Change maker: Schools were designed for an era that no longer exists

Words: Jason Purdie
Published: 3 December 2024

Could it be more fitting that a nudge from a school teacher set Professor David Lynch on the path to becoming a nationally regarded education expert?

Over 40 years Professor Lynch has both been part of – and railed against – a system he says is failing students, teachers and the community alike.

Today he leads Southern Cross University’s TeachLab Research Centre, where he and his colleagues are trailblazing change in deep partnership with schools in Queensland and New South Wales.

“Schools were designed for an era that no longer exists,” Professor Lynch said.

“We need to think about what we want as a society and then design schools as a vehicle to deliver it.”

Professor Lynch grew up in Cairns, at a time when you either dropped out in Year 8 to take a low-skilled job, left for a trade in Year 10, or finished Year 12 on a pathway to University.

The young David Lynch was clever and forthright, saying his attempts to engage in the process of learning were at times interpreted as 'ratbaggery'. He was no stranger to the cane, now an archaic notion, but then still very much part of the principal’s toolkit.

At one point, he had opted out of school to work in his father’s business, only to return after a chance meeting with someone who had taught him English.

“She said she always thought I’d end up being a school teacher,” Professor Lynch said. “So I went back, enrolled in Year 12, gazumped it and that’s exactly what happened.

“I became the principal of a small, rural one-teacher school in my second year out.”

Professor Lynch describes a baptism by fire, saying his studies had little bearing on his preparedness for rowdy country kids – and sometimes country kids’ rowdy parents.

“You realise how important this role is – you have these kids’ lives in your hands,” he says. “And you realise how you have no idea.”

“The current system is industrialised and designed for the mass, which is an affront to teachers and the potential of every student in it.”

His career as a school leader continued an upward arc. He knocked over a Master of Education (School Administration) and, in his early 30s, was appointed to a 1000-student school on the Sunshine Coast. Doctoral studies beckoned.

Given his pathway to that point, it is little wonder his interest was squarely on teacher preparedness and school improvement, areas of focus to this day.

“That’s what I’ve made my life’s work,” he said. “The reality is the systems of schooling don’t work.

“This has made me absolutely focus on education. Twenty-three books later and every single one of them tells a story.

“The Teaching Improvement Agenda brings them all together.”

Professor Lynch is referring to the 2024 book he published with colleagues, including experts based in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States.

It methodically sets out seven 'agendas' which – if adopted – would overhaul mainstream teacher education and classroom practice.

Proposed reforms include evaluating success in different ways, preparing teachers differently, and new roles in schools to bridge the divide between schools and universities. The first agenda calls for new levels of government leadership as a precursor to the following six.

For the uninitiated it might all seem a bit abstract, but Professor Lynch and his colleagues are on the ground, delivering and evaluating these principles in respectful partnership with schools across New South Wales and southern Queensland.

According to Faculty of Education Executive Dean, Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, it is one of the things that makes Southern Cross University truly distinctive.

“Many of the leading members of our Faculty have deep, practical experience in the classroom,” she said. “Their talent and passion for the field has led them on a path to research, which then informs how we prepare education students for their careers.

“And we are working in the school system, in partnership with leaders and teachers, with the goal of creating learning environments which are fit for the modern day and are literally world-class.

“All of this responds to the interrelated crises facing the national education system that were recently addressed by the Teacher Education Expert Panel.”

TeachLab is one of three areas of focus at Southern Cross, along with the SEAE Research Centre and the Early Years Research Lab.

“We’ve got to get this right,” Professor Lynch says, of the education system generally. “The current system is industrialised and designed for the mass, which is an affront to teachers and the potential of every student in it.”

Education and Teaching