Warren Peat: Holistic education recipe for success

Successful schools. There are lots of them. But perhaps that is the problem. The focus should not be on the schools but on the successful learners within them and what measures we use to determine that success.

Parents want the best for their children, often looking to provide opportunities they did not get themselves. They will go to considerable lengths to do so.

In our school we have many families who make sacrifices, often spending an entire second income to choose the best education that they can afford for their children.

When surveyed, our parents told us the most important reason for choosing our school was so we could develop their child's full potential. I suspect that is true of most parents and the aim of most schools.

Having spent most of my teaching career in state schools, I have the utmost respect for my colleagues and their boards of trustees who are required to lead complex organisations with impossibly short planning times, particularly with enrolments and, at critical times, without the necessary support of the government body that funds them.

Zoning is a hot topic. It comes into focus only when schools - or their learners - are seen to be underperforming and parents exercise their choice to send their child elsewhere.

Zoning, at best, is a clumsy instrument used to restrict parental choice, deny access to an education more suited to the learner - perhaps in a school other than their zoned one - and mask underperformance by directing enrolments to schools that have surplus capacity.

As a parent, I'm not left with the impression that the needs of the learner are a priority in that process. Schools that have a zone and still accept out-of-zone enrolments could be seen to be "protesting too much" when in-zone families leave the area and annulment of enrolment provisions are invoked.

People have a right to change their mind and live somewhere else. Legislation enacted to deny choice to both the individual and the school will always be subject to challenge.

Middle schools are in vogue at present. But middle schools, like intermediate schools, don't work in isolation. There is some sound research concerning schooling in the middle years, Year 7 to 10 in the modern era, Form 1 to 4 in the old language for most of us as parents.

The dislocation caused for so many learners by our present intermediate school model, particularly the huge variations in Year 9 entry levels from contributing schools, is a well-kept secret. Changing schools three times in three years at this age does not make good educational sense.

Middle schools work best when connected to primary schools (Years 1 to 6) as well as senior schools (Years 11 to 13) in the examination years; and although each school is autonomous in a physical sense, they share a pathway that develops the attitudes, values and strengths of the learner in a cohesive and connected way.

Middle schools are great for developing leadership in young people in their "forgotten years" as 13 and 14-year-olds.

So what is wrong with our boys? Not much from where I stand. Boys learn differently from girls. They mature at different times and at different rates.

They like to read different books, they interact with technology in quite different ways - for example, the gaming thing is bigger for boys, the texting thing for girls.

The debate rages on about whether single-sex or co-ed schools are better. The answer is that there are great examples of every type of school.

I suggest that we are asking the wrong question.

When you put the learner and their needs first, you would create a learning environment that lets boys be boys and girls be girls. They would read the books that turned them on to language, literature, comprehension and grammar. They would work in classroom environments where they didn't feel embarrassed because they weren't able to express themselves as clearly as the girl down the row.

Single-sex classes seem to make a whole lot of sense for these years, when boys don't talk to girls anyway and girls think boys are smelly. Then, as the tumultuous years of puberty begin to pass, why not encourage them to listen to one another's opinions, prepare them for their young adult years beyond school, just as their developmental rates are beginning to even out.

A few years ago our college took the opportunity to do things a little differently. We have a middle school and a senior school on the same campus. Middle-school students enjoy a single-sex learning environment and then enjoy the benefits of their senior years being co-ed.

Our boys are doing considerably better than many of the statistics that we now read about. So are our girls. They also go on to be very successful learners in their tertiary years and good citizens in their chosen careers, a true measure of the success for any school.

Why is that? Some of their success can be attributed to good structures. A lot of it can be attributed to dedicated teachers who ensure our boys and girls are engaged in their learning, creating rich experiences for them that interest and motivate them.

A lot of it comes from parents who, having made the financial investment, are also prepared to make the emotional investment by taking an interest in their children's learning, not leaving their growing solely as the responsibility of the school.

Successful young people also need to play sport, as an individual or in a team, and to express themselves in the performing arts.

They need values and the right people to model those values for them. They need permission to find out who God is.

We call it educating the whole person and there is clear evidence that the recipe is the successful one that many parents are looking for.

As Norman La Rocque wrote on this page, the choice belongs to the rich. But it isn't really about money. Resources, or the lack of them, can too easily be used as an excuse.

The model of education that we have adopted could be available at any school. Sadly, many parents must pay twice for the quality we all deserve.

* Warren Peat is executive head of Saint Kentigern College.