The Echo’s story on Mullum High School students building a rainforest river trail is a reminder of the creative ways to better engage students and prepare them for life.
Sadly our education system is dominated by standardised testing. Despite almost every educationalist dismissing standardised testing as a waste of time, the Australian system has followed the American system down the rabbit hole of a test obsessed regime.
Since then education minister Julia Gillard sold out education to News Limited by publishing NAPLAN league tables, schools now spend a considerable amount of time ‘teaching to the test’, i.e. cramming kids full of largely forgettable information to pass a test. And what do NAPLAN test results show us… nothing we didn’t already know.
Schools that do better in NAPLAN are in high socioeconomic areas, schools at the bottom of the table are in low socioeconomic areas. The only measure of a good education system is societal social mobility.
In contemporary Australia (in sharp contrast to Australia of the past), if you’re born into poverty you’ll probably stay there.
In Finland, if you’re born into poverty you have a good chance of moving up the socioeconomic ladder in your lifetime. The Scandinavian countries have the highest rate of social mobility in the world. Why? Their education systems are a level playing field that give every child an equal chance to excel. The Finnish system doesn’t test students in their early years, they don’t give out homework and profiting from education is illegal, which effectively rules out private schools.
Its curriculum is decided on by teachers and students, not politicians. Yet Finland is considered the best education system in the world. As this program at Mullum High School has shown, local schools know what’s best for their students. Politicians with their standardised tests… keep out!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
