How would you know, Keagan?

Based on a single article that I’ve decided is somehow of the utmost relevance, would it be fair of me to conclude that Keagan Elder is the worst journalist in the country?

Seems a little unfair based on such limited evidence ... no? Truth be told, it is unfair. Frightfully so.

I don’t know Keagan Elder. In fact, I’d never heard of Keagan Elder until I was alerted to his article in the Townsville Bulletin intended to shame several Townsville schools as being the worst in the state due to suspension rates. 

The brunt of Elder’s scorn is directed at Weir State School. I’m as equally ignorant of this school’s work as I am of Elder’s, but I do know a few things about school transformation that Elder has chosen to ignore in his narrow, blameful diatribe

I know this because I’ve been the Principal of a low socio-economic school and I’ve been charged with turning it around for the vulnerable students and families it serves.

I’ve lived with high rates of staff turnover, making consistency of practice and constancy of approach, a daily grind. I’ve endured being seen across an entire jurisdiction as a “gateway school” where inexperienced or struggling teachers work before they can get a job in a school where the challenges aren’t so laden with trauma, poverty, low wellbeing and the brutal sting of mental health challenges.

And I know that things often get worse before they get better.

It’s an old, simple and true maxim that the best educators are firm and fair. They’re not one or the other. And when a Principal decides that the firmness is missing and acts on this, the change is often resisted by those that Principal leads. 

This can result in an increase in rates of suspension and disruptive behaviours. Given that journos of Elder’s ilk are also likely to sink the boots into any school that might be seen to be soft on student aggression or staff underperformance in any way, it makes his hypocrisy even more cruel.

Another school in Elder’s sights is Charters Towers State High School – and this is a school that I do know well. The Leadership Team there has undertaken an enormous challenge and it’s not dissimilar to the one I was handed as Principal.

Enormous investments have been made in improving the culture of the school, supporting the acceleration of the growth of the teachers in the actual challenges they face between the walls of the classroom and in bringing the student experience back to the top of the school improvement agenda. 

Elder wishes us all to be alarmed by the raw numbers of total Student Disciplinary Absences (SDAs) at the school and assume them to be failing. They are not.

Principal Kaye Corcoran and her dedicated team have, in just one semester last year, reduced:

• short suspensions by 57.5%.
• long suspensions by 44.4%
• exclusions by 50%
• enrolment cancellations by 53.8%

This isn’t cause for derision – it’s cause for celebration. This is a dramatic increase in the number of young people getting access to education. And these are young people who need an education more than most. 

Elder’s next column should be a retraction of his bitter attack against the country’s worst funded and worst supported schools who nobly accept the challenge of giving a glimmer of future hope to the students who see none.

He should be learning about education before he writes about schools.

And he certainly shouldn’t be labelling any as the “state’s worst”, thereby implying that the grossly over privileged private schools peppered across the country are the best for no other reason than their students have been born into environments that tend to make them less suspension-likely.

Finally, he should take a trip to Charters Towers and check out what Kaye Corcoran is actually doing to bring the power of a fruitful education to her community in these trying months.

Perhaps then, we could consider Elder as a much more reputable scribe.

#StateHighProud