School Choice - What Makes a Good School?

"It is students' engagement in learning that matters - not superficial results on a website" - Chris Bonnor

In the article 'Good Schools Give a Hoot', the central topic is what makes schools "good" and in turn who should they be "good" for: students? parents? or the nation? This is an important current educational issue as parents are becoming very particular about the school they would like to send their children to, and at the same time, many schools are becoming selective and only demanding students that are gifted and talented.

I think that to define a "good school" with the absence of any faults would be extremely difficult. However, some of the main aspects of a good school should include: 
1. Good and productive teachers that know their students and their subject content, who are themselves learners and work alongside colleagues to improve practice across the school.
2. A positive teaching environment where all students are surrounded by positive relationships, and are thus encouraged to participate in all classroom activities.
3. The promotion of tolerance and acceptance of culture, heritage, and religion among staff and students, as well as anti-bullying and discrimination instructions.
4. The development of an intellectual quality that produces deep understanding of concepts, creative, communicative, and critical skills and ideas.

Chris Bonnor states that: "most schools teach the same centralised curriculum with similarly trained teachers catering for mainstream students...where effective teaching and authentic learning are nurtured and constantly developed to help students achieve". Theoretically, because of this, he argues that any school has the ability to be a good school, and I support this argument completely however, despite whether the school is "good" or not, what really concerns parents is the reputation of the school. Humans' primitive demand is to always want the best quality of anything and this idea is regurgitated when parents school hunt for the best schools to send their children to. 

In 'Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia', Jane Kenway makes a valid point as she states: "For students, a school's bad reputation often centres on drugs, alcohol, sexuality (girls' short skirts, and juvenile pregnancies), trouble makers, fighting and knives... But reputation is also intimately connected with the suburb and its associated habits and styles of consumption, as those outside this suburb imply that suburbs have 'sign value'". This is a valid argument that is also reflected in the way that parents depict schools, however parents tend to rely on reputation through research and they look for aspects such as the academic levels of student achievement, the school's sense of discipline, test results that show where the school sits in relation to other schools, and the kind of children that are already enrolled at the school. All this information can be extracted from the MySchool website, but as Kenway also argues: "The talk among parents and particularly students; the rumours and gossip; the exaggerations; and the innuendo are what makes and breaks the reputation of the school". 

Chris Bonnor argues that in the process of school hunting by relying on reputation and results: "we equate the achievement of students with the achievement of their school - and cite each school's alleged good or bad features as the root cause of success or failure". The problem with this is that a majority of the school achievement is created not by the school, but in the homes and neighbourhoods of the enrolled students. This is one of the reasons as to why many schools are choosing to be more selective of the students that they admit, and are only selecting gifted and talented students that will create a positive image for the school.

All in all, in relation to what makes a good school and how parents should decide, Chris Bonnor states that: "The challenge for parents is to discover the real depth of student engagement and learning. In the process they have to reserve judgment about such things as raw test scores, student ranks, neat and full workbooks, docile students in neat rows and hours of homework". 

I completely agree with this statement as I feel that parents should not spend their time researching the test results and overall reputation of a school to solely use that information to determine whether the school is right for their children. Instead, parents should be researching aspects such as whether the school has suitable facilities, productive and engaged teachers, a positive learning environment with positive relationships between peers and teachers, the promotion and development of creative and critical skills, tolerance and equality among students, what the motto, ideals and goals of the school are and in turn what the school attempts to achieve for its students. These are just a few aspects that I feel provide a decent foundation for a "good" school. 


References:

Chris Bonnor, (2012). 'Good Schools Give a Hoot'. [Online Article] retrieved from the Sydney Morning Herald Website: 
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/good-schools-give-a-hoot-20120715-223zb.html

Jane Kenway, (1998). 'Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia'. Chapter 5: Consuming children? Public education as a market commodity. pp. 52-54.

Selective Schools and Multiculturalism - Personal Reflection

In this blog I'm going to talk about my own personal experiences of culture and identity at my high school and refer to: 'Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism', by Christina Ho, and a news article I found on the Sydney Morning Herald website called: 'Ethnicity at Selective Schools Provoke Fierce Debate', by Anna Patty.

