Do-it-yourself Approach Makes Ascham One Of The Best
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 5, 1996
WITH top fees (up to $9,480) and near-top HSC results, Ascham School at Edgecliff is a school of privilege in more ways than one.
One privilege for the 600 high and 400 primary school pupils is a wealth of teachers - and class sizes of 17 to 22 in junior school and a maximum of 15 (often less) in senior school, just about the smallest classes of any major school.
Another privilege is individual tutoring for all secondary pupils under the 60-year-old Dalton Plan. Under this, teachers set pupils on a voyage of disciplined self-learning with one assignment on each subject to hand in each week.
When they need help on the assignment, they consult the teacher in the teacher's study. The class lesson is freed up for other teaching, such as showing pupils how to tackle the assignment.
A third privilege is that the school is awash with musicmaking, public speaking and drama. All primary children and 430 of the secondary pupils learn a musical instrument and become proficient in reading music.
The principal, Ms Rowena Danziger, believes music and public speaking are crucial to help build the competence and confidence of the pupils and their ability to express themselves.
Ascham employs a battalion of music teachers - 30 visiting and seven full-time. There are several choirs, a full symphony orchestra and other orchestras, concert, rock and jazz bands.
It also has outstanding facilities (including gym, oval, swimming pool, tennis courts and a new theatre) on the 3.5-hectare campus.
Last year Ascham students gained the second-highest HSC results of the independent girls' schools (after Pymble Ladies College), with 45.9 per cent of Year 12 students in the top 5,000 TER list. This was behind Sydney Grammar boys' school (58.2 per cent) but well ahead of the next best boys' school, Knox Grammar (34.1 per cent).
Ascham, non-denominational and non-selective, but drawing heavily from the wealthier families of the eastern suburbs, succeeds with a structured, disciplined environment that also encourages independent learning.
The Ascham method is inculcated from a young age: Ms Danziger says that all 96 pupils in Year 7 came up from the Ascham primary school, most from kindergarten and junior years at Ascham, with the last big intake from outside at Year 6, when 46 are admitted. This ensures that all girls experience Ascham's methods before they go into high school. Computers do NOT dominate here, though all learn keyboard and problem-solving skills in primary school, but Ms Danziger emphasises that computers are a tool only and cannot replace the teacher.
She thinks laptops (which many schools buy) are a waste of time. "You lose sight of what should be happening in the classroom," she says.
She says the pupil-teacher link is vital. "The big thing about the Dalton Plan is that the girls speak to the teacher all the time and that they hand in a piece of work every week and that it is marked every week," she says.
Ms Danziger says part of the secret of this sort of teaching, which is "very labour-intensive" and demanding of teachers, is not just to give the girls a mark for an assignment but to get them then to find out where and how they went wrong.
She says the system aims to give students "the skills of analysis and reasoning and give them good study disciplines" that will be of benefit in any career.
"It aims to make them accurate and to feel more competent," she says. "One of the great catch-cries is self-esteem and that only comes from feeling competent.
"We give them techniques for tackling problems and the skills for independent learning." The high teaching numbers also mean that senior school students "have a completely free choice of subjects", and the timetable will accommodate them.
Ascham is one of the few schools that offer classical Greek as well as Latin - and every student does classical studies in Year 7.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald