Dear Blue Mountains Grammar School Families,

Welcome Back to Term 3

It has been wonderful to welcome our students back for the beginning of Term 3. There is always a particular energy around the first few days of a new term, and it was so good to see our campuses come back to life with students, staff and families returning after the break. I also want to extend a very warm welcome to the new students and families who have joined us this term across both our Junior School and Senior School. We are delighted to have you as part of the BMGS community.

This term we have also welcomed our new Chaplain, Mr Dave Catto, who has begun joining us on occasion as he transitions from his previous school. Mr Catto has already had the opportunity to attend Senior School Chapel, and we look forward to him connecting more fully with our Junior School students and staff in the coming weeks. We are very pleased to have him joining the life of BMGS and look forward to the contribution he will make to our community.

Term 3 is always significant in the life of the School. It is full, purposeful and, in many ways, marks a turning point in the year. Most notably, it is the final school term for our Year 12 students, the Class of 2026. Their first day back this week was their last first day of term at BMGS. That is always special, always a little strange, and always tinged with some sadness as well as excitement. For our Year 12 students, the weeks ahead will be important ones as they complete courses, prepare for Trial examinations, mark significant milestones and begin the process of bringing their formal school journey to a close.

In the final week of Term 2 and into the holidays, I had the great privilege of joining staff and 29 of our Junior School students on the Victorian Goldfields trip. It was a fantastic experience, and one that will live long in my memory. Across Junee, Wagga Wagga, Jerilderie, Echuca, Bendigo, Ballarat, Glenrowan and Beechworth, our students represented themselves, their families and BMGS exceptionally well. They were not only beautifully behaved, but also kind, respectful and encouraging of one another throughout the journey.

Trips like this matter because they do something difficult to replicate in a classroom. They ask young people to be brave, independent, patient, curious and resilient. They invite them to live alongside one another, manage tiredness, ask questions, try new things and discover that they are capable of more than they perhaps realised. I came home incredibly proud of our students. They had a wonderful time, but they also came home a little more grown up than when they left. I am thankful to God for the experience, for the staff who led it so carefully, and for the students who made it such a joy to be part of.

Of course, the holidays were not quiet across the School. Senior Outdoor Education students were away on snow-based learning experiences, HSC teachers generously ran holiday classes for their students, and a significant amount of work continued across our campuses. At Wentworth Falls Junior School, new carpet and painting have refreshed learning spaces, new signage has continued to improve the way we present and navigate our School, and many staff worked behind the scenes to prepare for the term ahead.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the BMGS experience across the break. Whether leading trips, supporting students, teaching holiday classes, improving our facilities, preparing programs or ensuring our campuses were ready for the return of students, your work matters. Schools are built through these many acts of care, service and professionalism, often undertaken quietly and without fanfare.

We now look ahead to a fantastic Term 3. It will be busy, meaningful and full of opportunity, and I look forward to sharing it with our students, staff and families.

Part 1 - An Education Worth Having: What Parents Are Asking of Schools

One of the more interesting education reports I have read recently is the Future Ready Schools White Paper 2026, released by ViVEDUS. Its subtitle is perhaps what should catch our attention as we engage with some of the challenges in the educational landscape at this time. The report is titled: An Education Worth Having: What parents think about school, the future of work, and the age of AI.

That phrase, “an education worth having”, matters. It moves the conversation beyond school rankings, examination results, ATARs, university entrance, NAPLAN bands and the usual measures by which schools are too often compared. Those things matter, but they are certainly not the whole story. The deeper question is not simply whether students are achieving within the current system, but whether the current system is preparing young people for the world they are actually entering.

There is, of course, a lot to cover in a report like this, and I do not intend to deal with all of it in one newsletter piece. Rather, I want to reflect on it over the next two newsletters. This week, I want to focus on what the report tells us about what parents are asking of schools. In the next newsletter, I will reflect more specifically on what an education worth having looks like at BMGS and how our work over recent years has been deliberately shaped by many of these same questions.

The ViVEDUS report draws on the views of 1,105 Australian parents of school-aged children and asks what they believe schooling should provide in the age of artificial intelligence. It is worth noting that this was not a small or incidental survey. With 1,105 completed responses, representing students across all year levels and all sectors of schooling, the study gives us a substantial indication of parental sentiment. In education, reports drawing on 300 to 450 respondents are often treated as meaningful pieces of evidence for school reflection and sector discussion. This study is significantly larger than that.

The findings are in some ways confronting. Only 38% of parents believe schools are preparing their children for a future workforce being transformed by AI, with over 75% believing academic development should no longer be the sole priority. Only 11.37% of parents said they were satisfied with what their child’s school currently offers.

Those numbers should make every educator, parent and politician pause.

The figure that most immediately captures my attention is the 38% confidence rating. It tells us that fewer than four in ten parents believe schools are preparing young people well for the future workforce. That is not a small concern at the edges of the system, but a significant vote of uncertainty from the very people who entrust their children to schools every day. It suggests that many parents are not simply nervous about AI in the abstract, but that they are asking whether schooling, as it is currently imagined, is keeping pace with the world their children will inherit.

