Streaming the curriculum

Elements of our skilled labour shortage results from the deep lack of respect offered to the trades throughout the traditional school years. How many schools proudly advertise the number of their students who have entered the trades upon graduation? Probably none. Instead we gauge a school’s success by how many of its students attend university. If today’s starting salaries and high employment rates are any judge of status, then being a tradesman should garner its proper respect within our schools.

How would students opt for one of these choices? Not easily. To be eligible they would have to pass rigorous literacy and numeracy tests meeting minimum standards. They would need to seek their own placement or program to accept them, and they would have to learn to market themselves by dressing appropriately, speaking accordingly and clearly, and preparing themselves for an interview - they would have to earn their way out of school.

No tradesperson or employer would be obligated to take on a student and no student would be guaranteed a placement. Acceptance must be willful by both parties.

What about part-time placements? If daily timetables were re-structured to be identical each and every day (Monday’s timetable was the same as Tuesday’s and so on) then a further option could be to attend regular school in the morning then head off to a placement in the afternoon or have the placement in the morning while attending school in the afternoon. This process already exists in some jurisdictions, often known as co-op, where students earn school-based credits while gaining work experience every school day. Some TAFE’s offer a “tafe taster” but that is usually only once a week.

What does that leave for schools? They would remain the central educational body now with (potentially) fewer students, but more of those who want to be there; and with fewer students we could concentrate our efforts to make the necessary and long talked about changes surrounding pedagogy and the curriculum.

School curricula needs to be streamed by Year 9; streamed not by a student’s academic ability but by academic interest and career direction. Individual courses would be streamed, not students. Take physics for example, it could be divided into a TAFE bound or university bound syllabus. A TAFE bound syllabus might be more practical whereas a university bound syllabus might be more theoretical and mathematical. Both syllabi could be identical in content or cover completely different material. This division would allow both syllabi to be more rigorous and better suited to a student’s particular needs and interests. The same streaming could exist in each discipline.

Students, along with their parents, would choose their stream on a course-by-course basis with any overall mix permissible. A student could take a TAFE bound physics course and a university bound English course if he chose. Streaming would become a natural choice for students interested in an academic career catered to their own benefit - not pigeon holed to study the same material. This method is about streaming the curriculum, not streaming the students. Students would choose, not a secret cabal of teachers.

Fewer students also mean fewer teachers (and possibly fewer schools). Although the media (along with the teacher unions) continues to detail a so-called teacher shortage, the proportion of academically qualified teachers has also diminished. Governments have opened extra university placements for teacher education, but more and more teachers are teaching out of their qualification area, especially in science as pointed out by the Who’s Teaching Science report by the Australian Council of Deans of Science (2005).

By and large current hiring practices centre around classroom management skills, not on academic qualifications or pedagogical inspiration. As long as you can control a class full of students you’re hired - academic depth is not essential. This demeans our profession; so having fewer teachers means we too can have better choice over who teaches.

For this new system to function, student achievement needs to be monitored and recorded. School-based tracking of their successes, failures, and status would be needed, possibly using an all-encompassing report card covering their work, academic and apprentice achievements. A school-based organisation could provide guidance from qualified teachers experienced in career leadership, academic assistance and community programs.

Finally, there is one other option crucial for success - failure. Failure must remain a distinct possibility given the available options. Failure is a natural part of growing up: failure in courses of study, failure as an employee, or failure as an apprentice is part of the learning curve. Some students will invariably make haunting mistakes so an integrated system of support will be critical. As long as our school doors remain open to all students, literally and figuratively, then we will not fail them.

Being a student should be a choice in life, not a stage in life. We have been teaching too much water-downed content to too many disinterested youth for far too long. Forcing students into a well-rounded education will inevitably dull their sharpened edges.

Providing youth with viable and valuable educational alternatives acknowledges their true potential. Today’s educational leadership must have confidence in our youth that they are well aware of what they want to learn; we just need to give them the chance to choose. We ought to meet our students’ needs, not tell them what they need. We require intrepid leadership at all levels to affect such change. Sadly, I fear we will have this debate all over again in a generation and the village will continue to fragment.