Task Force: Design Your Own Education System

Congratulations!

You have been assigned to a board of leaders for a sovereign country with a diverse population of citizens. This is a new nation that you are creating from the ground up, so as a board of leaders, you are faced with creating an educational system for your country. What would an ideal education system look like in this country? Your task is to collaborate as a group to design the educational system of your country. 

Why Are We Doing This?:

Various countries have different education systems. Here, we want you to think about an ideal education system based off of what you may already know about some of these systems and perhaps even do some brief research beyond your preexisting knowledge. Try to analyze what systems seem to be working most effectively (student satisfaction, drop-out rates, pursuing higher education, etc). Decide what factors you think best represent a properly functioning educational system.

Steps:

1. With your group, compile a list of all the features of your new education system that your board of leaders can agree on. 
   1. What laws, policies, or regulations will you have? Will education be mandatory? Free? Is education considered a right or a privilege?
   2. How much funding would you give to the education system? What kind of resources would you allocate to the education institutions? Who would be paying for the books, school resources, and salaries of school employees? 
   3. Will you give different funds to different schools? Or will all schools receive the same amount of funding? Will the funding be based on any measurement, such as test scores? Will all schools have the same quality of education to offer? 
   4. What would the schools look like? How many students would attend each school? How would school be divided (age, grade level,etc)? When should students start going to school? How long should students be in school each day? 
   5. What would classrooms look like? How big would class sizes be, and what would be the ideal ratio of students to teachers? What is the classroom community like? Are there rules or policies that must be followed on the local level in every school? Do schools and classrooms have any freedom to create their own rules or policies? 
   6. What would it be like to be a student in the new educational system? How is it decided which students go to which schools? Is it based on location? 
2. Consider the ways in which your education system serves various citizens of your country. 
3. Discuss with the group your ideal visions for education in society. Try to convince them that your vision is ideal for students’ needs and wants.

Things to Keep in Mind:

•   You do not have to come up with an exhaustive list of features for your education system. It’s better to come up with a few that you feel most confident defending. 
•   You don’t have to worry about answering all possible objections, but you should have some defense of why you think your reasons are more important.