Improvements in maths and numerical science demand transparency

The Inquiry recommendations represent a total defeat for the QSA and the Education Establishment generally; their ideas and methods have been totally repudiated.

All of my triple criteria - defined, reliable and valid can be met and satisfied by a system using parliament's recommendations if they are applied in letter and spirit. Therein is a massive problem; who or what will operate any new system? It will be the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority QCAA, the child of the QSA. I see nothing in QCAA to encourage optimism. I anticipate that they will obfuscate, play with the meaning of words and act in the secretive manner that they have brought to a fine art.

The 2013-14 Annual Report of the Education and Innovation committee stated inter alia

:…the committee made 16 recommendations covering the number, format and proportion of marks for assessment tasks; the introduction of external examinations as part of the assessment process; expanding syllabus documentation to be more clear and explicit…. On 6 January 2014, the government tabled its response…. All the committee's recommendations were supported by government either directly or in principle, with several recommendations referred to the review of senior assessment and tertiary entrance processes in Queensland as they were directly in the scope of that broader review.

The review referred to in that summary was the Queensland Review of Senior Assessment and Tertiary Entrance produced by Matters and Masters of ACER. Whilst there is some recognition of the need for change – they advocate an external exam and the use of numbers but the general feel is of a document by the education establishment based on views of the establishment and for the greater glory and power of the establishment.

The recommendation that received most publicity was that the Overall Position, the OP, should be discontinued. It is important to note that the OP calculation does not and never has affected or been affected by syllabi or subject assessment. Hence the dropping of the OP has no implications for parliament's recommendations. The OP is irrelevant in that context.

The intention is that tertiary admission procedures should be done by those institutions; that the methods should be made as clear as possible and that there should be 'Transparency in tertiary selection.' Recommendation 11 makes that very clear and uses the word should repeatedly –'institutions should make as transparent…'. I can go along with the idea that tertiary institutions should sort out and explicitly state what their selection system will be. However I find the demand by the establishment for transparency from others to be totally hypocritical.

To explain in simple terms: I have been tutoring students in maths/physics for many years now. During that time I have never seen a test or exam paper at all. Does anybody get to see old exam papers? I do not know what a 'modern' exam paper looks like. The students tell me that each question has a little matrix next to it that contains some letter and small numbers. I have no idea what that all means, I have no idea how the 'results' are totalled. Students tell me that some questions are A, some B etc Transparent? Has anyone – a parent for example - ever seen any marked work? Has anyone any idea how the extended pieces of work are marked? Transparent? I presume by the way that the reason the schools keep the old exam papers hidden is to save the bother of writing another one later.

The Parliamentary Inquiry Recommendation 4 states that '…the external exam for mathematics, physics and chemistry be used to scale school based assessment.' As mentioned earlier such scaling is essential. However the ACER document in its recommendation 5 states categorically that 'teacher assessments should not be statistically scaled against the external examination.' (My emphases). This difference is fundamental; there must be scaling.

ACER also state that there will be just one mark (result) for each subject, that mark is to be 'the sum' of the .. (various) activities (with external counting 50% and the internal also 50%). To simply add such data is crude, simplistic and unacceptable. Furthermore ACER demands that tertiary institutions must make clear how they are to sort entry to the courses; but ACER deliberately hides important information. It is very common for a student to score much more highly in assignments than on supervised exams. A faculty may decide that a result on the external exam is of greater significance than the 'internal' result. Surely that is their business not QCAA or the education establishment generally. There are a number of possibilities: (a)three separate results - external exam, internal assessment and some averaged result. (b) one result which is obtained after proper and legitimate scaling, (c) two results external and internal. But definitely not unscaled adding.

ACER Recommendation 8 aims to 'assure validity and reliability of school assessments.' The proposed system 'includes three elements, 'Endorsement', 'Confirmation' and 'Ratification'. Such a system might work using a 'guild of Assessment Supervisors', However a central aim of the parliamentary inquiry will be for schools to emphasise 'basic content and procedural knowledge….(which are to be) the primary determinant of results in Maths Physics and Chemistry'. To that end the eternal extended items are to be shortened and done in school. The remainder of the time should be spent emphasising the skills, understandings and knowledge etc. and then application of those skills. Any time used meeting the ACER ideas of endorsement, confirmation and ratification will cut into the teaching and learning time. ACER needs to simplify this material.

The Parliamentary Inquiry recommends that basic content and procedural knowledge should be the primary determinant of results. That is anathema to QSA/QCAA. To them content, knowledge and skills is the least important aspect of maths. What they seem to want is chatter in English. It is vanishingly unlikely that the QCAA will 'interpret' Parliaments clear intentions; certainly not in spirit and, by redefining words, not really in letter either. Student outcomes/results will be at odds with what Parliament wants. Note that as QCAA, like QSA, determine everything that happens in all schools so they will determine the external exam. It is probable that any external exam they set will give low significance to procedural knowledge and skills.