I agree that systems thinking is a much better lens through which observe and explain how complex organisations such as schools 'work'.
One problem is that those who set up and 'run' these systems are prisoners of a view of learning , knowledge, and science that grew out of the worst features of objectivist epistemology and behavioural psychology.
( PS Do the French call those who are responsible for the pastoral care 'principle' or 'principal' tutors? It's an important distinction)

What I learned from Sydney Selective High School and from work experience in electronics design and testing in the UK:

1. Schools like life are competitive. Kids whose parents are successful have an interest in sabotaging other kids learning. There are many ways apart from direct bullying that this is achieved. Teachers are easily embroiled. It makes their duties easier and less complex if they only have to teach rich kids with POWERFUL parents who $donate. Its no figment, I lived through this.

2.Knowledge, even at basic high school levels is a COMMODITY and the best WORKED EXAMPLES in any subject are closely guarded by teachers and students alike. If everyone is taught all the tricks of the trade, there is no KUDOS for students or teachers. The Internet version is book publishers like SPRINGER. Any REAL working knowledge of school courses (or University subject matter) involves extra curricular text books that cost far too much for libraries (Fisher Library is appalling), let alone students. In one stroke this makes the INTERNET and Libraries massive intellectual wastelands. All the good stuff is for sale and what is left is not coherent enough to be effective in learning Curriculum subjects. IE stuff is missing unless you can pay big money!

3. In the UK, in academia and in most companies, boffins rule. BOFFINS share their skills in such a way that the working out of a problem is OBSCURE, the answer is SIMPLE and you therefore must worship THEM and not the intellectual material.
The UK is RIFE with this . It is SOP (standard operating procedure). In large part promulgated by the Peerage to protect Class boundaries.
Australia's version is less emphatic but it exists.
In Work you can simply change companies regularly to skirt this. But by the time YOU become a boffin, You don't want to share knowledge either! School students CANNOT change schools - they get stuck with low self esteem and essentially pass exams but intellectually drop out.

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These problems can be partly overcome but KEEP IT SIMPLE!

Keep schools as-is but with ONE maths TUTOR for each form. Maths is EVERYTHING. It IMPACTS every subject.

The way to teach it in HIGH Schools is rearranging the well exampled but CLUMSY Coroneos curricula. It teaches 3D geometry without a lien on Vectors, Inverse functions as a patchwork of unfathomability and differential equations as only pertaining to motion you get out of a string or a ball with no explanation of how dv/dt becomes d/dx(1/2v^2). Coroneos also eschews mnemonic learning. He never understood that to 'GET' math you have to OWN it in your head so you can toss it around. You can ONLY do that with Mnemonics.

So a maths mnemonics teacher for each form, a reorganisation of the order in which topics are treated and a brief but realistic seguay into university real- world & Applied Mathematics concepts & terminology is whats required.

3 benefits are:

1. Students will create more indelible mnemonics than teachers. The competitiveness involved will run counter to the current 'exclusivity of learning' and enrich the body mnemonic for generations of students to come.

2. Every student's Mnemonic memory can be reinforced easily by parents and tested rapidly by the Tutor.

3. Math makes minds agile. Agile minds want to read. At the end of the day READING is everything. The UK universities don't have students - They have "READERS in subject" .....

Good ideas are continuously being recycled - been there done that. But rather than sounding like a tired old cynic I would just point to this - the problem with school organization is the one size fits all approach. VT will work well with some kids but all? I doubt it. The same will go for any other method of organizing schools. The only thing that works a 100% is programmes that are tailored to individual needs - yet these programmes are beyond any system for they would be far too expensive. (Reason - it would require more teachers - I have run very successfull individually structured programmes but I was working with just 8 students - with 8 I was working twice as hard as I would have with a class of 30)

Kaep,

I do not often find myself in agreement with you but with regard to teaching I agree. Maths starting with basic arithematic learning by rote is essential. Mathematics is the basis of everything western. Reading does follow.

I disagree on other things though ... from personnal experience ... the current systems are fine what is lacking is parental involvement. Not just in the overseeing of and involvement in the day to day learning but in understanding, guiding and accepting responsibility for the overall education of each individual child. That should not be a job for, nor left exclusively for the teacher, the school or the education system.

...Quite frankly, it is time to abandon the mass education concept completely. Of course, this will be an unsupported concept in these pages where the priority is personal professional advancement...

diver dan that too has been tried - Ivan Illich and the Deschooling movement - I am sure there are still lots of us out there who believe he was/is right but governments are reluctant to go down that track but there are plenty professionals who are committed to education and see that as the only way to go.