Standing Still is Not an Option

By Rebecca Butterworth, Principal – Hunter Valley Grammar School

In education there is often nothing more terrifying than the idea that we live in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. How on earth do we prepare students for that? How will I get them ready for HSC or IB examinations and help them be adaptable, agile, creative and critical thinkers, good communicators and less worried about the exam and more future focused? How on earth do we do it all?

I am almost breathless as I write this. I also cannot discard my parent hat – will my child be entrepreneurial enough for this unknown future? What do I tell him? How do I prepare him?

As adults we are well out of comfort zone right now. We can’t predict the future (that is the whole point about a VUCA world) and it scares us. We know what education, university and a career pathway looked like for us, but the ground has now shifted. We need to worry about AI and how it might transform the world of work and take away jobs.

It is easy in these moments, particularly within education, to play it safe and hold on tightly to what we know. Traditionally schools are solid, stable structures. Certainly, architecturally there is a simplicity in design: general learning areas (GLAs) and good outdoor spaces are a staple, as well as good facilities for sports and the arts. School timetables are built around these spaces and a conventional school day that accommodates local transport options. Traditionally, there is little flexibility in the geography or structure of schooling.

Likewise, in schools and the media we love to hold on tightly to metrics that are easy to measure. HSC and IB Diploma examination results, NAPLAN, ACER and “allwell” testing, for example. These metrics are crucial; they provide an important benchmark for schools around literacy, numeracy and readiness for university study. In addition, they represent the culmination (in the case of HSC and IBDP) of two years of dedicated study by students and therefore provide them with invaluable recognition.

However, in a VUCA world dominated by AI, they cannot be the only metric we use to know if our young people are ready for their future, not our past. On Friday 27^th March, we welcomed Emeritus Professor John Fischetti to HVGS for our first Ignite and Unite breakfast talk. He was accompanied on stage by four of our Year 9 students, who were incredibly articulate about the importance of

• passionate teachers
• using portfolios to determine student mastery of key skills, understandings and competencies; and
• continuing to listen to their voices as we unlock the future of education.

They also admitted to using AI in their academic studies, almost like it was a guilty pleasure. Listening to the students speak, I was impressed by the way they were using AI. They are using it in all the right ways – not to find the answer, but to help them understand a task or figure out the best way to represent ideas. They appear to be using AI to help them think, not to think for them. How interesting! Our students are leaning into this technology, mostly using it appropriately but feeling guilty about admitting this to their teachers and parents. Meanwhile, most adults are lamenting the impact AI is having on the ability of our children to think. There is an irony in this!

What I heard last Friday is that our students want to learn and they want to learn how best to use generative and agentic AI to help them learn better.

In his book The Future of Schooling in a GenAI World, John Fischetti’s write:

“For parents and carers, this shift is more profound than the move from blackboards to smartboards. GenAI isn’t just a new tool—it’s a new way of thinking, learning, and creating. And it’s already reshaping classrooms.”

The challenge that John Fischetti now lays at our feet is this:

“In 2024, ChatGPT outperformed many students on standardized exams, including law and insurance tests. This raises serious questions about how we assess learning and what skills we truly value.  And how we “do” school.”

Whether they can articulate it in this way, our students are looking for us to do school differently. They want us to measure what matters and help them get ready for a VUCA world, a world they see as full of possibilities. What is exciting about the emerging conversation about education in Australia, that experts such as John Fischetti are championing, is that it is an invitation to become less transactional about schooling. It is an invitation to see school as the beginning of a lifelong learning process that truly will never end. It is also an invitation to figure out ways of assessing students’ skills, understandings and competencies in ways that matter.

Looking ahead, how will we measure, at the end of Year 12, the human competencies our young people need to ready for their future? What might it look like to unlock the regime of schooling and focus on helping young people be highly literate and numerate, and ethical human beings with strong critical and creative thinking skills? How will we know our children have the agility, adaptability and resilience needed for their future? This is an exciting dialogue I am looking forward to having at HVGS! As Professor Fischetti said on Friday: “Standing still is not an option”.