parents value their choice in educating their children

The Age, Bridie Smith, 3 October 2007

 

The Australian Parents Council (APC), which represents parents of students at non-government schools, has commissioned a draft report as part of the Federal Government’s values education programme.

The report’s objective was to explore a range of issues in regards to educating children at non-governments schools across Australia. Even though the report mainly focused on values education, it also explored parents’ thoughts and attitudes to choice of school, the concept of family-school partnership and school funding.

It found that ‘parents with children in non-government schools consciously regard the education of their children as a
high priority. Indeed, some see it as the one gift they can make to their children which will outlive themselves… Our respondents recognised – and often explicitly stated – that they were privileged to have been able to make a choice
about their children’s schooling.’

The draft report, which is based on findings from parent focus groups held in each state and territory this year, listed
the following values they wanted to see their children imbued with: acceptance of others and understanding,
compassion, honesty, integrity and decency, love for one another, resiliency and perseverance, responsibility and independence, sense of justice and equality and service to others and a sense of duty.

Respondents were then shown the Nine Values for Australian Schooling drafted as part of the National Goals for
Schooling in Australia in the Twenty-first Century, which are: care and compassion, doing your best, fair go, freedom, honesty and trustworthiness, integrity, respect, responsibility and understanding, tolerance and inclusion.

The report shows that there is both a considerable overlap and considerable differences when comparing the two responses. The respondents unanimously agreed that it is the responsibility of parents to instil values in their children, aided and supported by the school.

‘While parents were clear about the ideal values they wished to see their children grow up with, they saw many ways
in which contemporary Australian society failed to display these values. Parents saw contemporary Australian society
as displaying too much selfishness, materialism, injustice and intolerance,’ the report says.

To read the draft report, Values and other Issues in the Education of Young Australians, click here.

 

 

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