The Worrying Preoccupation with Weighing the 'Sheep'!

Global trends in education policy

I’ve recently returned from a trip to Europe where I had the chance to read British newspapers most days. Reading 'The Times' every day was like being at home reading the Sydney Morning Herald. Not because the content was the same, but because many of the articles about education covered the same topics as at home. In Britain, as in Australia and to a large extent the USA, governments, business leaders, media commentators and some parents are decrying the limitations of education systems and are planning or are implementing remarkably similar strategies. In brief, the public agenda involves a call for:

• More extensive national testing of literacy, maths and science.
• Tougher exit exams at the end of high school that provide a single mark that allows all students to be compared across the country.
• A strengthening of system-wide standardised testing of literacy at grades 3, 5 and 8, and in Britain there are plans to test 5 year-olds and include the data in school league tables.
• The publication of lists of the ‘top’ schools ranked on available cross-national data (e.g. the 'My School' website in Australia).
• Better-qualified teachers.
• Increased benchmarking against other OECD countries on the various Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.
• The introduction or strengthening of national curriculum initiatives.

The dilemma of how often to weigh sheep

Overall, the priority is on being able to measure student performance based on agreed measurable outcomes. Now, I’m not against measurable outcomes, but in education they have some limitations when compared to, say, raising sheep, or monitoring factory production. The assessment of sheep production can be monitored in varied ways. You can weigh the sheep, assess the quality of fleece, check general health signs etc. But one thing I know, as the wise Scottish sheep farmer once said, “it doesn’t matter how many times you weigh the sheep, you have to feed them if you want them to grow.”

I’m very concerned at what is happening in relation to the public debate about education where much of our energy is being spent on calls for more testing. As well, large amounts of money and time are being spent on practices which arguably contribute no more to children's growth than weighing does for the growth of sheep. The people who know most about education, the teachers, are being beaten up by farmers, policemen, lawyers, social workers, small business owners etc, because the teachers don’t want to keep ‘weighing’ their kids and limiting school programs to that which can be easily turned into items on a national test.

I’m no stranger to business and public policy, nor the needs of parents and I’ve been an adviser to PISA and other major national assessment projects in Australia for almost 20 years. I believe that testing has a place in assessment, I see the value of a national curriculum and even system wide testing. And I know that parents want and deserve clear feedback on their children’s progress at school and their performance relative to other children. You can read my post on the ‘My School’ website in Australia for a fuller discussion of some of these issues (here). However, for me, the problem with national assessment programs and the My School website is what they are unable to measure, or those things that cannot be easily measured in quantitative terms.

PISA and the performance of some nations

Prof Geoff Masters

It is worth noting that of the English speaking countries surveyed in reading literacy, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have outperformed the USA and the United Kingdom since PISA was commenced. While I won't speculate on the performance of the USA and the UK, I would offer one piece of advice, increased testing will do little to help either country, only quality teaching will help. The USA has a long history of standardised testing of reading that is well beyond anything you would have found in Australia or New Zealand, although this has increased dramatically recently. It is also worth noting that Australia’s love affair with the national testing began about ten years ago. Since then, while Australia continues to have high levels in reading literacy (we were ranked 9th of 65 countries in 2009 in the PISA results), we have seen a decline in our performance in the same period. In a recent report on Australia’s performance, Professor Geoff Masters, the Chief Executive of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) points out that:

“Australian students are still performing well above the OECD average but their results in reading literacy and mathematical literacy have declined significantly over the past few years,” 

More worryingly he points out that:

“Australia was the only high performing country to show a significant decline in reading literacy performance between PISA 2000 and PISA 2009.”

For Australian readers let me stress that our performance is still high, only six countries had significantly higher scores for their 15 year-old students. But for me a number of alarm bells are ringing.

I don’t think that the secret to a great education system, let alone a great nation, is the structuring of national school education systems to teach to tests, particularly when the tests only measure one small slice of what learning and education is about.

Professor Allan Luke commented recently on Australia’s first attempt at a National Curriculum in a paper for the Australian College of Education:

“To date, the Australian Curriculum has the hallmarks of the new generic, transnational curriculum settlement that emerged in the late 1990s as a response to new economic and social contexts. This features a focus on basic skills acquisition and a taxonomic reinstatement of canonical content knowledge in literature, science and history. It attempts to address the emergence of digital cultures and transnational economies through a complex overlay of 'new capacities' to be 'embedded', integrated and indexed against traditional basics and subject knowledge.”

I don’t agree with all that Luke says but his major point is well made. Many of our efforts to respond to a changing and more complex world, have involved cobbling a few new ideas onto traditional notions of curriculum. Schools are not factories, they are places where teachers create and lead communities of learners who inspire one another. Schools and teachers are trying to educate children for life in a world where there are greater opportunities for learning and the gaining of knowledge than at any time in human history.

