What Would We Build If School Didn't Exist?

A couple of years ago, I found myself sitting around a table with some of Australia's most talented architects at Hayball. They were working on the design of a new, purpose-built community, created around the needs and culture of the people who would live there, and we were talking about where a school might fit within it.

It was an unusual opportunity. There was no existing school site to work around, no ageing buildings or inherited footprint determining what could go where. The community itself was being imagined from the ground up.

As we talked, I remember looking at what was already being designed into it: aged care, health services, social and wellbeing spaces, fitness facilities, businesses and shared community spaces.

I asked what seemed to me like a fairly obvious question.

Why do we need to build a school?

What if this whole community was the school?

I remember Hayball Principal, Richard Leonard, looking at me for a moment, surprised by my question. What seemed to catch his attention wasn't simply the idea itself, but that it had come from an educator. I had spent my entire career inside schools, yet for that moment, I had managed to strip away the structures we so easily assume have to be there and start with a blank canvas.

I can't remember Richard's exact words, so I won't pretend I can. But his response was something along the lines of, "That's not the response we usually hear from educators. I'm liking this. Let's keep this idea going."

That moment has stayed with me because it was the first time I felt what it was like to stop redesigning school and instead ask a more fundamental question: if we were starting again, what would we design for learning?

It is much harder than it sounds.

I've spent more than 20 years in education, as a teacher, school leader, principal and consultant. Yet when I try to imagine education without school, I inevitably start putting school back. Teachers. Classes. Subjects. A timetable. Somewhere for everyone to arrive in the morning.

Before long, I've rebuilt the thing I was supposed to be imagining without.

Our understanding of school is so deeply embedded that many of its structures no longer feel like design decisions. They simply feel like the way education works.

So what happens if we try, just for a moment, to erase them?

Imagine there is no school to redesign. There are children and young people growing up in 2026. There is knowledge accumulated over generations that we want to pass on. There are families, communities, cultures, technologies and environments. There are people with expertise and experience. There is a world these young people will need to understand, participate in and eventually shape.

Now design learning.

Would they need to arrive somewhere at roughly the same time each morning and leave in the afternoon? Would learning happen five days a week? Would most of it happen in one place?

Maybe it would. Schools provide routine, relationships and belonging, and they allow families and communities to function in ways we shouldn't dismiss. But if those arrangements didn't already exist, would we land on exactly the same ones?

That community I was imagining with the architects still makes me wonder. Perhaps young people would spend some of their time in a dedicated learning space, but they might also learn in the health centre, alongside local businesses, in creative and sporting spaces, in natural environments or with older people living in the community.

We often talk about creating opportunities for students to experience the "real world". On a blank canvas, I'm not sure we'd separate the two quite so much.

Then there is grouping.

Would the year someone was born determine who they learn with and what they learn next?

Age matters. A six-year-old and a sixteen-year-old have different developmental needs. But within those broad stages, perhaps young people would sometimes learn with others who were ready for the same challenge, interested in the same problem or bringing different knowledge to a shared project.

If year levels didn't already exist, I'm not convinced we'd invent them exactly as they are.

And then we reach a harder question: what do young people need to learn?

If we weren't starting with existing curriculum documents or subjects, what would we decide every young person should know and understand?

There is knowledge I would put straight back onto the canvas. Language, mathematics, science, history, culture, health, technology and an understanding of society and the natural world all matter. Instant access to information hasn't changed that. If anything, AI and the sheer volume of information available to us make knowledge and judgement more necessary. You need to know enough to question what you're seeing, connect ideas and recognise when something doesn't add up.

But I would also want to ask what young people need to be able to do with that knowledge.

The OECD's Learning Compass 2030 brings knowledge, skills, attitudes and values together with student agency and the capacity to act in unfamiliar situations. UNESCO has also called for education systems to reconsider how learning is organised and the relationships between learners, teachers, knowledge and the wider world.

