I had the pleasure of attending the CEP Inc Rural Learning Summit recently where a number of people involved in rural education came together to share ideas and concerns about the future of education in rural Victoria.
As I participated in these presentations and discussions, I reflected on the many education leadership roles that I have had within rural communities. As part of this reflection I considered the challenges I faced over these years, the activities and initiatives that I gained a great deal from and considered what we needed to do for supporting our communities into the future.
In all my rural experiences there have always been challenges around recruitment of staff, providing the breadth of programs we would like to provide within our communities, and the variety of expectations that communities have of a leadership role within them. It is interesting that these challenges are still with us today.
As I reflected on how we dealt with these in the past I considered the three key values that seemed to be at the centre of our discussions and approaches - co-operation, sharing and partnerships.
I wondered to myself whether these values are as strong today as they were in my past experiences?
I considered those specific initiatives that I was involved in that provided quality learning opportunities for our communities including the provision of German to all primary and junior secondary students within our cluster through a LOTE shared specialist; the expansion of VCE units across the three secondary schools through telematics; the involvement of our middle years students in the extensive Saltwatch (and frogwatch, and waterwatch) programs with community organisations; and the professional and collegiate dialogue that existed within our cluster principal group. These initiatives were developed through rigorous discussion between education leaders, staff and the broader community all keen to ensure that rural young people were not disadvantged.
The allocation of resources to clusters of education organisations across sectors facilitated us as education leaders to meet and explore creative and innovative ideas and programs together – through the introduction of individual school budgets, these discussions are far less obvious to me today.
We were also provided the opportunities to meet at a state-wide level to share stories and experiences while exploring ways we could work together across the state to progress rural education – sadly this happens too rarely these days. These discussions, forums and conferences often resulted in creative and innovative programs for our students and staff as well as research projects focusing on rural education.
These local and state-wide opportunities generated a sense of excitement and and an air of possibility for the future – perhaps we need to learn from these experiences and explore their relevance for today and into the future.
As I was involved in the summit discussions, I was encouraged to hear people talk about the need for a stronger emphasis on collaboration at a local level; the need to share resources, expertise and ideas; and the building of strong partnerships with the wider community. And in a number of the discussions there was a desire to revisit the resourcing approach which encouraged clusters of education organisations to work collaboratively within rural communities.
Throughout the Rural Learning Summit I highly valued the opportunity to consider rural education within Victoria into the future, and the extremely valuable discussions I had with my colleagues. As a result, I am convinced that if we are going to ensure quality learning is provided within rural Victoria into the future, we need to reignite the values of partnerships, collaboration and sharing within our rural communities as well as at a state-wide level.
I was pleased to hear Minister Pike support these sentiments and I am looking forward to contributing to the consultation process on Victoria’s rural education future.
Anon.
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