The things that national testing find hard to measure

When we do assess children’s learning within our classrooms and across educational systems we need to be careful what we measure. I need to stress that I’m not criticising the quality of the PISA assessments. In fact, the tests used are the best they can possibly be. They measure what they are expected to measure well. But there are many things that the tests cannot measure (or find it difficult to measure) which are very important for individuals and nations. Here are just a few:

• Problem solving ability.
• Critical thinking.
• Creativity.
• Level of engagement, interest and motivation.
• Moral growth.
• Aesthetic and design sense and ability.
• Citizenship.
• The ability to work as part of a team.
• Leadership ability.
• Depth of knowledge in areas of great interest.
• Human sensitivity.
• Well-developed self-awareness. 

While good teachers understand that the above are very important and seek to develop them, consider what might happen to teacher behaviour if all that is seemingly valued by governments, business and lobby groups is performance on school or system wide testing. A National Curriculum like that just developed in Australia (see here) must allow, indeed encourage, the development of many of the above abilities and attributes as well as basic skills like decoding. I read a number of blogs and am part of a number of online communities. The following comment by one outstanding teacher speaks volumes for the issues at hand:

Right now I have to assess 126 items per report card times 26 children. That means 3276 check marks per tri-mester, times each tri-mester = 9728 marks. Now they want us to record it 3 different places…That doesn't count the pretesting in September or the CA60's (Cumulative Student Record Folders) and literacy folders in June.

You can hear the frustration in this teacher’s voice because as a professional she knows that her time is being soaked up ‘weighing’ the children rather than feeding them on the excitement and challenge of learning. There is a need to look closely at the quality of our schools and teachers and to ensure that they continue to do the very best they can with the children parents nurture and prepare for schooling in the first five years of life. Teachers need to be held accountable, but they also need to be left alone at times to make professional decisions. On top of this, they need our support in an age where teaching is harder and all families have higher expectations than ever before.

Other relevant posts

'Australian National English Curriculum' HERE

'My School' Website: A Blunt and Inadequate Instrument' HERE

'Multiple Intelligences' HERE

The Australian School English Curriculum

Non-Australian readers of this blog won't be aware of the move in recent times to institute a National School Curriculum in our country for the first time. Australia's parliamentary system consists of has 6 states and 2 territories, all of which have their own separate curricula in all subjects. Many Australians, especially business groups and some parents, have seen this as a problem. While it would seem to make sense to have a national curriculum the existing system of State curriculum and syllabus documents has served Australia well so teachers have been resistant to change. While there are things that could be improved in Australian schooling, such as the results achieved by Indigenous students, overall we have an enviable record in school education.

Results from the Program for International Assessment (PISA) show that the performance of Australia's secondary students in mathematics, literacy and science is outstanding.  The program is an initiative of the OECD and the 2009 program assessed 15 year old students across 68 OECD and non OECD countries in the three key curriculum areas. The PISA program assesses all three areas every 3 years and focuses on one in depth as well as assessing functional skills across the curriculum such as learning strategies, computing and problem solving. The program commenced in 2000.  Australia has ranked in the top 10 nations in all subject areas since the program commenced (here). In the last reported year (2006) we ranked 6th in Reading, 8th in Science and equal 9th in Mathematics. This places our school performance above many developed nations like the USA, UK, France, Germany,


The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has released a draft curriculum that covers English, Mathematics, Science and History.  Draft material for other curriculum areas will follow in 2011. ACARA is seeking public and professional comments on the draft materials by 23rd May 2010.

1. What does the National Draft English Curriculum look like?

The Draft Consultation Document for English K-10 curriculum is organised around three interrelated strands. The draft document describes them as follows:

Language: The Language strand involves the development of a coherent, dynamic and evolving body of knowledge about the English language and how it works.

Literature: Students learn to interpret, appreciate, evaluate and create literary texts such as narrative, poetry, prose, plays, film and multimodal texts, in spoken, print and digital/online contexts,

Literacy: Students apply their English skills and knowledge to read, view, speak, listen to, write and create a growing repertoire of texts.

The document commences with a brief half-page rationale and then an even smaller section on aims preface the content descriptions. This is then followed by a brief paragraph description of the three strands and short statements and introductions to the achievement standards, what is meant by texts, grammar, spelling, handwriting, English as an additional language dialect, general capabilities expected, and cross curricula activities.

The major part of the document consists of the Content Descriptions organised by grade (Kindergarten to Grade 10) and within the three strands (language, literature, literacy) and the Achievement Standards.

