An account of the visits/activities during the trip
The team visited 4 schools, namely Fitzroy High School and Boxhill High School (local government schools), Trinity College (a university preparatory college affiliated to the University of Melbourne), Geelong Grammar School’s Timbertop Campus (a private high school providing Grade 9 boarding school experience) and two industries, Victoria Fisheries Department’s Marine Discovery Centre and the Melbourne Museum. Our school visits included an explanation of how educational programs supported better teaching and learning, lesson observations and Q & A sessions with key personnel. The 2 industries we chose had close ties with education and we examined their core educational programs and their efforts to attain their organisational goals and mission. A number of the school and industry leaders also offered insights into their leadership and management practices.
Significant similarities and differences between Singapore & Melbourne, A-ha moments & key learning/reflection points.
Collaborating for curriculum success
Public Institutions like the Melbourne museum and the Victorian Fisheries Department’s Marine Discovery Centre work closely with the Victorian Department of Education to craft their education programs to meet the requirements of the Victorian curriculum based on the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS). For example, the Melbourne Museum’s education program alignment to VELS means that its learning packages can be taken, “plugged and played” into any Victorian school’s curriculum with peace of mind that the lessons are relevant and meet state education standards for content and skills. This allows for schools to utilise community resources like the museums more often to engage students while fulfilling curriculum. In Singapore, while there is collaboration between the Ministry of Education and external agencies both public and private, most of these education programs take the form of enrichment. In contrast, the Melbourne Museum aligns it learning packages and even its exhibits to support and align to the state curriculum for a wide variety of subjects like Science, Geography, Liberal Arts and History. A specific example would be a learning package for secondary school student to use a specific exhibition area to craft a video of their own that will capture the essence of the exhibitions teaching intent. These sort of problem-based projects heighten engagement and with the programme pegged to the VELS, schools can confidently include this learning package into their curriculum for the year. Similarly, at the Marine Discovery Centre, its Marine Biology lab work lessons which schools can sign up for are fully aligned to VELS. The learning point is that public institutions should collaborate more deeply with our curriculum designers at MOE to see how they can align their education and outreach efforts to schools to the National curriculum. This will change the perception that leaning journeys are purely for enrichment and cannot be use to teach the curriculum. Victoria is able to do this quite well because their state curriculum standards are laid out clearly for public access with progressive benchmarks from Primary to Secondary levels covering personal, social, interdisciplinary and disciplinary skills and content.
Skills development: Victorian schools consider physical, personal, social and interdisciplinary skills like thinking and research skills as subject areas within the curriculum and Victoria’s Department of Education gives it equal emphasis in its curriculum framework VELS. This was observed at schools like Fitzroy High where there is daily Personal Learning Advisory time and interdisciplinary skills such research skills, study skills and time management are taught within timetabled time. This is in contrast to Singapore where the emphasis on supportive skills for independent learning is lacking in explicit instruction. The Victoria Department of Education believes that by teaching its students the skills that enable them to construct their own knowledge and learn independently are as important as subject area content knowledge. Singapore schools spend a disproportionate amount of time teaching knowledge but we should instead be deliberately equipping our pupils with skills in communicate, collaboration, research and thinking skills and mapping out exactly in which parts of the curriculum they are being taught and the standards against which they should be assessed. Such benchmarking and awareness of integration is still absence in Singapore.
In Victorian schools like Fitzroy High, the approach to life skills training is supported by a level based approach to pastoral care where teachers at the different levels teach the same group of pupils over several years and become their students’ skills coaches designated as Personal Learning Advisors at Fitzroy. This designation has its roots in the VELS strand of Physical, Social and Personal Learning. Students are Fitzroy are coached in the areas such as time management and self-directed learning. Furthermore, schools like Fitzroy High has “learning toolbox” classes where pupils are taught interdisciplinary skills needed to support their learning via project work and self-directed learning. Most Singapore schools do not have timetabled time for teaching these skills explicitly and thus many Singapore students start doing their project work with a low level of skill in interdisciplinary skills. At our schools, we should have a month of preparatory lessons on a progressive nature over the years to explicitly teach our pupils the personal, social and interdisciplinary skills that will turn them into self-directed learners. The absence of such an explicit emphasis in our national curriculum is possible an impediment to our school’s ability to truly “Teach Less” to “Learn More”.