Neither hands us a model to copy. They ask us to reconsider some of the assumptions underneath the model we already have.

Then there is the question of who young people would learn with and from.

This is where I find the blank canvas particularly challenging, because I'm not sure I would automatically put the role of "teacher" back in the way we know it today.

I would want young people surrounded by people who understand how learning happens. People who know how to ask the right question, recognise when someone is stuck, provide challenge at the right moment, connect ideas, offer feedback and open doors to knowledge and experiences a young person might never find alone.

But I'm increasingly interested in whether we need to think less about teachers and more about masterful learners.

These might include the people we currently call teachers, and many teachers already work in exactly this way. But on a blank canvas, why would we limit the people who support learning to one profession?

I keep returning to that community with its aged care, health services, businesses and shared spaces. Imagine the people already within it. An engineer, artist, nurse, tradesperson, entrepreneur, Elder, researcher, parent or retired professional. Each brings knowledge and experience, as well as the opportunity for young people to see what learning looks like beyond school.

Perhaps the adults around young people would take on different roles at different times. Sometimes they would explicitly teach. Sometimes they would mentor, coach, question, demonstrate, connect or work alongside them. Sometimes they would be learning too.

That last possibility interests me. If we want young people to become capable lifelong learners, perhaps they need to spend more time around adults who are visibly learning, rather than only adults positioned as the people who already know.

Maybe the blank canvas doesn't need us to ask how we bring more people from the community into school. Maybe it asks us to reconsider who gets to be part of a young person's education in the first place.

Assessment gets interesting too.

If nobody had invented report cards, percentages, A to E grades or end-of-semester exams, how would we know what a young person understood and could do? How would they know? How would we identify what they needed next and decide when they were ready to move on?

I don't have an alternative education system sitting in my back pocket. That's not what this exercise is about.

Human-centred design asks us to understand the people we're designing for before we become attached to the solution. Education makes that difficult because we are designing from inside a system we know intimately. We know school so well that even when we set out to transform it, we often begin with the structures already there.

We aren't usually starting with a blank canvas. We're renovating.

That's why the conversation with Richard and the Hayball team has stayed with me. For a short time, I wasn't trying to improve the school I already knew. I could question whether some of its most familiar features needed to be there at all.

But perhaps a blank canvas doesn't have to be reserved for those rare moments when someone hands you an empty site and asks what you would build.

We can create one inside existing schools too.

The next time we're trying to change something, perhaps we resist starting with, "How could we improve this?"

Instead, erase the existing solution for a moment and ask, "What need are we trying to meet?"

Then design from there.

If we're reconsidering assessment, don't begin with how we could improve our assessment model. Ask what we need in order to know what a young person understands, where they are growing and what they need next. Then see what you design when tests, assignments, grades and reports aren't automatically part of the answer. What evidence would you look for? Who would need to see it? What would the young person need from it?

If we're looking at the timetable, don't begin by moving periods around. Ask what young people need their time to look like for learning to happen well. Start with the learning rather than the grid. How much time does this experience need? When do young people need intense focus, collaboration, movement, independence or a break? Only then ask what structure could support it.

If we're thinking about teaching, don't begin with how we allocate teachers. Ask who and what young people need around them to learn. Perhaps that includes teachers, but don't put them back automatically. Who needs to be there at different points? A mentor? An expert? A coach? Someone from the community? Someone learning alongside them? Start with what the young person needs, then decide who is best placed to provide it.

We may work through those questions and put some of the existing structures straight back.

That's okay.

There is a difference between keeping something because it has always been there and choosing it because, after questioning it, we still believe it is the best way to serve the young people we're designing for.

So here's my challenge.

Pick one thing.

Assessment. Timetables. Year levels. Subjects. Teacher roles. Learning spaces.

For a moment, erase it.

Don't ask how you would improve it. Ask what need it exists to meet, then imagine how you would meet that need if the current solution had never existed.

You might put it straight back.

But you might not.