Educating young people is not a onesizefitsall endeavour

i’m the principal of australia’s only

high school with a registered nightclub

and i don’t believe for one minute that

any of my teachers when i was at school

thought i’d be the principal of any

school

in fact judging by the report card

comments they thought i’d end up in a

different industry altogether

but here i am the principal of

australia’s only high school with a

registered nightclub

a nightclub that our students operate

they do everything

including booking aria award-winning

artists and international touring acts

that’s real world education and i almost

didn’t make it through school

in my final year of school my dad

tragically passed away

and i dropped out you could say i ran

away to join the circus

my boss from work experience had offered

me a job in his lab developing prints

and negatives and i took that job

and i really enjoyed it but after eight

months he let me go

and i was at a loose end not knowing

what to do my eldest brother sat me down

and talked to me about going back to

school and said i should finish my final

year

now i know that not every kid in that

situation has that kind of support and

i’m lucky that i did but i followed his

advice

went back to school and while i was

there met an incredible mentor

my pe teacher not only was he a great

bloke but he had the best job in the

world

played sport all day and had 10 weeks of

holiday every year

how good is that so i was on my pathway

to becoming a teacher

i went to university for three years to

study the theory of how to become a

teacher

and putting that theory into practice

proves a lot more difficult than what i

could imagine

one of my first teaching gigs was an all

boys year 10 pe class

and boy did they make life tough for

this rookie but when i decided to

recruit some of them into my rugby

league team

and built meaningful relationships with

them they slowly came on board and

things became easier

i then continued to hone my skills as a

teacher across the following 16 years

in regional and tough cities and i loved

my time teaching in the classroom

but i started to get jaded and the gloss

had worn off because i’d seen so many

students

either drop out of school or been shown

the door and told to leave

kids like me good kids kids who were

struggling with something was far

greater than what they could grasp

and handle at the same time at school so

they dropped out

or they acted out and got asked to leave

i often hear a lot of people say that

school days are the best days of your

life

well if that’s true why do the stats

paint a different story

one in four kids who enter school in

australia fail to graduate year twelve

forty percent of students are disengaged

on any given day in any school across

the nation

it’s clear that we have a problem add to

these the mental health statistics for

our youth

where one in seven will experience a

mental health problem

one in ten will self-harm and 113 will

seriously consider

suicide and you can see that we have a

much larger problem

i found it unacceptable that so many

students were disconnecting from school

so i decided to do something about it in

1996 a group of mates and i

started a drop-in centre that quickly

morphed into a full-time youth centre

we developed job programs a live music

venue

a radio station a recording studio and

even our own record label

and these kids kids who couldn’t or

wouldn’t go to school

we found it difficult to get them to

leave the facility at the end of the day

because they’re so engaged in what

they’re doing after six years of running

these programs i got to thinking

we should be able to do more for these

kids we could legitimize their learning

and that’s where the idea of music

industry college came from

a school that’s dedicated to students

who want to pursue a music career

a school where graduation rates are

above 90

where bullying is almost non-existent

and where mental health problems ease

and disappear over time

and mark’s improved but that’s not

really our focus

and when we started mic we decided to

strip back everything that was

unnecessary

for example we have no uniform no

homework

we allow students to leave campus when

they need to go out for lunch

we even threw away the rule book we just

don’t have any but we replace them with

four pillars

trust respect community and

participation

now just so you know that these aren’t

just words on a page that we pay lip

service to

i want to give you an example of how

these play out in everyday life

let’s start with trust at mic we expect

that every member of our community is

trustworthy it’s just simply

non-negotiable

this allows us to give the students full

access to all facilities

all the equipment allows us to let them

leave the campus to go and get lunch

not be at school if they don’t have a

class and yeah

you’re right some of these kids will do

the wrong thing

and even some of the staff will and

we’ll have an issue with trust

what we do then is we seek with that

individual and we work through ways that

we can restore that trust relationship

between them and the school community

because we want every member of our

school community to be a fully

functional member of that community

and trust is a key tenant of that this

philosophy and style applies to each of

the other three pillars

in a similar manner we deliberately kept

the size of the school small

we started with a cohort of 27 students

and we quickly grew to our current cap

of a 90.