Quality pastoral care: In Victorian schools like Fitzroy and Geelong Grammar School, the Form teachers play a role beyond the administrative. For instance, Fitzroy High noted that from national data that the high school drop-out rate in junior high school was correlated with the weakening of the teacher-student relationship after Primary School. Hence, Fitzroy built its pastoral care programme to centre around strengthening the teacher-student-relationship (TSR) using a Personal Learning Advisor(PLA) system akin to the level master system advocated in Singapore’s SERI report. At Fitzroy High, form and subject teachers follow up by level for at least 2 years and every 20 students have a teacher as their PLA who meets them daily to for pastoral care to discuss goal setting and to attend to learning issues. The PLAs who are also subject teachers for that level are seated in staff rooms adjacent to their level classes. Seating teachers teaching the same level together also increases the camaraderie of the PLAs. We hope that in our own schools, we can change the mental model of seeing Form teachers as life coaches who spend their time equipping pupils with skills for personal mastery instead of being mainly class administrators.
Positive Education: We noted that Geelong Grammar School uses the Positive Education Programme conceptualised by American psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman to teach their pupils positive living and thinking and to engage their strengths to attain personal growth. Using the outdoor setting of its Timbertop campus, students at Geelong Grammar in Year 9 learn about their own strengths as outlined by the Values in Action Institute that cover 24 strengths such as kindness, gratitude and modesty clustered into 6 dimensions: Wisdom and knowledge, courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence. The considerable emphasis on character education at Geelong Grammar and Fitzroy High highlight how life skills that transmit values are explicitly interwoven and given pride of place in Victoria’s curriculum. The state curriculum through VELS plays a large role in ensuring that Victorian schools blend character education so well into what pupils learn and schools like Geelong Grammar go a step further to strengthen this with a theoretical basis to craft their own unique character education program.
Learning to be responsible: Geelong Grammar’s Year 9 students at Timbertop learn the values of being responsible and self-reliant with the school’s heavy emphasis on learning through outdoor activities like hiking, canoeing and skiing. In Singapore, such forms of education are done through our CCAs outdoor activities such as camps or Outward Bound School. However, the year-long outdoor education and boarding school system for Geelong Grammar’s Year 9 students is especially intensive and it provides a unique opportunity for students and teachers to bond through a full curriculum. The increased interaction time between students who live and study together creates the opportunity to teach and learn life skills. Cooperation, responsibility and unity are fostered through living together in their bunks as a group call a Unit. Unit life cannot be replicated in its entirety in Singapore, however, we can view the class or the CCA as “units” within our schools and through the activities of the class or CCA, a sense of togetherness are also being forged though it may not be the exact same experience as what Geelong’s students experience living and studying as a unit at Timbertop. The remoteness of the Timbertop campus and the way the curriculum is tailored to heighten the need to cooperate provides opportunities to teach values. For example, students are detailed to cut firewood for heating daily. If any student chooses not to carry out his duty, the entire unit will freeze at night as they will not have fuel for their heater. The consequence of irresponsible behaviour is therefore immediately felt and the ones who err automatically wise-up. Thus, if we want to teach Singapore pupils how to make responsible decisions, we should think of how to weave into our programs and curriculum for opportunities for our pupils to make decisions which if poorly made may have negative though not disastrous consequences for themselves and their peers to drive home the point of the need for them to act responsibly and cooperatively. Of course, such “learning opportunities” have to be properly facilitated and debriefed to maximise learning.
At Boxhill High School, students learn about responsibility by being empowered with the power to make decisions. The school’s student leaders are empowered to organise school assembly programs, initiate special interest clubs and even design the layout of the new school courtyard. Perhaps the lack of such authentic leadership opportunities in Singapore schools has made our adult workers into efficient doers but lacking in initiative and ideas, a view expressed by some quarters. Singapore schools should therefore give our pupils more opportunities to self-organise, lead and in the process make mistakes and learn from them so that they may develop resilience and be calculated risk-takers. These are competencies that are valued and needed in a globalised world. We do have such opportunities in Singapore school such as CCA and CIP activities which have a measure of student-initiation and organisation, however, as teachers we should focus on the life skill lessons the students need to pick up rather than on whether the outcome of their planning was perfect. Hence, we should focus on the process of learning instead of the product of any student-led initiative. Another interesting thing we noted at Timbertop was that all students, not only student leaders, have responsibilities to be of service to the school. For example, students are detailed daily for jobs like meals servers, wood choppers or compound cleaners. This fosters a sense of community and makes everyone feel responsible for one another’s welfare. In our schools, we already assign such duties at the class level but we could widen our students’ roles to impact school life daily. For example, throughout the year classes can be detailed to self-organise events that boost the quality of school life such as managing lunch time concerts or in keeping the school canteen spotless after every recess. This will help pupils develop a sense of ownership thereby raising school spirit.
