When written, my concern was that public schools in the Northern Territory, Australia, were ‘hiding their light’. Rather, they should let it shine. My advice applies to public schools elsewhere. What do you think.

It says in the Bible that we should “never hide our light under a bushel” (Matthew 5.15). That means if we have a good story to share, we should share it.

People could be forgiven for believing that very little happens in our public school system in the Northern Territory. Stories that focus on “good news” coming from our public schools are infrequently shared in the pages of newspapers, on radio or via television.

Contrawise, stories about private school educational outcomes are far more frequent. They make good reading and certainly uphold the positive qualities of schools, staff and students about whom they are written.

I admire the forthrightness and the willingness of those within the private school sector who share their good news stories. It’s hard to believe’ on the basis of publicity, that celebratory learning takes place within the public school sector. Yet it does!

Process

A major impediment to sharing stories about what’s happening within government schools, is the process principals are required to go through in order to get good news stories into the public domain. It’s required that those wanting to share publicly have to take their story outlines to the Media and Marketing Section of the Department of Education in order to get clearance for that to happen. Story outlines going into the section then have to go through a number of internal clearance processes before Media and Marketing can authorise the school to go ahead with the item for public release. That takes time. Great news is old news before it gets into the public domain.

Policy change needed

I personally believe that anything to do with policy must always go through formal channels and processes. However, if schools have good news stories to share about what’s happening at “their place”, why should there be a hold-up to them being able to share the joy? Principals and schools should be trusted in terms of telling their stories.

There seems to be a belief within our public schooling system that all publicity is bad and should therefore be avoided! As a school leader, I never adhered to that philosophy. Rather, the schools in which I was privileged to lead and the NT Media shared many celebrations, ranging from student accomplishment to school anniversaries.

Swinstead’s Word

Many years ago the Northern Territory News Chief of Staff, Julian Swinstead, was invited to speak to a meeting of Darwin Principals on the subject of publicity. He shared two very important points with the gathering.

Mr Swinstead said that newspapers had to sell. As sensational stories, usually negative, have the potential to draw readership they had to be published. That was a question of marketing. However, print media was also interested in sharing good news stories. His second point was that media doesn’t know everything about what’s going to be happening within schools or elsewhere within the community. He told us that we (principals of schools) needed to let the media know what was happening in order to arrange coverage. His advice could also be applied in terms of radio and television outreach.

Becoming Media Savvy

There are lots of good things happening in public schools within the Northern Territory. But you wouldn’t know it! I believe it timely for our Department to consider allowing Principals to make contact with media outlets in order to arrange coverage of “good news” stories without needing to get permission for that to happen. I would encourage School Principals and others within school leadership teams to have the courage to go out and to share the positive outcomes of their schools with the Northern Territory public at large. If this happens, their schools and students will be the winners. A new, positive face to our Territory Community on public education is long overdue.