2. Some Things I like about the Draft

a) The place of literature - One of the best things about the draft curriculum is that it has identified literature as worthy of its own strand. Readers of this blog will appreciate why I see this as so important. While literacy is very much a multimodal activity today, with varied online forms of literacy and increased emphasis on images on video and film, literature is still vital. As I have outlined previously (here) narrative has special significance and literature is a key way for children to learn about language and the world (here & here).

b) An emphasis on language - Having a special strand for language is good, although as I will comment below the current language section is a little limited (see below). Language must never become just an object of study (although close study of language is important). As Michael Halliday taught us, we need to recognise that children need to learn language, learn through language and learn about language. It's good, for example, to see greater emphasis on grammar (as one aspect of language), but the way it is included in the content descriptions is problematic (see below).

c) Content descriptions are generally good  - They are reflective of what teachers do in classrooms, and seem overall to be age appropriate, although there are issues with sequencing across the grades (see below). The Achievement Standards are also generally consistent with common practice. Some teachers will struggle to apply grade rather than stage standards but parents want grade level standards.

d) Elaborations - I liked the elaborations that gave added depth to the curriculum and enabled the content descriptions to be understandable, frankly without them some content is less meaningful. For example, in the Literature strand of the Kindergarten content descriptions we read under the heading 'Recognise and Responding' that our programs might encourage children to "Recognise and respond to familiar literary texts". This doesn't mean much until the 'Elaborations' are added:

• accessing a range of texts to listen to, read, view and browse independently
• choosing and revisiting texts
• explaining preferences for texts
• bringing favourite texts from home to share and discuss, including texts from their own culture
• recognising familiar texts. This may include oral traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples represented in art forms (eg dot paintings).

3. Things that are problematic

I have a variety of concerns with the draft curriculum but these are the most significant ones:

a) An inadequate rationale - While the Curriculum has a rationale and assumes that various State syllabus documents will sit beneath it and will offer much practical guidance and direction, the curriculum lacks an adequate description of teaching and learning. This is imperative to ensure that the implementation of the curriculum is done well. As the document stands it has an implied pedagogy that might well be misinterpreted as a fragmented curriculum based on 3 separate strands, each with many separate elements to be taught. This is in contrast to what we should be communicating; that is, while English has three strands, we must not lose sight of its integrated nature. The elaborations do not have this same implied pedagogy and are much richer in their interpretation of what English is. I'd like to see a simple (and strong) introduction to the curriculum that stresses that language is not simply a set of discrete strands that can be taught in decontextualised ways. Grammar, for example is not taught well as a series of isolated activities. Rather, grammar is best acquired as children use language in all its forms and as teachers give direction and content that helps them to understand how the English language works.

b) Lack of attention to creativity - While there is brief mention in the 'General Capabilities' section at the introduction to the Curriculum, and the non-mandatory elaborations show evidence of the importance of creativity and imagination, it is lacking in the content descriptions and the rationale.

c) Lack of recognition of first-hand experience - The curriculum content also fails to recognise that first-hand experience has significant power to stimulate learning, especially with the young. Experience stimulates language use and at the same time provides real purposes for learning.

d) Emphasis on enjoyment and love of language - Children need to love learning and see English language as more than just a tool. There is a lack of emphasis in the content descriptions on enjoyment, loving literature, playing with language, experimentation etc.   While it is more evident in the elaborations these are not a mandated part of the curriculum.

e) A lack of evidence of purpose and audience - Literacy has a number of important purposes (e.g. learning, communication, enjoyment and expression) and is used with varied audiences in mind (e.g. self, teachers, examiners, friends, employers etc). All these need to be seen and stressed in the curriculum content. To allow purpose and audience to be submerged in a curriculum is to run the risk that English will be used and taught as an isolated school subject disconnected from wider learning. If this happens, children end up simply 'learning about language', rather than being active language users 'learning through language' and applying it for varied real life purposes.

f) There is a lack of sequence across the grades - The curriculum content lacks a consistent sequence across the grades. The writers need to trace every content description across the grades to make sure that the progression is logical and consistent with what we know about children's development. As a simple test, readers might try to track (for example) 'listening and talking', 'Writing' and 'Reading' in the respective strands of Language, Literature and Literacy across the grades. You will find that at times these disappear in specific grades, or that there is inappropriate progression. This aspect of the curriculum needs a lot of work.

g) The language section is very passive and fragmented - There are at least two problems in the language section. First, in listing all elements of grammar in this section it might well imply that it needs to be taught as a series of lessons rather than in the context of language use. Second, the description of language elements fails to tap the important integration of language and its power to amuse, challenge. rebuke, hurt, express love, ridicule and so on. Language teaching should be more than simply isolated elements of instruction in grammar, vocabulary, phonics and word knowledge and text structure as the content descriptions suggest.  While I'm not suggesting that the writers of the Curriculum are suggesting this, the way the content is described could well be interpreted in this way. Once again, the 'elaborations' help but they aren't mandatory!

h) Cultural Diversity - The Curriculum Rationale makes the statement that it "places an emphasis on understanding the cultures of Asia". This seems muddle-headed to me. While Asia is important to Australia and many immigrants have become citizens after arriving from Asia, surely our aim should be to encourage our children to have a broad understanding of the whole world and its people and cultures. They also need to have tolerance and understanding of all the ethnic groups who have joined us and a special understanding of our British and Indigenous foundations of Australian culture.


4. In Conclusion

Overall, I feel that the curriculum writers have done a reasonable job within the constraints that they have been given. With further revision and the linking of existing state syllabi, teachers will find the curriculum to be workable.

5. How can you comment on the Curriculum?

If you'd like to comment on the curriculum you need to go to the ACARA website (before the 23rd May 2010), register, explore the curriculum and then respond.