LAUNCH ADDRESS –

DR. DAVID WARNER, CEO

Distinguished people all, Welcome. I particularly acknowledge the Lord Mayor John So, Harold Mitchell, Chairman of the Mitchell Communication Group and Chris Heysen, Chairman of the Eltham College Board and other Board Directors. Lord Mayor, on behalf of the Melbourne City School, can I thank you for your time and your inspirational words in welcoming the Melbourne City School to Australia’s knowledge capital. Without Harold Mitchell and his dream for Melbourne, this project would not have progressed beyond a great concept. Harold Mitchell is one of Australia’s most influential business leaders and philanthropists. He is a legendary leader in the media business for over three decades and is the Chairman of Mitchell Communications Group. In 2000 he established the Harold Mitchell Foundation with a gift of $10 million. His enormous contribution to business and his tireless philanthropic and voluntary work was recognised in 2006 with an Order of Australia.

Harold is also a long time supporter of Eltham College, having sent both of his children to the school and a strong sponsor of the Foundation and early facilities development, including driving the bulldozer to help develop the ovals. Harold, please accept the thanks of all of us involved in this project and of the many generations of Melabournians who will benefit as educated CBD global citizens.

Melbourne has a reputation through its universities as a knowledge city, but little acknowledgement is given to the primary importance of creative, relevant and culturally transforming schooling. The wealth of a city in the global knowledge economy comes from an innovative and learning workforce, from creative and entrepreneurial leadership. Some of this comes from universities, but the rest come from schooling. If Melbourne is going to grow to become a Global City in the global knowledge economy it will need relevant and creative schooling and the knowledge workers that need to come from this schooling.

The Melbourne City School will be such a school. It will be an autonomous school with its own Board of
Directors and Principal and the capacity to set its strategic directions for CBD schooling. We currently are meeting the Victorian requirements for full registration as a separate school through the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority.

I would like to acknowledge some guests who are working with us in many capacities. Allen Williams, Chairman of JL Williams who is our principal networker and support; Chris Heysen Chairman of Eltham College Board who has led a dedicated Board in making such a bold decision as a City School; we are working with Grocon in relation to the location of the senior school and I acknowledge and thank Daniel Grollo and David Waldren for the opportunity to work with them in the realisation of our vision for future senior years education. David Brown and senior staff from Lend Lease and Stuart Hornery from the Hornery Institute have been on a learning journey with us for four years through child care to building city communities around schooling. I also acknowledge VicUrban and its role in realising a bigger city dream. Stuart Mitchell, our first Steering Committee Chair who had to move into the background because of pressures of work, helped shape the project. Ian Roberts of The Mitchell Foundation has been a tower of knowledgeable strength. Professor Field Rickards, Dean of Education, University of Melbourne has worked with inspiration in providing us partnership opportunity with the university’s programs. Phil Truscott has been our Project Manager and has given superb effort and intelligence to the project. Councillors and senior staff of Melbourne City Council have been generous in their ideas and support and I refer specifically to Councillors Peter Clarke, Karl Jetter and David Wilson and senior staff, Geoff Lawler and Linda Weatherson.

However, I need to refer above all to colleague, friend and city educator, Prue Gillies of Kids on Collins. She has provided inspiration to the project in ensuring that caring and schooling are converged into one exciting, relevant and practical vision. Thank you Prue.

In 1974 ELTHAM commenced as Melbourne’s innovative co-educational completely independent school. It was quickly recognised for its student focus, innovative approaches to teaching and learning and its values of community and respect. In 1996 it recognised that at the time of most disengagement from school and learning, Year 9, young people needed something that engaged and challenged them. ELTHAM opened its City Campus in Flinders Lane long before anyone had recognised the enormous classroom that a city provided and through it the environment and opportunity to develop independence, individual and group learning skills, emotional intelligence and social maturity. These kids are awesome!

Above all however was the realisation that City living and working was a reality of the global knowledge economy and that schooling needed to acknowledge that in the way in which it went about its business. In 2000 the Board of ELTHAM recognised that the global knowledge economy and the Internet had transformed the world for young people and that schooling needed to be real and relevant to the new world of young people. Our symbol was the GameBoy, that piece of technology that young people could use but their parents could not. They showed us that they could learn, teach, communicate and team and wanted school to acknowledge their world and work with them to better define it. Few schools have succeeded as ELTHAM in transforming to the 21st century but I do acknowledge the leadership of people such as iNET Director, Wendy Cahill and its Principals Reference Group that are providing new leadership.

Today ELTHAM is translating new vision to the Melbourne CBD.

The Melbourne City School will not only be a global knowledge era school, it will provide the resource that busy, creative CBD workers require. It will converge schooling and caring. It will proudly develop and further Victorian curriculum as global and at the very cutting edge of international schooling. It will not offer international curriculum franchises. We need to be proud of what we have achieved and what, through such creative endeavours as the Melbourne City School, we will achieve in the future for young people, their families, their CBD communities and their national economies.

The growth in population in the Melbourne CBD and surrounding areas support exciting plans for further development in the Melbourne city area. The Melbourne City School will directly be part of and benefit from these in the coming years. It will work with the City community in unprecedented ways, welcoming community members to share in its facilities and provide the essential human resource of education to community members of all ages. The environment of the Melbourne City school will be a centre of learning, discussion and community interaction – the true focus of community activity for city residents, workers and their families.

