Golden Age: Principal John Thornberry talks about school growth

GOLD Coast principal John Thornberry shares how his school went from 300 to 1300 students, and the future of education.

OVER the past few months our school has become a construction zone.

The normal noise of daily life in a school has been largely drowned out by the cacophony of heavy machinery. New buildings are on their way and the capacity of this school situated bang in the middle of the fastest-growing community in Queensland, will expand to 2000. Far removed from the 295 students that walked through the front gates a little over five years ago.

In recent years two new primary schools have been added to the educational precinct of Pimpama. Next year Catholic Education will open St Joseph’s College in Pimpama and over the next few years two more government schools will be built to cater for the growing community.

Pimpama State Secondary College principal John Thornberry. Picture Mike Batterham

Over the last calendar year the population of this once quiet part of the Gold Coast grew by 31 per cent. To put that in perspective, the state population grew by 1.6 per cent. As a principal in this wonderfully vibrant community I welcome the addition of new schools. The “super-sized” schools of 2000-plus students aren’t for me. I like to know my students. I like to know their families and I like them to know me. Strong relationships are built on trust and these relationships are hard to build when schools begin to focus more on the collective rather than the individual.

ONE NEW SCHOOL A YEAR NEEDED FOR COAST GROWTH

Our school motto is built around the concept of the partnership between the school, the student and the family — “Together We Succeed”. The familiar African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” resonates with me. For a child to succeed the people that make up this partnership between the school, the family and the child must be all working together to develop and support the education of every child.

Pimpama State Secondary College is a worksite, as the school builds more classrooms to keep up with demand.

It wasn’t just the buildings that made me pause. As I walked through the school I witnessed students flying drones on our school oval. They are completing their Certificate III in Aviation (Remote Piloting). I saw students using virtual reality to walk through the buildings they had designed, Year 5 students from our local primary schools writing code for the tasks they wanted their robots to complete, students designing sustainable buildings in Mine Craft and then printing them on 3D printers and students rebuilding mobility scooters that were bound for landfill and donating them to local aged-care facilities.

THE CITY’S FASTEST AND SLOWEST GROWING SCHOOLS

The current education model grew largely out of the post-industrial era of the early 18th century. It still holds true that traditional subjects like Mathematics and English rank at the top of the pyramid, followed by science and humanities. And subjects that stimulate the creative impulse rank somewhere further down.

As the lauded education adviser Sir Ken Robinson says “as educators we tend to focus on the head and slightly to one side. What about the rest of the body? Or at least the rest of the brain”.

Pimpama State Secondary College in the making.

When we opened our school we were determined to offer something a little different. To value curiosity and imagination, to value creativity and innovation and to see failure as perhaps the most valuable of all learning experiences.

The students sitting in my classrooms will leave the workforce around 2070. What will our city look like then? Where will the jobs be and what skills will be needed? In their 2017 report on the skills young people need for employment in the 21st century, The Foundation for Young Australians identified creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy and problem solving among the most in-demand skills wanted by employers.

As family lives get busier and as technology impacts our leisure time many neighbourhoods are losing that sense of community. We might have 500 friends on Facebook but we don’t know our neighbours. Schools are the one constant in our communities and play an ever increasing role in building the social capital of those communities they serve.

To grow our city of the Gold Coast into the future, schools must develop the entrepreneurial skills of our youth. Solutions to address big city issues such as traffic congestion, public transport, sustainability and community wellbeing all require people who are able to work collaboratively, who are problem solvers and innovative thinkers.

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Our city’s leaders can help schools play a role in shaping our future by broking relationships between the city’s innovators and schools.

Pimpama State Secondary College principal John Thornberry outside the school. Photo: Kit Wise