Developing self-discipline: Schools such as Geelong Grammar School at Timbertop and Fitzroy High use restorative approaches to discipline their pupils. This often requires rule-breakers to reflect on their errors in order to modify their behaviour with reflective questions such as, “How do you think the person felt when you did that? What could you have done to avoid this? What support do you need to ensure that you do not do this again?” Such reflection help students reach self-realisation of the negative impact of their actions without coercion. Such realisation causes lasting behaviour modification. Singapore schools still employ more punitive measures such as detention and caning which serve as good deterrents but may not lead to lasting positive change since it is not internally directed. The increased use of restorative practices in Singapore would require a change in our mindsets to see discipline as a formative tool rather than as simply a deterrent or punishment. For example, pupils who litter can be made to reflect and to come up with suggestions on how they can prevent themselves from littering again. They can also be asked to come up with ideas to reduce littering in school and this would turn them from offender to champions of good conduct. Hence, Victoria’s schools like Geelong Grammar still mete out the consequences of school rule-breaking strictly. However, what we can learn from them is that the enforcement of school rules needs to be done concurrently with the effort to make students aware of that the school expects its pupils to enforce their own self-discipline and should a student break a rule, the offender must be made to realise his error through restorative practice and reflection and be given the life skills to ensure that he will not offend again.
Students’ Creed: Another useful idea to help students develop self-discipline and to take responsibility for their own actions is students’ creed used by Geelong High’s Timbertop campus. At Timbertop, all the Year 9 pupils will come up with 4 sentences that represent how they wish to lead the remainder of their school lives in pleasant, meaningful and engaged manner for the rest of their time at Geelong Grammar. This becomes the cohort’s creed to abide by. Similarly, at Singapore schools like CHIJ Toa Payoh, students also agreed on a students’ creed that will dictate the way students behave so that their actions honour the school and its rules. Unlike Geelong creed, CHIJ Toa Payoh’s creed is used as a tool to encourage self-discipline and for restorative practice rather than as a guide for engaging in the living the positive life. Nonetheless in both cases the words of the creed stem from the students themselves and are used as guidepost for thought and behaviour. Such involvement makes the students more likely to be committed to the creed’s words.
Leadership and Management ideas
A number of the school and industry leaders we met such as the managers at Melbourne Museum and the principal of Fitzroy High echoed the importance of clear communication in leadership. In small schools like Fitzroy High, the principal gets staff buy-in by personally explaining to staff “what we want to do, why we want to do it and why we do it like that”. In large Singapore schools, key personnel may not be able to explain all their decisions on a one-one basis but by distributing leadership as suggested by Barbara Cargill of Trinity College. She also suggested in during her discussion on change leadership with us to use staff who are early adopters of our change initiatives as advocates who can act as evangelists on our behalf.
Another leadership idea picked up was that of “Leading by Example”. Fitzroy High principal’s Pauline Rice teaches class and is a Personal Learning Advisor to 20 students. While this may change as the school expands, it shows that a leader must be willing to work with the “troops in the trenches” and this wins the respect of staff and gives school leaders an accurate feel of classroom issues that plague teachers. Another good practice we noted by Ms Rice was her school’s open observation system where colleagues can drop into one another’s class to observe lessons unannounced as part of professional development. Teachers may also visit the Principal’s lesson unannounced and this also wins her the respect from her staff.