The first phase of the Melbourne City School, Prep to Year 4, will provide a seamless convergence of schooling and caring. Families will have choice through the personalised attention culture that will mark this school. Choosing schooling only will be one of the options that Melbourne families will have. It is not about one-size fitting all but about responding to each young person and their families to ensure the highest standards of both early schooling and care. Let us imagine:

In 2009, Sue comes in with Mum and Dad at 7.00am and, quickly through breakfast, then engages in developmental play with half a dozen other early starters, taking Dad with her, while Mum talks with Learning Advisor Teacher, Jenny, about Sue’s weekend, what they talked about on the way to school and how it could integrate with her literacy and creative play this week. Jenny notes this for planning later. Parents know that Jenny will give them updates and reports through the schools Knowledge Network that provides continuous reporting, communication, and curriculum and activity transparency on their notebooks, PC’s or phones. Peter doesn’t arrive till nearly 9.00am and Dad and Learning Advisor Teacher, Rob, touch base on some personal issues from last week and how they will work together this week to sort them through. Both Sue and Peter meet up with a combined numeracy and music activity.

Parents pick Sue and Peter up around 6.30pm and Sue will drive with Mum and Dad to Heidelberg while Peter and Dad will walk home to the Dockland’s apartment. By Wednesday Sue and Peter’s parents, with Sue and Peter, are talking about their holidays, the only ones of the year, in September. Both want four weeks to go to Fiji and are all comfortable because the personalised attention of the Melbourne City School will enable that with comfort and Sue and Peter will still be on their learning track as they will certainly cover off lots of activities during July when a lot of the other kids are taking holidays. Sue’s Mum was initially concerned that she would not get a break from school but quickly realised that Sue, like most young people, just wants to be totally engaged in discovering, exploring, sharing and playing, that Sue is very happy. In fact, Sue’s Mum quickly realises that this is what young learners actually do all the time, taking breaks when they need them.

Neither Sue nor Peter want the type of school that their parents had and certainly don’t want the type of teaching that their parents experienced! Their worlds are just so different. Peter and Sue are at different stages with their literacy so Peter will often join different groups and be exposed to different challenges and levels of support. Peter’s Dad, somewhat of the ‘old school’ initially had issues with the concept of school wear rather than uniform but quickly realised that Peter would have school wear that associated him with school but enabled his personal space and style through school-wear choice. He didn’t really want Peter to grow up a ‘uniform’ person but an adaptable, clever 21st century person engaged in learning and living. In fact, as a parent he had to adapt to this new world and it wasn’t easy. He believes that Peter will take it in his stride as one of life’s great experiences.

This is the vision of the Prep to Year 4, junior years in The Melbourne City School. The school and caring are seamless for young people and allow for family flexibility.

It is planned to open the middle years in 2010-2011 and we are in the process of negotiating not only the new facility but the range of relationships with community, sporting and other educational providers to ensure a wide learning network. While continuing Chinese language immersion and offering other languages as part of a core commitment to global citizenship, the Middle Years also will recognise the issue of sustainability at the heart of young people’s views of the world. As ELTHAM’s Year 9’s have their city campus so too will the City School’s Year 9’s have their Green Wedge environmental campus.

Moving to the senior years will be to enter a young adult campus, and we are working to have this at the intersection of the University of Melbourne and RMIT. Young people will converge academic and vocational and the transition from senior years to post-school university, TAFE or work will be seamless. Opportunity will be enormous, as with ELTHAM’s 77 VCE choices, and young people will graduate able to manage effectively their living, learning and working. The senior years should commence in 2012 and will offer choices and experiences appropriate to young people and their challenges. There will be classes and on-line learning and opportunities to network with other learning institutions from schools to universities to the working world.

The Melbourne City School will set new standards. None of us living in the 21st century would now believe that the standards set for 20th century schooling would be anywhere near high enough for young people to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly transforming world. Today we need standards that will enable us to grow economically after the minerals run out and we have to survive and grow on creativity and entrepreneurialism. Today we need standards that give self-esteem, emotional intelligence, a capacity to interact with the world with skill and resilience, the capacity and drive to be a learner and change and adapt. We need music, art, literature and scientific technology like never before, but 20th century single-minded focus on traditional literacy and numeracy alone won’t work and won’t engage young people. We need creativity at the centre of how young people need to learn to think and operate. Most schooling does not provide this.

The Melbourne City School will acknowledge where young people are at and have student voice. That voice will help define the standards of the 21st century.

The Melbourne City School sees the changing lifestyle preference of our times - people want to live close to the inner city and their work location. People also want the highest quality services to be available near where they live and work - whether they be recreational, cultural, education and transport facilities and opportunities. Central Melbourne is part of the ‘convenience revolution’, and the answer to the work life balance that so many families are seeking. From 2009, the Melbourne City School will be part of the education infrastructure that you would expect from a world class city. Parents today want to spend more high quality time with their children. They want to know that they are being cared for and educated in a manner that is second to none, and skilled for the challenging world they will enter. They will travel the journey with their children.

Parents increasingly seek modern visions for their children’s education. This does not at all mean rejection of tradition, but rather an environment to allow children to be prepared to succeed in the dramatically different opportunities offered in the 21st century.

People, I welcome you to the Melbourne City School and invite you to become participants in establishing it as a school that will set the standards and mainstream practices for CBD 21st century living and working. There is no other CBD school that converges seamlessly schooling, caring, CBD life and work-style. We will open the Prep to Year 4 school as the school that will personalise attention for Melbourne’s families searching for solutions to the challenges of modern CBD working and living.

Dr David Warner
CEO, Eltham College
and the Melbourne City School

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