We spend $5 billion a year on our Ministry of Education and yet we cannot solve the simplest of problems, making our education system a learning process with individual assessment-driven goals over a ten-year period. Instead we marginalise our children's potential and force them all through a "one size must fit all" system that stresses and scars them at a very young age for no other reason than this is what has been done before.
Every year on this (SEA) day I say the same thing–make all schools ten-year schools, grade all children over the course of their academic careers on a grade point average that can monitor their improvement against their own average annually, and be open-minded enough to diversify the system to include those who may be less academically but more artistic or otherwise inclined.
It is no shame to come out of the school system with a degree in plumbing; we need plumbers as much as we need doctors and definitely more than we need lawyers.If those employed to lead cannot lead, and those given the responsibility to steer cannot steer, then perhaps the problem is not with the system as much as it is those who have been put to manage it.
We need people with vision, compassion and understanding to lead this most important of ministries; people who understand that if what we have now is not working then we are duty-bound to try something that can. Our children's future depend on it.
Phillip Edward Alexander,
via e-mail