Another leadership tip we picked up was from Trinity College’s Dean of International Programs Dr. Barbara Cargill who shared with us on how to lead change successfully. She advised us not to take resistance by staff to our proposed changes personally as resistance to change is natural. Barbara suggested that we take positive steps to make the planned change more appealing by explaining it in positive language and making clear of its benefits and the rationale to staff. She also suggested that we practise distributive leadership, as was mentioned earlier, by giving early change adopters co-leadership positions to deepen their commitment and to spread the “gospel” of change. For staff who are genuinely fearful of the change, Dr Cargill recommends that leaders act in a consultative manner by giving them opportunities to air their concerns. At the Melbourne Museum, for instance, their Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr J. Patrick Greene conducted numerous feedback sessions with his staff over coffee to get their buy-in for his initiatives and to gather feedback. These sessions allowed staff to engage their CEO in casual non-threatening environment. The objective was also to get staff to feel involved in the change process and for the CEO to clarify his position on issues so that the staff will have a greater sense of confidence in when the change takes place. However, for the minority of staff who continually reject change, Dr Cargill suggests the use of coercive techniques such as busying these “naysayers” with work, removing any audience they hope to play to and offering them the option to leave. The use of such approaches may not be culturally acceptable in our civil service context but they can perhaps serve as a weapon of last resort in order to get badly needed change through. We saw the use of such tactics at places like the Melbourne Museum, whose managers shared with us that some of their older staff who were unable to accept increased use of Information and Communication Technology to support its public education and outreach programs, were retired off. This leads to the idea shared by Dr Cargill that as long as 80% of the staff are with you, change should proceed. Hence, the lesson is that the organisation’s long-term mission takes precedence over individual needs, with the caveat that the organisation’s goals are worthy.
Data collection and analysis: At Fitzroy, student performance data is collected and analysed to help students perform better and to form the basis of discussions between student and Personal Learning Advisor (PLA) for goal setting and to discuss issues connected with learning. This is akin to what we do in Singapore schools when the Form Teacher speaks with their student about academic performance during pastoral care time, though the thoroughness of the collection, analysis and use of data may vary from school to school. In Singapore, we can learn to be more active in using student data to help our pupils set goals and be motivated to reach these goals in a more self-directed manner.
Data collected at Fitzroy also allows for the school to be differentiated in their emplacement of pupils and so they can move pupils to a more advanced class for subjects like Maths. Boxhill High is one of 36 secondary schools in Victoria delivering an advanced placement system called the SEAL programme for its high ability students. This is much like our streaming system in schools except that the decision to place a student at advanced level is made at the school. For example, half of Box Hill High School’s students are part of the SEAL programme where students may choose to enter tertiary education after only 5 years of study if they prove themselves to be advanced learners. Learning in core subjects such as Mathematics and Science is accelerated for these pupils in special classes but they are integrated with other students for elective subjects such as Art and Music. Singapore’s through-train programme also accelerates education by a year for their pupils but for the majority of Singapore schools, there is no such practice. Hence, MOE could give schools the autonomy to mount accelerated programmes for high potential Express stream students by allowing them to sit for their O levels in Secondary 3. There are of course other considerations such as staff and venue availability especially since our schools’ time tables are run according to classes rather than by modules.
Data in schools like Fitzroy High is also examined to look for trends and to understand at a deeper level what is happening to its pupils. For example, the school looks at data relations using data analysis approaches like cross-tabbing and correlation analysis across data sets such as demographic, school performance and survey response data. This gives the school insights and highlights potential concerns and trends that may impact the school. At the individual student level, such data analysis could allow the Personal Learning Advisors to understand, monitor and guide their charges more effectively.
Data-driven decision making is also a cornerstone of Melbourne Museum’s management approach. It collects data from customers such as visitation numbers and feedback from the parents, students and the general public about their visit experience and their present and future expectations of the museum. Such information through its thorough review process allows it to make informed decisions. At schools, we have a great deal of data in cockpit and our school’s data storage systems but we may not use it as effectively and as regularly to analyse trends and see relationships between data which could help as make more informed decisions. We should also be aware of how to collect data properly and what sort of data to collect. A core set of staff should be trained in both qualitative and quantitative research methods so that the school is able to collect and analyse data properly for more effective decisions. In the long-term, this will cut down wastage in resource allocation and utilisation and lead to an increase in productivity and effectiveness at schools.
Thinking out of the box: Melbourne Museum noted that in order to fulfil its mission of To educating more members of public about Victoria’s heritage, it could not confine itself to just attracting people to visit the Museum. It therefore decided to improve on it outreach programme by using a mix of high-technology and unorthodox old school methods. It made its website more engaging by using Web 2.0 tools to improve the website visitor experience so the net-savvy younger generation would be able to learn what the museum had to offer even if they did not physically visit it, thereby allowing the museum to still fulfil its mission. The museum also put replicas of historical sources into large kits that schools could loan out to teach topics like Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Hence, the Melbourne Museum literally brought the museum to the people and for rural schools in Victoria, who may never actually send many of their pupils to visit the Melbourne Museum, these kits brought the museum to them. Thus, the learning point here is that we should think out of the box in order to address issues and reach our objectives.
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