An education revolution – which way education reform?
Media comment on the Government’s planned national curriculum being implemented for English, maths, science and history in 2011 remains contentious following the Government’s launch of its draft curriculum details.
The draft curriculum covers K – Year 10 study. A further draft curriculum for these subjects for Years 10 – 12 students will be released ‘later in the year.’
It is not the purpose of this blog to examine the minutia of curriculum choice and text selection for each study subject. Education experts will pore over those details ad nausea.
As previously predicted a range of competing views and interests will be espoused to The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) which prepared the draft and is responsible for its school implementation.
One thing is certain from the ACARA proposals – as with the Government’s possible health care and hospital management changes and its bungled implementation and management of its home insulation and energy proficiency schemes – the Government is pursuing a number of broadly similar outcomes:
i) Greater power and control of schools will be a natural outcome of the ACARA curriculum program however the nuances of the final subject curriculum evolve.
Possible centralised control of hospitals can be seen in bureaucratic overload – and across-the-states duplication – that adds avoidable costs to the public purse. Sydney’s area health scheme is beset with bureaucratic red tape and mind-numbing administration
In the same way Julie Gillard proposes to close poorly performing schools will the Rudd Government close down inefficient hospitals? The action/response by the Government to both these enormous funding recipients is chillingly similar.
While the Federal Government will argue the national curriculum will avoid state differences in teaching – helpful to the anticipated 80,000 students who relocate to different states each year – its outcome should be directed more towards the millions of primary and secondary school students affected by the changes.
Will the federal government acquiesce to state’s individuality regarding education administration? Not likely.
Will the federal government require massive administrative oversight to manage a national curriculum across 9,600 Australian schools? More than likely.
How will this administrative burden be handled? What will it cost? What will be the new relationships between state and federal education administration and administrators? How will respective state teacher unions respond to Canberra's directives? These and other questions on curriculum implementation processes remain unanswered.
ii) Centralisation and standardisation will automatically follow the national curriculum implementation.
While a one size fits all approach might provide a modelled management objective it will inexorably fail at the level of implementation simply because schools and students differ, both in regional dimensions but also in academic ability and attainment
As a nation do we want major public services such as education and health centralised in Canberra? As the federal government unexorably moves to control financial resourcing what role do the states play in educational input and regional diversity?
Throw in the complexity of teacher competence, differences in learning ability and the vexed issue of student selectivity means schools face a fruit salad of effective learning options that cannot be adequately accommodated with a single curriculum pattern.
It is highly likely schools will cherry-pick their optimal curiculum options to achieve their most effective learning outcomes. The passionfruit pips of poor performance will remain in the bottom of the curriculum bowl.
iii) The Government and the Education Minister are inexorably committed to equity in education which, in turn, is driven by the mantra of public accountability of individual schools and ultimately the teaching profession.
Cross school comparisons are generally of limited value and usually highly odious either to the school or the sector being compared.
iv) Education is broadly conceived as creating a democratic, equitable and just society where student outcomes highlight qualities of successful learning to create informed and active people who will develop an interest in life-long learning.
The Minister has continually failed to mention such individualised learning outcomes, preferring to couch the ACARA directives in economic overtones where skills are developed for ‘globalised economies.’
Rather than strengthening learning for learning’s sake students are being regarded as economic monotones, workers and contributors towards a more equitable society. Education clearly generates social and economic outcomes but the inherent individuality of the learning process should not be submerged in such impersonal 'evidence-based' outcomes.
The fact that the Government’s BER injection was implemented primarily to stimulate economic recover and sustain construction employment levels during the global economic downturn testifies to the Government’s short -run intentions regarding its school infrastructure injection.
v) Any government that trumpets its MySchool NAPLAN results runs the risk of alienating and disenfranchising the very institutions it purports to support.
Similarly building human capital and focussing on ‘work skill’ development may not necessarily lead to successful schooling and the best learning outcomes for all students, an issue that directly relates to learning differences and academic ability across school cohorts.
Community discussion and debate on the national curriculum will more than likely be debased to discussions on which text will be learnt and what level of political correctness will be pursued.
Witness the illogical response from the shadow Minister for Education who rebuked the government initiative for failing to recognise King John's Magna Carta in learning verses the more modern application of indigenous and Asian cultural implications involving historical analysis.
Such low common denominator assessment will result in lowest common denominator outcomes for the nation’s primary and secondary students.
Our young people deserve better responses than offered by such trivialisation.
All Australians should demand higher aspirations regarding curriculum improvement than are currently being demonstrated in national education debate.
An announcement of the draft National Schools Curriculum was released by the Prime Minister and the Education Minister The Hon Julia Gillard, 1 March 2010. It can be read on the following site: http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_100302_082635.aspx
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