First of all, I went to Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, and this is a selective school located in the inner west suburb of Newtown. Most students wishing to attend the school have to audition for either dance, drama or music, however the students that live in close proximity to the school, are accepted without having to go through an audition process. Because of the school's high reputation for the performing arts, it attracts students from all over New South Wales that are interested in studying dance, drama, and music in their school curriculum. 

For me, attending this school was a great experience and it has definitely contributed into shaping the person I am today, for example: who my friends are, my taste in fashion, and the genres of music that I like to listen to. Everyday, a lot of my friends traveled from all over Sydney, places such as the Blue Mountains, Gosford, Cronulla, Parramatta, and East Hills, to come to school. Because 90% of the students at the school travel from all over Sydney, the school is highly multicultural and I found that everyone was generally very accepting towards other people's background, culture and sexual orientation. Everyone brought a little bit of culture in to the school, and that is what made the school interesting and the fact that we were all in a performing arts environment with other people that actually wanted to be there everyday. 

In 'Respecting the Presence of Others', Christina Ho stated that: “Schools can be ideal micropublics as they throw together people from diverse backgrounds, compelling them to engage in the everyday negotiations of sharing a social space”. I agree with this statement because my school was very multicultural, and having come from a catholic primary school which was not so multicultural and was mostly populated with students (like myself), that were from a Lebanese background, Newtown was completely different because there I was one of three other students of Lebanese background and I was constantly surrounded by people from different cultures and backgrounds, and even though we were all different, we still made friends, found things to talk about, and laugh and joke about. At the same time I felt that we all gave each other insight into our different cultures through things like our discussions on religion, and sharing our foods at lunch time. These are examples of cross-cultural friendships that Christina Ho uses in her work to display the ways that cultures can become shared and transcended through engagement at schools.

In 'Ethnicity at Selective Schools Provoke Fierce Debate', the first argument made is that: "The selective school system in NSW has polarised students and fuelled fierce competition which has disenfranchised already-disadvantaged students and some migrant groups". In some cases, this statement can be applicable, primarily for students from migrant families that do not speak english well and thus find it difficult to be admitted into selective schools. However, some selective high schools such as James Ruse, Baulkham Hills and Fort Street, that select students based on intelligence, do have large ethnic populations. Christina Ho also emphasizes that not all schools are ideal platforms for cross-cultural engagement, and this primarily depends on the school type: whether it is religious, private or public, as well as the school’s location: the suburb that the school is situated in and if there is a dominant cultural group in that suburb. She argues that: "While many public schools may serve as good candidates for everyday multiculturalism, some elite private schools are nothing less than pockets of cultural and socioeconomic exclusivity”.

From my experiences at high school, I feel that interests and similarities are what bring people together, and thus selective schools give the opportunity for people from different parts of Sydney to come together and study in an environment along with other people who have similar interests. In relation to selective schools, Anna Patty also states in her article that we need to: "Re-orientate this system to produce not just high-scoring kids, but well-balanced kids that have learnt to think critically, independently, and creatively, who make good use of their talents". The motto of my school is: Equality, Creativity and Excellence, and I feel that Newtown really does enforce its students to think critically, independently, and creatively, as well as encourage them to make good use of their talents. However, I do feel that Anna Patty makes a realistic point, in that this is what the whole education system should be doing for the younger generation of schooling instead of: "Pandering to the mentality of 'get ahead, get a skill, get a degree, get a good job'".

This is a link to my school's website: http://web1.newtown-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/

References:

Patty, Anna. (2010): 'Ethnicity at Selective Schools Provoke Fierce Debate', [Online Article] from:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/ethnicity-at-selective-schools-provokes-fierce-debate-20100913-159da.html

Ho, Christina. (2011). ‘Respecting the Presence of Others: School Micropublics and Everyday Multiculturalism’ in Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 603-619.

Newtown High School of the Performing Arts: http://web1.newtown-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/