demands for realistic coursework options for all our young people correspondingly increasing, it is clear that we must set in motion school programs for 15- to 19-year-olds as thoughtfully conceived as those successfully operating for them outside of school or in school/work partnerships here and abroad.

One significant Australian initiative, due for implementation in 1993, is the Industries Project in New South Wales.  It is an HSC course, involving schools, TAFE, and Industry, which provides wide options for pupils and offers both HSC and TAFE credentials.  The Retail Metals, Engineering, and Hospitality Industries will be involved.  Pilot training schemes such as the Training Credits initiative in Britain, which prepare young people for the work-force through selected vocational coursework, will also bear watching.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

It is obvious from the Carmichael Report's comments about the past dissatisfactions of our senior students ⁽³⁰⁾ that programs like Wessex, which are not "authoritarian" in structure, which give pupils ample opportunity to exercise responsibility and choice in handling core Liberal Arts subjects and electives, and which establish clear research links between the worlds of school and work, are needed in Australia.  What continues to be poorly understood is the degree to which the recurrent cry for learning "related to life" springs from boredom with "fill them with facts" lessons at one extreme, and vapid "get them into issues" lessons at the other.

The call for more "mature" colleges for pupils staying on for Years 11 and 12, and for programs of study which students can genuinely "own", ⁽³¹⁾ is at bottom a demand for work as stimulating as weekly Paideia seminars at the Goldblatt School in Chicago or the Launceston Preparatory School in Tasmania.  When students are thinking hard, and grappling with a body of existing knowledge, they know they are not just filling in time.  They don't have to ask for "relevance" because the meaning of the activity they're engaged in is so clear.

One reason there is so much talk in Australia about the "outcomes" of schooling, defined in terms of "key competencies" or skills, is that we haven't yet understood the difference between means and ends.  The emphasis in the Finn Report on "skills" rather than knowledge, and the concentration in the Carmichael Report on what 15- to 19-year-olds should be "doing" when they leave school, is similar to the absorption in "process" in syllabus guides for the more junior years of school.  It obscures the fact that skills -- what people can do -- are tools.  They are not goals.  The goals of education are understanding, wisdom, dominion.

Skills cannot be developed in a vacuum, or in an inadequately conceived course structure.  In too many classrooms, no idea worthy of being Tilled a "theory" ever surfaces;  and nothing resembling a "skill" is practised.  Discrete tasks are completed, but their connection with coherent, plainly stated, worthy aims is not made clear.  An ever-present danger of a focus on training, not educating, senior students is continuing curriculum fragmentation.  Only rich content, imparted in a variety of imaginative ways, guards against this danger.

Key competencies are generated by the habit of working on material with unmistakable substance.  Pupils who are given work to do which is clearly worth doing, and which demands a lot from them, begin to discover more than has been directly asked of them.  If their entire program of study offers a mental and practical challenge, they begin to see connections between diverse subject fields, and they apply investigative skills acquired in one area to other areas.  In educational settings with poorly thought-out programs of study this doesn't happen, no matter how many sensible-sounding tasks are set.  Nothing coheres.

Things fall apart.  There is no centre that can hold.

Students at every level of schooling are challenged and stimulated daily by having to solve real problems:  problems which fire the imagination because of the tough questions they pose.  When a series of related problems in an organised field of study is tackled systematically over a period of months, genuine learning takes place.  Despite the differences in technique and aptitude required by subjects individually, pupils begin to develop transferable habits of thought and practical skills -- e.g. care, patience, precision -- which serve them in every area of their program as well as in future employment.

Just as the process of confronting one tough philosophical question -- e.g. Does might make right? -- gives students more than answers to that one question, so the process of habitually finding solutions to problems in maths, history, or motor mechanics generates a range of practical skills and not simply the ability to complete one immediate task.  For years, our best teachers have known this;  but most of them have been busy in their own classrooms, and haven't been involved in designing an entire curriculum.

Ironically, the Finn and Carmichael Reports have revealed the out-of-touchness of key aspects of our programs for the compulsory years.  To achieve excellence for our 15- to 19-year-olds, we must avoid the curriculum errors detailed in Chapter 2 of this Report and emulate the practices long relied upon by classroom practitioners who know exactly what people like Adler, Sizer, and Haberman do:  that educational achievement depends on what is taught and how it is taught.  In The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis remarked that the task of the modern educator is "not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."  That observation remains profoundly true.

