Bad education I can chalk up to experience
Planned changes to Australia's educational philosophy have been tried overseas before, and failed, writes Christopher Bantick.
The debate over what and how primary aged children should be taught is gaining momentum. There is a division between the supporters of outcomes-based education and those who covet a return to a formalised, prescribed traditional curriculum.
Outcomes-based education is an approach to schooling based on the philosophy that every child can achieve in any subject at his or her own level. This may take time, and generally students are not assessed through externally set tests.
With a formal syllabus courses are predetermined, content is mandated and a series of tests, usually externally set, measure achievement against predetermined benchmarks.
The release of a Federal Government initiated report last week has brought the issue to the foreground. The report is unambiguous: outcomes education has failed to deliver the kind of education achievement that assures sound understanding in three key areas: mathematics, science and English.
By comparing Australian states and the Northern Territory with Britain, Singapore and California, the report suggests that Australian primary education is not delivering on internationally standards.
Nationally, Victoria's primary science curriculum in physics achieves the equal lowest ranking with Tasmania. In mathematics, the result is marginally better with Victoria sharing a ranking of two stars, out of a possible four, with Queensland, NSW and Western Australia. In English, Victoria is equal lowest with Tasmania for academic content.
As concerning as these results may be, is this reason enough to abandon outcomes-based education and adopt a prescribed curriculum? Federal Schools Minister Brendan Nelson is in no doubt. He has condemned the outcomes-based approach and called for a more concise, prescriptive syllabus for teachers to teach from, and parents understand.
Central to a standard syllabus are basic skills and a belief that all primary-aged children must incrementally build on a preordained and essential content base. This is duly assessed and a standard established. If students fail, they are expected to repeat the tests until they reach the desired level, before they move on to the next level.
The assumption is that a prescribed syllabus will ensure improved standards. This is not so. I taught the national curriculum in England when it was introduced almost 20 years ago. The results were immediate and palpable. What the prescribed curriculum did in England was immediately reduce teacher creativity and independence. This would be mirrored in Australia.
Moreover, achievement standards under the national curriculum in England, according to Professor Peter Tymms, director of Durham University's Curriculum Evaluation and Management Centre, have stalled. "Standards of reading between 1995 and 2004 have hardly moved," he said in August this year.
Much has been made of a more teacher-centred approach to delivering a standard syllabus. The cost of this is that teachers become functionaries in delivering a prescribed course and administering tests. To deliver a prescribed course undermines the status of teachers. In simple terms, it suggests they are not to be trusted to teach and determine what children need at particular times of their education.
Then there is the question of assessment. A standard syllabus has as its centrepiece testing to measure progress in prescribed skills and content. These results in turn can be used, as they have been in England, to identify what are deemed to be failing schools and to determine pass rates and teaching proficiency. A good thing? Hardly.
What a standard syllabus, linked to formal testing or benchmarking standards, does not recognise is that children learn at different rates and in different ways. They may simply not be able to respond to a lock-step approach to curriculum delivery, let alone be tested on their skills or knowledge at specific times.
Perhaps what is more cause for unease over a standard syllabus is the sleeper of inspection. England has a formal inspectorate under the mantle of Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education. A standard syllabus would require an inspectorate to ensure that the aims of a given syllabus are being taught in a particular way. More than this, Brendan Nelson in June this year also made it clear that he thought students could also have a role in reporting on their teachers.
Imposing a standard syllabus would result in schools becoming over-administered. Teachers would be required to report on their progress with the syllabus, undertake testing at the end of each topic, and send in results to a government body for review. They would also suffer the stultifying sense of classroom conformity. Not a way to get the best out of teachers, or their students.
Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer who in the
1980s taught English under Britain's national curriculum.
David Broadbent returns next week.