Education Ambassadors | Tasmania

Education Ambassadors is a voluntary, community based organization encouraging all young people in Tasmania to dream big and stay at school to get the skills and knowledge to realize their dreams. The Ambassadors are community leaders of all kinds who stand up for the importance of education for all our young people, in all communities, and for the State as a whole. We are committed to encouraging evidence-informed, open, respectful, and non-partisan discussion of the current challenges facing education in the State.

For personal as well as other reasons I have wound up the Education Ambassadors project. I am grateful for the support of those who were willing to be patrons of the organisation, and ambassadors, especially for their championing the simple idea that all of Tasmania’s young people should have access to a full 12 years of education.

I will continue to argue the case for reforming Tasmania’s education system, and I would welcome the continued support of all who took part in Education Ambassadors, but I accept that even if just by association with me, the Patrons and Ambassadors might unwillingly be engaged in the controversy that attends the most obviously needed reform of senior secondary education in our state – the end of the separate high school and college system.

Accordingly I have amended this site to remove the names of the Patrons and the Ambassadors, while leaving the contributions made by the persons whose thoughts you may read below. Any views expressed on this site in the future, as in the past, should be taken to be the views of the authors alone, and not be attributed to others.

Michael Rowan

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Latrobe: Council/school connections develop leadership all round

June 30, 2014 By Mike Gaffney

While it is always a pleasure for me to visit each of the schools in my Mayoral capacity, I wanted to broaden and deepen the relationship between the Council and our schools beyond the annual round of special days and celebrations.

Education has been an important focus of the work of Councillors in the Latrobe Municipality for many years.  Not surprising as we have five primary schools, one high School and one independent (K-12), a total of seven schools.

So ten years ago I introduced an initiative which has been well received by our schools and has created a positive relationship between the whole Council and the school communities. This initiative also reinforces that the leadership strength in any community (be it school, sporting club, service group, Council etc) is most effective if the leadership responsibility is spread across or carried by a number of individuals.

Now, each school has its own Councillor, who receives information from the school, presents prizes and performs other ceremonial duties, and meets with students and staff to gain a deeper understanding of the real life of the school. I am the Council conduit to Latrobe High School, and six other Councillors have connected with each of one of the other schools in our municipality.

As a teacher I have been fortunate to meet and work with many impressive young people and as Mayor, I then was in a position to highlight the talents of those students. Ten years ago I introduced a regular student-focused item to the weekly Latrobe page in the The Advocate, profiling an individual student, including a photo. Too often articles in the media about young people are not positive but a weekly segment highlighting student profiles over time gives a great picture of the young talent in our municipality, and gives me confidence that our future will be in good hands.

This regular weekly item is now headlined as “Emerging Leader” – because that is what our young people are! In case you haven’t spotted it, you’ll find it in the bottom left hand corner of the weekly Tuesday Latrobe page.  The students now look for it and this initiative has morphed into a really positive activity connecting schools and communities in an enduring way. It is of note that this initiative has also been picked up by other Council areas in Tuesday’s Advocate as well.

In my role as Member of the Legislative Council for Mersey, I am the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Friends of Education, Tasmania, which meets at Parliament House twice a year. This enables all Parliamentarians to receive information, ask questions and discuss current issues with Members of the Tasmanian Principals Association.

As MLC I also sign and forward over 300 letters a year to students from the 17 schools in the Mersey electorate. I read all of the school newsletters that are forwarded to my office.  My Executive Assistant Bonnie and I identify via the newsletters those students who have achieved in diverse and wide-ranging arenas – e.g.: leadership, music and drama eisteddfods, academic work, art, sport, community involvement etc., and I take great pleasure in writing to congratulate each of them. Students nowadays rarely receive “mail” and I have received positive feedback from recipients, parents and even grandparents about the letters. Many students file that letter of recognition and congratulation in their personal file.

As both the Mayor of Latrobe and MLC for Mersey, I’ve been able to put into practice my firm beliefs that our schools are most successful when they are actively supported by the community, and that one of the most important roles of community leaders is to be powerful champions for our schools. Community based learning is definitely a two way relationship and a strategy of engagement which I am passionate about.

As a teacher for 28 years, I am also very supportive of education in this State and in favour of all students completing year 12. But I am also wary of a “one size fits all solution” to the problem of increasing our rate of year 12 completions. We need to be aware that each community in Tasmania will have its own needs and aspirations for schooling, and each community will bring a different set of histories, relationships, skills, hopes and dreams to our shared goal of supporting young people to get the best schooling Tasmania can provide.

Close school/community partnerships, such as is fostered in Latrobe and the Mersey electorate, will provide an environment to encourage the most effective and sustainable models for the future of educational provision in our region.  Let’s all get involved and make that outcome a reality!

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About Mike Gaffney

About Education Ambassadors

Education Ambassadors are community leaders who stand up for the importance of education for all our young people, in all communities, and for the State as a whole. We are committed to encouraging evidence-informed, open, respectful, and non-partisan discussion of the current challenges facing education in the State. We encourage all young people in Tasmania to dream big and stay at school to get the skills and knowledge to realize their dreams. And we will be successful when many more students complete their year 12 certificate, and go on to do the thousand different things that will shape a better future for Tasmania.

Did you know?

  • Eulogy for Eleanor Mary Ramsay – Eleanor led a wonderful life, full of achievement. Here is her story as I know it.
  • Eleanor Mary Ramsay scholarship – A scholarship has been established to honour and continue Eleanor’s work.
  • Response to ACER Review of education 9 to 12 – We look at the Review in detail and find some interesting new data, many old confusions, and a few valuable suggestions.
  • Education, productivity and economic performance: Tasmania, then, now and tomorrow – The 29th John West Memorial Lecture, by Saul Eslake. Just as good as you would expect.
  • Using MySchool to benchmark senior secondary schooling in Tasmania – The paper explains in detail the data we use to compare Tasmanian schools and colleges with similar schools in other states in relation to NAPLAN and Year 12 attainment, shows the comparisons in graphs, and considers possible explanations of the results.
  • Benchmarks For Year 12 Research Paper – Data set for benchmarking Tasmanian schools’ year 9 NAPLAN and senior secondary certificate attainment rates against similar schools in other states. Corrections will be welcomed. Please email contact@educationambassadors.org.au
  • Senior Secondary Certificate requirements in all states – TCE, VCE, HCE, etc: what’s the difference?
  • What did happen after the high school leavers dinner? – What can we learn from the year 12 graduation rates of Tasmanian high schools?
  • Will Losing Pathway Planners Take us Forward? – The State budget cut the Pathway Planners. Is this about dollars, or (good) sense? Garry Bailey looks for evidence the new plan will work and finds it lacking.
  • Tasmanian Colleges: fit for purpose? – Until year 10 Tasmanian students are doing about as well as similar students in similar schools in the other states. What is going wrong after that?
  • A Note on Tasmanian Retention and Attainment – How many young Tasmanians are completing secondary school?
  • Tasmanian Education Today: digging around in the data – We review the latest data from NAPLAN and PISA tests, and show that Tasmanian students are doing about as well as their inter-state counterparts. Until we get beyond year 10, then big issues emerge that we must deal with to do justice to our kids’ ability
  • Learning to Change Tasmania – Tasmanian education in a national and international context. What are our options for change?
  • Stanley School turns 100

Useful Links

  • 26TEN
  • Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
  • Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA)
  • Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
  • TasLearn
  • Tasmanian Qualifications Authority
  • The Tasmanian Department of Education

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