Unhelpful for students and for teachers

As noted in the debate concerning OBE assessment and reporting, where the assumption is that all students, given enough time and resources, are capable of success and the "fail" word is banned, teachers are also concerned that there is little motivation to excel.

At years 11 and 12, for example, instead of marking student work out of 100, the proposed OBE approach in Western Australia is to grade all students as being at one of eight achievement levels. The result?

One teacher notes: "To my mind, fine-grained assessments serve as excellent feedback mechanisms and lead to greater competition and student motivation to achieve their best. This is what would be denied in the WA implementation of OBE."

Criticism of OBE is not restricted to Western Australia. The Tasmanian president of the Australian Education Union, Jean Walker, has been reported as saying that not all teachers are happy with the adoption of the OBE-inspired essential learnings.

While Tasmanian Education Minister Paula Wriedt argues that teacher critics of essential learnings are old-fashioned and pass their use-by date, the head of the AEU suggests teacher critics span all ages and more would go public if teachers had not been gagged.

In NSW, the Vinson Inquiry into public education, on surveying teachers, found that many opposed the current preoccupation with outcomes as teacher workloads increased, learning was reduced to what could be measured and teachers' professional judgment was belittled.

It's significant that teacher complaints against OBE are supported by teacher academics. A NSW report undertaken by Professor Ken Eltis, of Sydney University, concluded that current approaches to curriculum lead to an "overpressured school day" and that teachers should be freed "to enable them to find time to pursue creative and innovative approaches to teaching, assessment and reporting".

After evaluating Australia's adoption of OBE, Professor Patrick Griffin, of Melbourne University, also concludes that OBE is flawed: "Perhaps OBE cannot be fully implemented system-wide. The changes needed are too radical and disruptive for whole systems of education to accommodate."

As important, if not somewhat ironic, is that the very education bureaucrats and curriculum designers responsible for imposing OBE on Australian classrooms have finally seen the light and admitted that teachers' misgivings are well founded.

An ACT report recently acknowledged: "Teachers had struggled with the volume of content they felt they had to cover." In Western Australia, a report evaluating the impact of OBE on teachers concluded: "Many schools and teachers are experiencing significant difficulty in engaging with the requirements of an outcomes approach."

Notwithstanding the millions spent developing curriculum over the past 10 years, those responsible for the Queensland curriculum also admit that teachers are correct in arguing that the excessive amount of material is "hindering in-depth learning" and there is "lack of clarity around what must be taught".

Indeed, such is the degree of self-criticism that those responsible for developing curriculum in Queensland are happy to admit that past attempts have failed: "For the first time, in Queensland's P-10 years [preparatory year to year 10] there will be rigorous, comprehensive assessment against defined standards that will be comparable across schools."