RECOMMENDATIONS  THE POST-COMPULSORY YEARS For the post-compulsory years, programs linking the worlds of school and work, offering appropriately distinct credentials, giving a wider choice to those headed for trades and the professions, and including suitable work in the Liberal Arts, should be developed in Australia, as they are already being successfully developed in England and Germany. The Finn Report recommendation for more diverse options for 15- to 19-year-olds, and firmer links between formal study and jobs, was a vital first step.  But Australia needs a much more coherent rationale undergirding plans for further education and training.  More serious thought must be given to the roles of general and specialised work in programs offered by TAFE and other vocational bodies, and to the question, "How can key competencies best be taught?"

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ENDNOTES

1.  National Report on Schooling in Australia 1990:  Statistical Annex, Australian Education Council.  Mike Richards, "Cutting Costs Without Cutting Quality:  Restructuring Tasmanian Education", Education Monitor, Autumn 1991.

2.  See Moe and Chubb's "Political Pollyannas", Teachers College Record, Fall 1991, reprinted in Network News & Views, December 1991.

3.  See The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 April 1992.  In fact, between 1988 and 1990 non-school staff (full-time equivalent) in NSW schools declined by 174.

4.  Private correspondence, 23 April 1992, in response to an enquiry on the matter.

5.  See, for example, the 39-page booklet Guidelines for the Establishment of School Councils, NSW Department of School Education, Winter 1990.

6.  A representative argument is put by Dr A.M. Badcock in "The Case Against Devolution", Education Monitor, Winter 1989.

7.  Entire programs of reform have been organised around the leadership role of the principal, working with teams of teachers and other professionals.  Perhaps the most successful, which are still very much in the news, are Theodore Sizer's and James P. Comer's, discussed later in this chapter.  Sizer's acclaimed book, Horace's Compromise, contains an important section on the role of the principal.

8.  See The National Report on Schooling in Australia, 1989.

9.  On some of the needlessly restrictive Commonwealth policies affecting the financial management of non-government schools in the late 1980s, see Susan Moore, "Government Policy and Independent Schools", Bulletin, No. 2, 1987.

10.  In overseas journals, considerable publicity has been given to schools without special course offerings but strong pastoral programs which have attracted disadvantaged children and provided successfully for them.  Schools in this category with we have direct familiarity can be found in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Texas, and Illinois (and of course many other places in the US and the UK).

11.  A fuller description of Mrs Williams' efforts can be found in The Wall Street Journal, 4 September 1990.

12.  See Diane Ravitch (now Assistant Secretary of Education in the US) on Köhn-Holweide in Network News & Views, January 1989, or Albert Shanker in American Educator, Spring 1988.  Susan Moore mentions their views in "Reforming School Structures", Education Monitor, Autumn 1990.

13.  For a more detailed discussion of James P. Comer's program and the Katherine Brennan school in particular, see Susan Moore, "Good Schools in Bad Neighbourhoods", Review, June-August 1989, reprinted in Network News & Views, October 1989.

14.  Details on proposed expansion can be found in Education Week, 11 December 1991.

15.  Of the dozens of articles written about the Essential Schools Coalition, the most recent one, which describes and provides an extract from Theodore Sizer's recent book on the subject, Horace's School:  Redesigning the American High School, is in Education Week, 11 December 1991.  Sizer -- former Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard and former Headmaster of the Phillips Academy in Andover -- is a sought-after speaker in the US and overseas.  He has taught for several years, on different occasions, in Australian schools.  Recently he received the 1991 McGraw Prize in Education for his outstanding contribution to the nation's schools.

16.  In 1989 Susan Moore saw the Essential Schools Coalition program in action in Providence, and she attended a seminar at Brown University with postgraduate students who were being trained to teach in them and in other schools fostering highly active learning and community.

17.  The key Paideia document is The Paideia Proposal, Macmillan, 1982.  Other materials, however, are also available.  They include a series of "Great Ideas" videos put out by the Encyclopedia Britannica, showing Mr Adler teaching a group of Year 11 students Socratically, a large paperback accompanying the series, and regular Bulletins about Paideia schools published by the main Paideia centre in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Drawing on a visit to Paideia schools in the United States, Susan Moore has written extensively about the program.  See, for instance, her "Paideia", Proceedings of the New South Wales Teachers' Guild, December, 1990.

