What began as a management question — should schools have more control over their own resources? — has quietly become one of the most important questions in education: should students have more control over their own learning? This lead article in the Australian Educational Leader by Professor Emeritus Brian Caldwell and former principal Jim Spinks traces that journey, drawing on nearly four decades of research, policy and practice to arrive at a destination that is urgent, ambitious and directly relevant to the engagement crisis in Australian schools.
Caldwell and Spinks are best known for their foundational 1988 work The Self-Managing School, which shaped school governance reform across Australia, England and New Zealand. This article revisits that legacy to make a new argument: that structural autonomy — the delegation of decision-making authority to schools — has largely been achieved, but that it contributes very little on its own. What matters is professional autonomy: the capacity of teachers and school leaders to make well-informed decisions that genuinely improve learning. And the destination of that journey, the authors argue, is student autonomy — students who set their own learning goals, regulate their own progress, and take genuine ownership of their education.
The article is frank about the obstacles. TALIS 2024 data show Australia has the second highest level of teacher stress among OECD participants, with 69% of secondary teachers citing excessive administrative work as a key source of strain. Students are increasingly disengaged — attendance is falling and many find formal schooling boring or needlessly stressful. The authors observe that many students, particularly at secondary level, are already racing ahead of their schools by creating their own learning opportunities through technology, and that the challenge for the system is to catch up rather than push back.
The vision Caldwell and Spinks offer for the decade ahead is not a rejection of schools or teachers — it is a reorientation. Teachers remain central, but their role shifts toward facilitation and guidance as students take increasing charge of their own learning, including through curriculum flexibility, embedded assessment, and project-based collaboration that crosses local, national and international boundaries. The authors are clear that equity of access is the defining policy challenge in this transition: the same technologies that can liberate learning can also deepen disadvantage if the system does not actively close the gap.
For educators and policymakers thinking about student engagement in the middle years, this article offers a compelling frame. Disengagement is not primarily a motivation problem — it is a structural one. And the structural response is not tighter control but greater trust: in teachers to exercise genuine professional judgement, and in students to take real responsibility for their own learning.