Speaking at the Australian School Improvement Summit last week, founder and CEO of Knowledge Society Elena Douglas told delegates the population’s ‘biggest driver of cognitive capacity’ comes down to the knowledge we learn at primary school.

“Reading, vocabulary, writing, grammar, numeracy, geography, history – all the rich knowledge that goes into the schools and creates the velcro for all future knowledge,” Douglas said.

“Building that when children are at their most open and keen is where it’s at.

“So those foundations, when stable, can be built upon in all future learning.

“It’s actually the primary school that does the heavy lifting in building a nation’s cognitive capacity.”

A former economist, Douglas criticised universities for promoting a ‘fantasy’ around their role in the nation’s prosperity.

“Don’t let the university industrial complex, whose faculties of education have, until now, done more damage to the cognitive capacity of the population and to the Australian school education system than anyone else, convince you that they make the biggest difference to the economy.

“That’s their fantasy. That is not economic fact,” Douglas said.

An expert in system-level change, Douglas said it’s what’s stored in the long-term memory of the population that is the greatest driver of economic growth.

“Economists have discovered this, but we as policymakers and as leaders haven’t interpreted [that understanding] and implemented it,” she told delegates.

Established to bring evidence-aligned school reform to the forefront of national conversation, the Summit brought together policymakers, educators, school system leaders, private industry players and the media to clarify the best path forward.

The cost of educational failure from our primary and secondary schools is immense, Douglas emphasised.

“When we, as a society, configure our educational resources and practices in schools, so as to allow a large number – as many as one in four young people – to leave school without complete functional literacy and numeracy, they suffer terrible consequences in life outcomes.

“It’s heartbreaking.”

Douglas said universities had “done more damage to the cognitive capacity of the population and to the Australian school education system than anyone else”. PHOTO: Ben Nicol

We know that the life trajectory of instructional casualties are more likely to involve the justice system, unemployment, crime and violence, compared to those who leave school with proficient levels of literacy and numeracy, Douglas added.

“It’s a litany of heartbreak for individuals and families.

“But also, in pure economic terms, it’s super costly.”

Given we cannot fully control how many children turn up to school or how many turn to crime or drugs, we must focus on what we can: what happens in our classrooms and in our student support services, Douglas said.

“We can ensure that the curriculum and teaching are evidence-aligned and continually improving.

“We can ensure that our children leave schools with a round globe of rich and fulfilling knowledge.”

And forming the seventh biggest workforce in the nation, the collective impact of teachers is “pivotal” to the health of our society, Douglas said.

“It’s a bigger workforce than agriculture, mining or construction.

“So, the productivity of that workforce: how much is achieved in educational terms, how much knowledge is learned, how much is stored in long-term memory, is a pivotal thing in the basic productivity of the nation.

“As the Shifting the Dial report from the Productivity Commission made clear, improving the productivity of non-market services is a national priority.”

Appealing to delegates to welcome in ‘genuine optimism’ about the science of learning shift underway in school systems across the country, Douglas noted “we all get to work together now and change this”.

“We get to turn this whole practice base in our education system around.

“We get to make evidence-based practice, best practice, common practice in every classroom and every postcode.

“Productivity is the result of industry-wide realignments of practice, from being laggards to being at the frontier of practice. That’s how all industries improve.

“It’s how health improves, agriculture improves, mining improves, software improves.

“It’s the same in education.”

What’s at stake here? Well, a better life, according to Douglas.

“A life nourished by stories, by ideas, by concepts, by knowledge, by history, literature, science, art, music, joy, meaning, purpose, happiness.

“The wrong approach to learning means less words are learnt by our children. And as Ludwig Wittgenstein said, ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my world’.”

The wrong approach to reading instruction and to curriculum means that less children experience the joy of reading, Douglas continued.

“They know less stories, they can make fewer distinctions, they can describe their emotions and life experiences less well, they are less-able reasonants, they make poorer decisions, they are less good at accurately calculating and measuring things, they’re less able to get the higher paying jobs dependent upon the mastery of mathematics, they have less satisfying relationships, they are less able to describe feelings and name them and self-regulate.”

With the wrong approach to curriculum, schools don’t function properly and teachers in the same year don’t teach the same thing, compounding student learning gaps, Douglas added.

“When we teach less knowledge, our students graduate with less creativity, they have fewer ideas and precedents to draw on.

“Less will thrive in higher education which requires the foundations to be very solid.”

Given our ‘innate need’ for stories to anchor our sense of belonging in the world, the fewer we know the more adrift we’ll be in our communities and to those around us, Douglas contended.  

“This is all that’s at stake in our decisions about curriculum and teaching. And this is why we have to make best practice, common practice,” she said.

Read more of our coverage on the Australian School Improvement Summit here, here and here.