John Hattie’s Jack Keating Memorial lecture at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education is worth listening to. John Hattie is the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL).

John Hattie’s theme throughout his speech is around ‘rebooting’ the Australian education system. The speech is fifty one minutes long and covers a range of Hattie’s views about how schools and Governments can change in order to improve student performance.

Some of Hattie’s ideas presented in the lecture include the following.

• To shift the parent and Government focus of debating and pushing ideas that have minimal impact in education to a focus on what does have an impact.
• To focus on the kids and not appeasing parents.
• To stop blaming post codes and/or SES ratings for why schools struggle to get students to learn.
• To focus on expertise and to value expertise.
• To increase the number of Highly Accomplished and Lead teachers.
• To have a common understanding of what ‘growth’ in relation to a child’s learning means. What does a years growth look like?
• To change the narrative from schools believing excellence at the top end is the measure of success to seeing the growth of all students as the measure of a school success.
• To develop collaboration and open classrooms – including student voice.
• To focus on getting students into maths and science pathways who thrive on the struggle not just the ‘best’ students.
• To abolish the exam system.

I think Hattie’s speech challenges us to think about what we do in schools and its impact on students. If you have an opinion about Hattie’s lecture I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments section.