18.  On the advantages of vertical grouping, the principal of the Queenwood School, NSW, Mrs Judith Wheeldon, is persuasive.  Her school has adopted the principle for Years 5 and 6 on a trial basis;  and despite some early bugs, it has been working successfully.

19.  The three large cognitive areas just named -- spatial, linear-sequential, and symbolic -- are the ones considered central by one of the few Australian schools with a special program for the learning-disabled, Cromehurst in Lindfield, New South Wales, a specially-funded state school.  Among the most common forms of disability in these areas are dyslexia (putting letters and numbers in the wrong order) and dysgraphia (very slow writing).  Recent research has shown that children who have these cognitive problems almost certainly suffer from impaired vision and hearing.  With such children, technology -- computers with good word-processing software, videos, movies, tapes -- is an obvious and successful means of by-passing neurological incapacity and facilitating learning.

20.  For a more detailed discussion of learning disability, see Susan Moore, "Children with Special Needs", a paper delivered at St Joseph's, Nudgee, Queensland, at an international conference on The Needs of Youth in the 21st Century, and published by the conference organisers in September 1991.

21.  Dr Harrison, a Tasmanian optometrist has been in close contact with Britain's Martin Turner, the Senior Educational Psychologist of the Dyslexia Institute in the UK whose research has attracted major international attention.  Harrison has been doing highly original and important research in Australia on the reading difficulties of learning-disabled and other pupils.  A teacher with whom he has been working closely, who has been helping him to develop computer programs for handling diagnosed problems in adolescents and adults, as well as in young children, is Mrs Jean Zollner.  A description of Dr Harrison's research is scheduled to appear in the June 1992 issue of SCORE.

22.  See further Moore, reference cited in footnote 20.

23.  A more detailed discussion of the Finn Report, Young People's Participation in Post-Compulsory Education and Training Report of the Australian Education Council Review Committee, can be found in Christopher Bantick, "Finn and Vocational Education", Education Monitor, Autumn 1992.

24.  Aiming Hitter was the first report in a series by the Business/Higher Education Round Table comprising the chief executive officers of 40 of Australia's largest companies and the vice-chancellors of 18 universities.  The Round Table's president, Eric Mayer, heads the group producing key competency profiles expected for release in July 1992.  Other business groups which recommended a broad, general education to Finn include the Australian Bankers' Association, the Australian Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Chamber of Manufacturers, the Australian Mining Industry Council, the Business Council of Australia, and the Confederation of Australian Industry.

25.  See the discussion of "Delivery:  Achieving the Targets", pp. 66-80 especially, in The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System [the Carmichael Report], Employment and Skills Formation Council, National Board of Employment, Education and Training, March 1992.

26.  Contemporary English was designed chiefly for recently arrived migrants with very little English who were completing the senior years of high school and revealing strong university potential;  but it is also suitable for pupils with weak backgrounds in language and literature.  Videos of recommended texts are included in the program of study;  and students are helped to master ordinary language tasks -- e.g., discussing the main ideas in standard editorials -- which incorporate reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  These tasks are useful for developing the "interpersonal" skills, as well as the language skills, included by Finn in his list of "key competencies".  A more detailed course description can be found in Susan Moore's "Contemporary English:  The Set Texts", Education Monitor, Winter 1990.

27.  In view of the widespread discussion now taking place about Finn's "key competency" list, this point needs underlining.  One immediate example of a group that relies on personal instruction for the youthfully unemployed is Workventures in Matraville, NSW.  Another, in the same geographical area, which does the same thing for voluntary workers, is the Randwick Community Service group whose office is in Maroubra.  Aspects of the Randwick program directly encourage young people to develop more fully their skills in personal relations.

28.  In Australia there are 13 ITeCs helping young people to acquire skills which lead to gainful employment.  Intensive courses which run from three to twenty weeks, taught hands-on by skilled staff, enable students who have left school before finishing Year 12, and other young people, to find decent jobs.  The ITeCs have been organised under a Skill Share program, Commonwealth funded, which has 370 branches around the country.  Through Skill Share, the youthfully unemployed can receive advice about jobs, help in acquiring greater confidence and self-esteem, and job training.

29.  For greater detail on Wessex, see Ken Gadd, "The Wessex Project", Education Monitor, Vol. 2 No. 4, Spring 1991.

30.  See especially pp. 68-74 of the Carmichael Report, op. cit.

31.  Ibid, p. 70.