8.1 The Senate, when referring the question of the education of gifted and talented children to the Committee, asked that the Committee consider two matters concerned with excellence in education. They are:
Despite the Committee's attempts to obtain date about these two issues, little evidence was submitted. The evidence that was submitted generally reflected the opinions of witnesses. This was to be expected, given the different connotations the word 'excellence' has for different people and the lack of any objective definition of 'excellence'.
8.2 The United States' report, A Nation At Risk, published in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, adopted three different meanings of 'excellence':
At the level of the individual learner, it means performing on the boundary of individual ability in ways that test and push back personal limits, in school and in the workplace. Excellence characterises a school or college that sets high expectations and goals for all learners, then tries in every way possible to help students reach them. Excellence characterises a society that has adopted these policies, for it will then be prepared through the education and skill of its people to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Our nation's people and its schools and colleges must be committed to achieving excellence in all these senses.1
8.3 The authors of a recent discussion paper on the role of secondary education in Australia which was prepared for the CSC, Making The Future, observed that, in the past, Australians have taken a narrow view of excellence.2 According to the authors 'An excellent schooling has been defined traditionally as competence in narrow range of knowledge, and limited modes of expression of that knowledge'.3 The National Commission's definition of 'excellence' for the individual learner referred to in paragraph 8.2, now seems to be widely accepted in Australia. Mr Tidswell, a member of the Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of New South Wales, remarked that 'the extent to which [students] approach whatever their individual maximums are is the connotation that we are giving to the word excellence'.4 The Committee also has adopted as its definition of 'excellence' those used by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
8.4 The Commonwealth Schools Commission informed the Committee that 'the pursuit of excellence in education is a fundamental objective of all government and non-government schools and education authorities throughout Australia'.5 The Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of New South Wales asserted 'it is the fundamental business of all government schools to identify and foster the talents of their students'6 and Mr Creese, representing the National Council of Independent Schools, observed that 'in a school one is aiming for excellence for all one's pupils'.7
8.5 Not all schools, however, enunciate that they have the objective of pursuing excellence. The Victorian Government remarked that few public schools included the phrase 'pursuit of excellence' in their stated aims. That Government's representative suggested, however, that the absence of those words did not imply that Victorian schools were not committed to providing a high quality education for their young people.8
8.6 All witnesses who addressed the issue of excellence in education supported the notion that schools should pursue excellence. Not all of these witnesses, however, considered that Australian schools were pursuing excellence. Dr Bartak, Senior Lecturer in Education of Monash University, claimed that 'the pursuit of excellence (at least through explicit programs for talent) would best be described as sporadic'.9 Mr Hudson, Co-ordinator of the Talented Children Program, Deakin University, declared that 'schools in general are not comfortable these days with the pursuit of excellence or the encouragement of the talented child'.10 Mr Lethbridge, President of the Gifted and Talented Children's Association (Western Australia), asserted that schools 'are pursuing mediocrity'.11
8.7 Other submissions and evidence received from parents of gifted children and from other members of the public show that there is a widespread perception that most schools are not interested in excellence. An example of the comments made by the public were those of Mr G. Brisbane of Figtree, New South Wales. He observed:
In practice many schools may profess the objective of academic excellence but in reality pursue the objective of exacting the maximum potential from the average student.12
The National Council of Independent Schools observed that 'The vast majority of schools have as a stated objective the pursuit of excellence, but the realisation of this often falls short of the ideal'.13
8.8 It seems that some schools achieve more successful outcomes than others even when similar physical resources are allocated to the schools. In Chapter 6, the Committee referred to a study of retention rates in Tasmanian secondary schools. In that study Dr J. Abbott-Chapman and her colleagues found that some government schools, classified as deprived on a number of counts, managed to retain a disproportionate number of talented students per head of population and to send more on to higher education than other government schools with similar characteristics.14 The authors of the study commented that school principals have 'a tremendous influence . . . on setting the climate of the school . . . and the encouragement and morale of teachers'.15 Mr Mercer, a colleague of Dr Abbott-Chapman informed the Committee that there are two features of the schools which were successful in producing high levels of intellectual achievement amongst their students. He remarked:
One is the climate of the school . . . It is the philosophy that the school has, whether it embraces excellence in all its facets - not just intellectual excellence but excellence per se - and how it goes about developing programs which lead to the development of excellence in all its students. There are many facets. The other thing is looking at individual teachers . . . at the qualities of teachers which seem to be important and which seem to contribute to the whole process of developing students and their abilities.l6
8.9 If the 'pursuit of excellence' implies that all children should be encouraged to achieve to their potential, only some Australian schools are pursuing excellence. The Committee has discussed in Chapter 4 of this report the provisions made in Australia for the education of gifted children. Although there are some interesting and effective programs for these children, it is clear that most schools do not cater for them. In effect, those schools which are ignoring the educational needs of a proportion of their students cannot claim to be pursuing excellence.
8.10 As mentioned in paragraph 8.1, the Committee was asked to report on whether the pursuit of excellence in mainstream education is consistent with providing for the educational needs of all children.
8.11 Several major reports on education in Australia, and elsewhere, have tried to answer the question. The National Commission on Excellence in Education in the United States of America suggested that a commitment to excellence would not be 'at the expense of a strong public commitment to the equitable treatment of our diverse population'.17 The National Commission observed:
Our goal must be to develop the talents of all to their fullest. Attaining that goal requires that we expect and assist all students to work to the limits of their capabilities. We should expect schools to have genuinely high standards rather than minimum ones, and parents to support and encourage their children to make the most of their talents and abilities.18
8.12 A recent Australian report by the Quality of Education Review Committee19 also considered whether the pursuit of excellence was compatible with the pursuit of equality. That Committee suggested that the pursuit of levels of absolute excellence and the pursuit of greater equality are not, in themselves, mutually exclusive objectives. In the words of the report, 'It is not a question of seeking either one or the other: we can pursue both.'20 The report concluded, however that because resources are finite, there may have to be trade-offs at the margin between equality and excellence.21
8.13 A similar observation was made more simply and more directly by Mrs Murphy, Educational psychologist with the Victorian Ministry of Education. She remarked:
The pursuit of excellence in mainstream education is certainly hampered by the fact that there are many more children of average ability or below average ability in the group than there are gifted; and if there is any extra teaching time available any reasonable teacher would spend that time with the under-achievers rather than the high achievers.22
Mrs Murphy argued that for this reason it is necessary to make special provision for gifted children. She observed that her experience with the University High School acceleration program had shown that gifted children need direct teaching and that 'new skills and concepts still have to be taught.'23
8.14 It seems obvious that if a teacher of a class which consists of children of with (sic) a wide range of abilities finds it necessary to concentrate on children at the lower end of the range, children who are above average will receive little attention. Moreover, it is not reasonable to expect a teacher to be able to deal with students with really outstanding gifts. The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers observed:
The lone mathematically-gifted child in the standard Australian classroom tends to become self-isolating by extremely rapid progress (usually beyond the capacity even of the teacher) . . . the kind of expertise needed to cope here is not, we believe, within the compass even of good teachers, nor should it an expectation of them.24
8.15 The Committee considers that ideally the pursuit of excellence in mainstream education is consistent with providing for the educational needs of most children, including above-average children. This conclusion presumes that teachers will cater for individual differences and that suitable programs are available for above-average children. Nevertheless, there will remain some children with outstanding gifts whose educational needs will not be able to be met in the normal class. If these children remain in mainstream education, they will require special treatment such as acceleration, early entry to tertiary education or tutoring by mentors. For the pursuit of excellence to be consistent with mainstream education, special treatment must be afforded to the gifted.
