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Perth, |
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It's a nightmare for teachers
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Anne Christie ("OBE going well at Churchlands High", POST letters, 4/2) has some misconceptions of what OBE, WA-style, actually is. The heart and soul of OBE is that it does not have a syllabus. The whole concept is that teachers are free to choose content which allows them to achieve the outcome. While one history teacher is able to choose The Russian Revolution to achieve the outcomes, the next can pick the history of Princess Di. I would encourage parents to go to the documents on the Curriculum Council website and take a look for themselves at these so-called specific outcomes and achievement targets. Parents who do so will then begin to have some idea of the vague, woolly edubabble that teachers have to wade through to design their teaching programs. On the other hand, on the same site, parents are able to go to the current tertiary entrance courses and see the very specific syllabus documents that teachers currently use. I am sure parents will find the differences remarkable. OBE has been tried in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, and while programs are defined in terms of outcomes (and there is nothing remarkable in that, as our current TEE programs have cognitive outcomes, affective outcomes and content outcomes), the assessment is norm-referenced. I downloaded last year's NSW HSC mathematics examination papers, and they are not that different at all to the current papers we set in mathematics here in WA. The students sit the examination and obtain a mark, which is then combined with a school mark to create a ranking. Exactly the same as it is here. The teachers in NSW do not have to worry about the ludicrous levelling process teachers here are being forced to comply with. These states went through this pain more than a decade ago and have thrown it out in favour of a norm-referenced, standards approach to their education. What is more, in NSW, it has just been mandated that a specific number of hours of each primary school year be devoted to English, maths, science and society and environment, with specific learning targets to be achieved at the end of each year. Or in other words, a syllabus. You would be struggling to find a common syllabus in these areas of study in primary schools in WA. I am at a loss as to how Anne thinks the benchmark tests, WA Literacy and Numeracy Assessment and Monitoring Standards in Education, represent OBE. These assessments are "one-off" benchmark tests of dubious integrity and validity. They actually provide schools with marks which are anathema to the OBE brigade. Finally, I think Churchlands are to be congratulated on their excellent Year 12 results, not only for last year but over many years. The school has been an outstanding success story for many years. However, in case Anne hasn't realised, and that is amazing considering she appears to teach there, the TEE is a syllabus-based, norm-referenced system. This is at the opposite end of curriculum systems to OBE. Greg Williams |
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