There has been a great deal of discussion over here in Australia about educational reform. I thought these thoughts maybe of interest to local and international readers. Given that we are heading into an election year this year we have the federal politicians presenting their education policies…. For those that don’t know we have a separate education system for each state here in OZ. That basically means there are 7 different curriculum boards etc… This has always been an issue in a nation that has a fairly transient population (everyone is moving to my town – Gold Coast).
The first issue that I would like to share some thoughts on is the argument of having 1 national curriculum. In this day and age there is a need to have a nation wide curriculum that is designed and created by a national representation of educators. While I am a fan of having a national curriculum I certainly can’t see our politicians getting it right. In fact it bugs me that decisions on education and what/how students will be learning are made by politicians who have little to no experience in the field. If I hear or read another article quoting a politician saying that “In my day we did….. and it worked well.” That just rings alarm bells with me. Sure maybe there are particular things from the past that we should look at in education reform, however, students today and the learning environment (just to name a few) are completely different. You are not going to make an impact by changing the school system to something that resembles a system of the 1950’s. The chart below tells us so much on what effect school is having on our students. I grabbed this off the US Apple Education site…. I don’t think students here in Australia would be too different to this….
Better still, why don’t these national political committees that are setup actually ask students what they want and look at how the students are best learning. However, I guess that wouldn’t be popular because the students can’t vote!! How about addressing the problems of the increased number of young enthusiastic teachers (the ones that connect with students) who are leaving the profession in droves. Perhaps that may answer a few questions around educational reform?
Some weeks ago I was angered to read an article in our paper that suggested that we needed to bring back streaming of classes based on academic performance. Our state education minister believed this was a great idea and was going to extend the bright minds of our state and help the students who are struggling. What annoyed me more than the fact that the research done in this area actually proves this is a failed method of teaching, was that the only other opinion sorted by the paper was that of the chairman of the Parents and Citizens group!! Oh my we are going to let parents and politicians tell us how to run schools. Imagine for a moment what that would look like?!!?!?!?
When I hear the thoughts of national standarised testing coming into this country I also cringe. All we have to do is look over to our friends in the US and realise that these systems only create students who become good (or not so good) at recalling facts. Once again, an idea from our politicians. When will our decision makers realise that a complex system such as the educational process will not fit neatly into a little box. The workers of the future need to have skills that are much more demanding than being able to recall facts.
I am going to expand on this further in the near future…. Thoughts????
On another note… Still looking for a new job…. On the bright side, I have more time for study and my blog!! 
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Although grabbing a US statistic based graph and using it to representative of Aussie student perspective could be seen to be contradictory to your assertion that we are not as standardised test based as the US, you raise some excellent points. I actually think that all state education departments should beat the government to the punch and collectively draw up a strategy and a timeline for a national curriculum so that is constructed by educators, not politicians. Most of the discussion could centre around evening out the differences as the media keeps pointing out to us the replication in the different states’ frameworks. The fly in the ointment could be WA which has recently ditched an outcomes-based curriculum which might put it at odds with everyone else. If this doesn’t occur then we run the risk of the government imposing it and creating the national curriculum using the Minister’s handpicked “experts” (like Kevin Donnelly) as the guiding lights. Then we truly run the risk of sliding down the international scale and joining the US in actively moving away from the useful skills for the 21st century.
Thanks for the thoughts Graham. See your point with the use of the graph. I am not sure though how long the standardised testing scheme has been running in the US. These stats where only as late as 2000. When I was there last year I was told that standardised testing had only recently been introduced accross the board. I am not sure how true that is but I think the graph still demonstrates a decrease in student intrest in school.
I am also going to have a look at the new WA system you have mentioned. Could be interesting….
Thanks again,
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