by 
Over decades of work in schools across the globe, Spensley Street Primary School remains my favorite school. I have been privileged to spend time at the school for thirty years. In a perfect world, every child would be blessed with the quality and spirit of SSPS. It is truly exceptional.
I warn visitors to SSPS that what they’re about to see does not exist. “It is impossible.” Unfazed and unbowed by the latest fads or hysteria, Spensley Street Primary School has stuck to its principles of multi-age, project-based, interdisciplinary learning as a community for generations. Spensley Street Primary School is based on the principles of open education and remains a vital “open plan” school, a bogeyman that has been a cynical punchline of lazy education critics for decades.
This is quite simply a miracle, rooted in principle, community, powerful pedagogical practices, and reverence for childhood. At a time of rising anxiety among children and about childhood, SSPS remains a great, safe, and joyous place to be a kid. There is no need for guards, tutors, therapy, attendance-raising schemes, or wellness rhetoric when kids attend a school where they feel seen, heard, and respected. Children run to Spensley Street, not from it.
SSPS is a special place. Parents are welcome on campus and viewed as partners, not enemies of the enterprise. School administrators not only know each child, but also the footy side they barrack for. The school’s annual fete attracts generations of alumni, parents, and neighbours to celebrate a school they love and ensure that it has the resources required to flourish.
Political demagogues trying to score political points by attacking “open education” or advocating for joyless authoritarian classroom gimmicks should visit Spensley Street Primary School to learn how a democracy prepares children to thrive in an uncertain future.
It would be foolish to mistake the fact that children who love learning at Spensley Street suffer a lack of academic achievement. I know successful adults working in the private and public sector who are proud Spensley Street graduates. Kids from Spensley Street go on to flourish at fine high schools and top universities. The student agency at the center of the SSPS experience prepares learners to lead and succeed. Best of all, SSPS students are happy, kind, literate, generous, playful, and socially conscious.
One extraordinary tradition at Spensley Street is the biennial student musical. Year Six students write, compose, cast, rehearse, design, and perform an original musical in which every single student, P-6, participate. My longtime dream of seeing the musical for myself was realized in 2023. The musical was not only cute, but it was also good – very good. It was clever, witty, timely, poignant, thoughtful, and moving. After a 14-hour flight, the SSPS musical held my attention. SSPS students take great pride in the musical, sing its classmate-composed songs long after the performance, and create sophisticated art generating memories to last a lifetime.
I was delighted to share video of the SSPS musical with my five- and seven-year-old grandchildren who not only watched a 90-minute play entirely produced by primary grade students they never met, but they sang songs from the musical during their bath.
The world would be a better place if my grandchildren and every other kid could enjoy the gift of a Spensley Street Primary School education. It is the gold standard by which every other school should be compared. Victoria should cherish and protect this public jewel for generations to come.
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.