Yet the more revealing number may be the 11.37% satisfaction figure. This is the quiet earthquake in the report. It does not mean parents dislike their schools or do not value teachers. In fact, many parents deeply value the care of teachers and are appreciative of the commitment and professionalism of educators and those who work in schools. It does, however, suggest that parents can sense a widening gap between what schools are currently designed to provide and what young people may actually need.

This distinction matters. Parents are not saying, “Stop teaching academic knowledge”, but rather they are saying, “Academic knowledge alone is no longer enough.”

This is where the report is most helpful, because it does not present parents as anti-academic; in fact, quite the opposite. The survey asks parents to consider what matters beyond academic achievement, assuming academic development is already a given. That framing is crucial, as parents were not asked to choose between academic learning and broader capabilities. They were asked what else matters once academic learning is assumed. Their highest priority was critical thinking and problem solving, followed by communication skills, adaptability and resilience, wellbeing and mental health, character and values, creativity, collaboration, and digital literacy. To be honest, I was surprised that wellbeing and mental health were so far down the list.

I do think there is a lot hidden in that ordering.

First, parents are not asking for less rigour, but are asking for a richer form of rigour. They want their children to be able to think, reason, communicate and adapt. These are not soft alternatives to academic learning because, as has long been understood, they are the capacities through which academic learning becomes useful. Knowledge matters deeply, but knowledge that cannot be applied, questioned, connected or communicated remains incomplete.

Secondly, it is interesting that digital literacy does not sit at the very top of the list. In an age of AI, one might have expected parents to ask for more technology, more coding or more digital skills. That is not what the data suggests. Parents appear to understand, perhaps instinctively, that the future will not belong simply to those who can use technology, but will belong to those who can think well with it, question it, critique it, humanise it and know when not to be led by it.

That is a much more profound educational challenge.

The report also found that 75.32% of parents believe capabilities such as creative and critical thinking, resilience, values and character should be prioritised, either ahead of academic results or given equal priority with them. Only 22.57% believe academic outcomes should remain the primary focus.

Again, this should not be read as a rejection of academic achievement, but is better understood as a rejection of narrowness. Parents are not asking schools to lower standards, but rather they are asking schools to widen the definition of what a well-educated young person looks like. They want students who can read deeply, write clearly and reason mathematically. But they also want young people who can withstand difficulty, collaborate with others, use judgement, solve unfamiliar problems and remain curious in a world that will keep changing around them.

This is where the current education debate in Australia becomes both important and frustrating. Too often, the conversation is presented as a choice between returning to “the basics” or moving towards inquiry, creativity and innovation. On one side, we are told that schools must focus on literacy, numeracy, direct instruction and knowledge. On the other, we are told that schools must embrace collaboration, creativity, student agency and problem solving.

I find that binary choice increasingly unhelpful. In some ways, I find it offensive.

No educator or parent in their right mind would deny the importance of deep and robust literacy and numeracy. Reading, writing and mathematics are not old-fashioned, nor are they optional. They are not things we move beyond. They are the essential foundations upon which almost every other form of learning depends. Perhaps we should stop calling them “the basics” and name them more accurately as “the essentials.”

A young person who cannot read deeply is limited in what they can understand. A young person who cannot write clearly is limited in what they can express. A young person who cannot reason mathematically is limited in how they can interpret the world. The three Rs remain fundamental because they are not simply school skills, but life skills. They are also democratic skills, and they are human skills.

And here is my point. A commitment to the essentials does not require us to abandon inquiry, exploration, creativity or invention. In fact, the stronger a student’s literacy and numeracy, the more capable they become of asking better questions, testing better ideas, making stronger arguments and creating more meaningful work. The essentials are not the enemy of future-ready learning, but are the foundation of it.

The problem is that much of the public debate refuses to hold these ideas together. It asks whether students should sit still, be quiet and learn, or whether they should inquire, explore and invent. It asks whether teachers should teach explicitly, or whether students should be given agency. It asks whether knowledge matters, or whether capabilities matter.

Surely it is all of this and more?

The more I look at that debate, the more convinced I am that it has been designed for the convenience of the system rather than the formation of the person. Systems like binaries. They are easy to measure, easy to defend and easy to argue about. People are more complex, and perhaps children are more complex on another level. What educators are becoming distinctly aware of is that learning is also now more complex.

Any serious educator knows that students need explicit teaching and rich inquiry. They need knowledge and imagination, along with discipline and wonder. Our students need instruction, conversation, foundations and an appropriate amount of freedom.

The future of education is not “either/or.” It is “yes, and.”

In the next newsletter, I will return to this report and reflect more specifically on what this means for BMGS. I will explore why our Strategic Transformation Project, Odyssey, Design Thinking partnerships, Project-based Learning (PBL) opportunities and our Learning Playbooks are not separate initiatives. Each of these is an important part of a coherent response to the very question parents are now asking with increasing urgency: “What does an education worth having actually look like?”

Warm regards

Steven Coote

Principal

This document has been reviewed for spelling and grammar. Please note that as such, it may identify some content as being generated by AI.

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