Page 2453 - Week 07 - Thursday, 3 August 2017
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The ACT could consider trialling some of these innovative approaches as part of our existing services, such as child and family centres, playgroups and preschools, in line with the ACT government’s election commitment to pilot after-hours preschool programs. Interestingly, both Singapore and Finland said they had looked to Australia’s early years learning framework as the basis for their new play-based early childhood curriculum. This gives us confidence that what is being offered in the ACT’s quality early learning and care centres is seen to be world class.
The delegation also took note of the quality teaching and school leadership on display in Finland and Singapore. Initial teacher education emerged as a key theme. This was an outstanding strength in both countries, and it is clear that the rigour in their pre-service teacher education has a direct relationship with the high status of their teaching professions. The delegation heard about the process used at the University of Helsinki to select students into teacher education. They emphasised the belief that teachers need to be astute and active life-long learners with the capacity and inclination to analyse the ever-growing evidence base in education.
The Singapore pre-service approach includes an annual process whereby every teacher-in-training shares their action learning project with their peers and they receive feedback. Many of these action research projects are not education focused, but deep investigations into a key discipline, such as astrophysics. This approach is key to both the depth of understanding and the ongoing action-researched orientation of all Singaporean teachers, something that was observed firsthand at the Canberra Secondary School in Singapore.
Ongoing teacher development was also really impressive in Singapore. They foster an amazing professional learning community, and at the Canberra Secondary School they demonstrated how the duty statement of teachers includes contributing to the learning and development of their peers.
Professional learning communities are alive and thriving in many ACT schools and also have something similar to Singapore’s career ladder. I am confident that Canberra’s schools can use some of Singapore’s ideas to take this a bit further and provide the opportunity to empower our teachers and educators. In doing so, the status of the profession in our wider community will be enhanced.
The clear lesson from both Singapore and Finland is that raising the standing of the teaching profession has been an important part of the success of these systems. This requires respecting and empowering teachers to use professional judgement to meet the individual learning needs of each child. These observations made during the visit have been strongly reinforced by recently international comparative research into high performing school systems. Canberra’s schools are on the right track with what matters most.
In the short term I am keen to build on the many connections between Canberra and Singapore by facilitating teacher exchanges and I have already discussed this possibility with a ministerial counterpart in Singapore. Further to this, Lana Read will also present these learnings among her peers in Canberra and contribute to fostering greater school and teacher exchange into the future.
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