What is Excellence?
After the survey results of all stakeholders in our school community were collated and following the focus groups with staff, students and parents, it was reaffirmed that Excellence (in its many and varied forms) is certainly a key value of our school community. This comes, of course, as no surprise. After all, the desire for Excellence, personal Excellence that is, and mastery (to whatever level) of whatever it is that we love or are passionate about, is indeed a very human thing and something that gives a person a genuine and deep sense of purpose, drive and fulfilment.
As the Teaching and Learning Leadership Team continue to forge ahead with the formulation of our new Vision for Teaching and Learning for Hume Anglican Grammar, we regularly engage in contemporary literature to inform the process and the product of our Vision. Over the past few weeks, I have been reading up on this notion of Excellence – what it means, where it comes from and why it is a worthy pursuit, both at school but beyond that too, in life post-secondary education.
Look up the word Excellence in the dictionary and you will see synonyms such as “distinction, quality, superiority, brilliance, greatness, merit, calibre, eminence [and] supremacy” (Webster, 2022), to name a few. But, when we talk about Excellence in education, for our young people, I think we mean personal Excellence. This is, of course, because Excellence for each young person looks different (and so it should) as all children are individual and possess a vast array of skills, passions, interests, predispositions and needs. They also have access to varying opportunities, depending upon where they are and what is available or made available to them. Our job as educators then (and when I say educators, I mean anyone involved in helping to shape a young person’s life), is to give each of our young people access to attaining personal Excellence, through supporting their wellbeing, providing equity and the opportunities for them to pursue whatever it is that they wish to, to a level that is individual and personal – one that they are capable of and indeed desire to reach (Pang, 2017, cited in WestEd).
Excellence, importantly, is so much more than proficiency in a set of academic standards (Pang, 2017). Rather, Excellence is found in encouraging young people to be curious about the world around them and giving them the tools that they need to explore and discover the things they are curious about, for themselves. It is about promoting their agency to affect change and building their sense of self-worth. It is about inspiring their personal purpose and building a community that equips them with the knowledge and capacity to have economic and social success as adults in their lives beyond school. We all want this for every single child.
So, what is your vision of Excellence? Use your notion or vision of Excellence to guide your work with young people, with our families, our teachers, our staff and our community.
At Hume, we believe in Excellence and we strive for it every day. For us, it is personal Excellence - that is, individual Excellence for every child, in whatever form that may be, for them to Excel and be Excellent as an individual.