By Pat Byrne President
A draft National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) is in the
process of being prepared for consideration by state and territory education
ministers in September this year.
The NSRA is an agreement which determines the amount of
federal funding each state and territory will receive; the specifics of this
agreement arise from the findings and recommendations of the Review to Achieve
Excellence in Australian Schools (2018), the Independent Review into Regional,
Rural and Remote Education (2018) and the Optimising STEM Industry – School
Partnerships: Inspiring Australia’s Next Generation.
The content of these three reports, if fully implemented,
represents a radical overhaul of school education in Australia.
While some aspects of the reports have the potential for positive
changes, there is much about which teachers should be concerned.
The pace at which the changes are to be implemented, coupled
with the fact that these changes are being driven, not by education departments
in consultation with the profession, but by statutory authorities – the
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AiTSL) and the
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (neither of which has
any responsibility for the way in which curriculum is taught in classrooms or
reported to parents) represents a direct attack on teachers’ professional
space.
A list of National Policy Initiatives, presented to state
and territory ministers in June, makes it clear that the big decisions have
already been made.
These include:
• The development of learning progressions and
formative assessment across all Australian Curriculum (AC) learning areas and
the general capabilities to support teacher assessment of student attainment
against clear benchmarks.
• Monitoring individual student progress and
identifying learning needs through online and on demand formative assessment
tools linked to the AC learning progressions, including the alignment of
digital teaching resources to the learning progressions.
• A national review of senior secondary education,
including curriculum arrangements, pathways to work, further education and
training, and university entry.
• The development of a national teacher workforce
strategy to respond to future workforce needs and assist decision making for
teacher employers and initial teacher education (ITE) providers.
• Strengthening ITE accreditation by establishing
AiTSL as the national regulator.
• Enhancing the Australian Professional Standard
for Principals to provide a clear understanding of the competencies required
across different settings and to enable the use of the standard in principal preparation
and ongoing development.
• Implementing a national unique student
identifier (USI) to better understand student progression and improve the
national evidence base.
• Establishing an independent national evidence
institute to inform teacher practice, system improvement and policy
development.
• Improving national data quality, consistency and
collection to improve the national evidence base, including options for
measures of school readiness, student learning gain, general capabilities,
post-school destination information, attainment, retention, wellbeing and
post-school outcomes.
What is immediately obvious from this list is that the
amount of data which is to be collected and stored through these initiatives,
is immense.
Further it is clear that the intention is for this to be
stored on a number of national databases. In other words, student assessment
data which until now has been normally retained in schools will now be retained
by systems and accessible nationally.
The development of learning progressions and formative
assessment across the curriculum and the monitoring of individual student
progress through online and on demand formative assessment tools will lock
teachers into hours of assessment and recording.
If the proposed assessments resemble what has been and is
currently being trialled in NSW they will introduce an unprecedented level of
standardisation across the country and will significantly undermine teacher
professional judgement.
The AEU (read more on page 5 of July 2018 Western Teacher) and the SSTUWA have expressed
strong opposition to the proposals in their current form, as well as the lack
of consultation with the profession, to all ministers nationally and to
directors- general in each state and territory.
Members are advised to familiarise themselves with the contents of the three reports listed above – all are available online.