this is based on dunbar’s number robin

dunbar was a british anthropologist

and through his study he found that the

human brain can really only cope

with around 150 meaningful relationships

so given our 90 students our 10 or so

staff

their friends and family outside of

school they’re at that capacity

and in order to have a really good

educational experience the research

tells us it’s based on relationships

we also provide flexibility at music

industry college

because no two students are the same and

the music industry can be an

unpredictable beast

a student might be required to go on

tour or play a festival during school

time

one example of that is olivia mccarthy

also known as joy

when she was in her final term of year

12 getting her exams and her assessments

done so she graduated high school

she was called away to sydney to record

a cover of kylie minogue’s can’t get you

out of my head

for our national broadcaster’s leica

version

the song was so successful when it was

released that kylie minogue herself

tweeted olivia while she was in a maths

class and as you can imagine her music

career gained momentum

overnight so there’s this tension

between the industry requirements

and requirements to complete school and

her parents were very stressed about

this issue

so we sat down with her parents and

olivia and we discussed a way that we

could manage it so that she could still

do her school

and travel to and from sydney to pursue

a music career

well she graduated high school was

offered a position at a university in a

paramedic course

but she also went on to have a

successful music career

she’s toured europe with demi lovato and

reduced a number of

chart-topping singles we progressively

released responsibility to our students

as well across their two years of year

11 and year 12.

one good example of that is when our

students run our annual festival

students allocated roles that they have

to fulfill prior to

and during the festival caleb one of our

year 12 students

was given the role of head of security

he had a budget

he had to book security and he had to

provide them with a roster

and on the day he had to take them

through an induction process

well about halfway through the event

caleb was wandering through the venue

just checking to see everything was

going well and he found two heavily

intoxicated patrons

who shouldn’t have been in the venue he

took them outside safely

and after he’d done that he went

searching for the security guard whose

job it was to keep them out of the venue

in the first place

when he found the guard he was

fraternising with two young female

members of the public

caleb gave him a piece of his mind set

him straight

put him back on his post and the rest of

the event ran smoothly

since graduation caleb has gained

employment in the construction industry

as a workplace health and safety officer

a job where you have to have difficult

conversations on an almost daily basis

caleb’s often told me that the skills he

learnt through that festival

have stood him in good stead with the

work he does from day to day

we focus on skills not scores

and through that process magically the

scores

improve and also it takes the pressure

off students

come exam time and assessment times

there is an appetite for data at the

moment in the education system within

australia

and mic has the data to back it up

through improvement in students grades

but that’s not our main focus during

post-graduation

interviews some of our students have

disclosed to us that they were suffering

from severe mental health issues

and even suicidal thoughts prior to

enrolling in mic

one female student unsuccessfully

attempted to take her life three times

during year nine and year ten prior to

coming to nyc

upon graduation she’s healthy she’s

happy

she’s full-time employed as a

photographer and pursuing her music

goals

as she goes along another example is a

young man who was suffering from such

debilitating bouts of anxiety and

depression

that he couldn’t go to school at all in

fact he found it even difficult to get

out of bed

when he came to mic what he found was a

supportive and nurturing group of peers

and teachers

he was able to express himself musically

and as an individual

he’s now a university graduate he’s

worked for our national broadcaster

and now he is manager of one of

queensland’s busiest retail

outlets not all of our students will go

on to have a sustainable music industry

career

but some of them will and many more are

pursuing that goal

ari award winner thelma plum recorded a

song called father said while she was at

music industry college

after graduation she uploaded that song

to triple j on earth

a national music competition they chose

her

to be their unearthed representative at

the national indigenous music awards

since then film has gone on to have

multiple chart successes with her debut

album better in black

another example is marco gikas marco

worked intensively with his music

teacher tom egert

over his last year at mic to produce

music

he released his first single running

while he was still at school

and it quickly amassed more than one

million streams on platforms across the

world

he gathered the interest of many people

in the industry and has signed a record

deal

with one of australia’s major record

labels thomas also joined the same

company full-time

and although we’re sad to see tom go we

believe that the school is there to

improve

the industry capacity of both students

and staff

see education is not just a

one-size-fits-all endeavor

and it’s not something where success

should be measured by a cold score

that compares one human child with every

other human child

ignoring their skills their experiences

their knowledge their passions and their

pursuits

the music industry college experience

demonstrates that there is a purpose

and positive impact of allowing students

to pursue the things that they love

and that they’re passionate about to

develop their own individual learning

pathway

supported by teachers as guides and

facilitators

and while we’ve chosen musical as a

vehicle there’s no reason this model

can’t be applied to dance or drama

computer gaming or coding in fact we’re

currently developing

an innovation and entrepreneurial campus

education shouldn’t come down to one

single school an education system should

be about providing students

with knowledge and skills that allows

them to lead a meaningful life

filled with passion and purpose and that

is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor

you