Let us now, after those critiques of the points system and 3rd Level Institutions, have a look at the Mission Statement of the Department of Education.
(The sentences below summarise the main points in various statements that change from time to time).
An education and training system that provides learners with knowledge and skills they need to participate fully in society and the economy.
Delivery of a high quality education and training experience for everyone.
Improve accountability for educational outcomes across the system that welcomes and meaningfully includes learners with disabilities and special educational needs, learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities, and those with language, cultural, and social differences.
In my experience, even though the Department of Education talks about learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and communities, the system structures itself to exclude them.
For example, there has been no real attempt to include the educational methods of the Travelling Community (children’s active participation rather than explicit teaching/learning that is so dominant in the settled community) into the education of their children.
As for a bit of two-way knowledge flow and learning something from the traditional methods of the Travelling Community – that would be very rare!
Mainstream education focuses almost exclusively on preparation for a child to grow into an adult who will be useful to a corporate-dominated capitalist economy. While, (as I say in a previous post), it is important to prepare children for the real world of work, the inclination towards the corporate world is far too powerful to be helpful to a child, particularly a child who is struggling.
Also, rather than accept that all human living is interconnected, (just like all of nature), the Pillars try and compartmentalise education into separate, certain entities.
Alternatively, the holistic approach would be that children would be trusted to be who they are, and reach their full potential in areas that they are passionate about, all the time encouraging self-assessment with critical support in an active, meaningful, creative learning environment.
As I previously stated the Pillars generally favour reductionist rather than holistic thinking, and they try to keep subjective experience at a distance.
Self-assessment, which I will mention later, (and which focuses on subjective experience) is a lot more meaningful in the context of overall education if we are interested in what we are doing, have a stake in being better at it and have a sense of belonging in the entity that is delivering the education.
Self-assessment also allows us to shed the values of the corporate world and the game-playing of the Pillars.
The influence of corporate values in the realm of education is so strong that despite the educational theories posited by Kolb, Dewey and many more researchers, not to mention the child development research done by Piaget, Bowlby and a host of others, the harsh, competitive points system still prevails.
Unfortunately, if educational methods are strongly influenced by capitalistic needs for a docile workforce, self-assessment, and its companion, honesty will never be popular.