2 January

Kelso High School was a unique school. The buildings were beautiful, light everywhere, central courtyards with gardens, everything carpeted, long ramps everywhere as well as stairs, it had its own cinema and photographic studio, subject areas were broken into distinct ‘units’ in the building that each looked out onto the courtyards and outside, with funky signage on the walls, lots of colour. Etc. Then it burned to the ground, a real tragedy. And it was replaced with something much cheaper. And the even greater tragedy was that schools in Australia in the past 20 years have been gutted, KHS became one of the ‘publics’ that took all of the rest, the kids whose parents couldn’t afford private. When I studied there it didn’t matter what school you went to, all of them were considered valid and excellent. Then a few decades of outright attack on public schools, and a massive shift in funding to privates, has given us a two-tiered education system, and the results show it, we’re racing to the bottom of the international league tables. Schooling became a social status thing, rather than an education thing. We all lost.