Education Revolution - radical change or chucking a 360?

Mr Rudd is fond of talking about his Education Revolution. But what does he mean by that fine phrase? In normal usage a revolution implies a radical change. Whenever we think of the American, French or Russian Revolutions, we are thinking about incidents that fundamentally changed nations in a radical way. A different sort of radical revolution was the Industrial Revolution which first changed a nation - Britain - and then the world as a whole.

In all of those cases there were losers, individuals or groups that lost in some way as a consequence of the revolution. Some literally lost their heads, or were killed in some other fashion; many more lost their power and others their property. Even the Industrial Revolution which was relatively non violent caused serious losses for skilled cottage industries such as spinners and weavers. They suffered terrible privation, dislocation and starvation.

An alternative sort of revolution is the mathematical one, i.e. 360 degrees. Youths who wish to show off “chuck a 360”. That consists of spinning the car in a tight circle, the consequences of which are to leave the car pointing in the same direction as it started, making black marks on the road and damaging the tyres. Lots of noise and hype, but no change of direction.

So which sort of revolution does Mr Rudd intend? Will he enforce radical and drastic change to improve the lamentable condition of education (especially in STEM - science, technology, engineering and maths), or are we just going to run round in a circle (or several circles) and land up where we are now only breathless?

I am sure that Mr Rudd intends a real revolution, a radical change to improve the situation. In that case he and Ms Gillard must first determine what the root problems are. That the situation is poor in STEM cannot really be denied.

The most recent of the long standing TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) showed, for example, that in Maths, Australian children in Year 8 got a score of 505 points. Yes, that was above the international average of 467, but is well behind Singapore with 605. Singapore was as far ahead of Australia as Australia was ahead of Tunisia, Egypt and the Palestine National Authority. Sadly it gets worse. A pitiful 7 per cent of Australian children were categorised as “advanced” as compared to 43 per cent in Singapore.

Clearly we are letting down our more gifted children in a big way. Bearing in mind that those are the students who will go on to study STEM subjects in Years 11, 12 and at university, is it any wonder that so few are doing those subjects?

Nearly three years ago, in another On Line Opinion article “Wadderloader; Maths and Science teaching in Australia” I described the Education Establishment, alias the four horsemen of the educational apocalypse, as comprising the:

• university education faculties who produce all of the peculiar ideas that pervade education and - supposedly - train teachers;
• the various State Boards of Study who produce all subject syllabi and associated assessment systems;
• State education departments; and
• teacher unions, where they oppose verifiable assessments of student outcomes.

Of these the Boards of Study are by far the most important because they are the action arm, the militant wing of the Education Establishment. They produce the syllabi and assessment systems for all subjects for all grades in every school, both public and private.

Both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are Queenslanders and were educated in Queensland in the public school system - in the days when Queensland provided a rigorous education for the students. Alas, no more. I hope that they will take particular notice of the condition of education in their home state now. It is woeful. Syllabi are of a low standard - insofar as it is possible to understand them, so inevitably there is a huge gap in STEM subjects between Years 10 and 11.

Assessment systems that have any validity are non existent to the end of Year 10. In Years 11 and 12 assessment systems are non-numerate and the “methods” used to assign final subject results totally unclear. Consequently it is a simple statement of fact that no student knows what a piece of assessment is worth and has no idea of the system used to reach the final subject result. Virtually all assessments are by way of “assignments”. Furthermore in many subjects in Years 11 and 12 there is no teaching in the formal sense at all, all they get is one assignment after the other.

The constant stream of assignments makes it inevitable that the whole system is discriminatory against students from lower socio economic backgrounds and, furthermore, is discriminatory against males. Even where there are exams the discrimination again the poor and male continues across Australia. The questions are verbalised to the point that one submission to a parliamentary Inquiry, “Boys: getting it right” (2002) stated: “the level of nomenclature and sophisticated verbal reasoning skills that are required - to even understand what the problem is - is on average four times greater than what is required in Australian history and English literature.”

It is a disgrace that the Boards and Education theorists have totally ignored a finding of the highest democratic body in the land which was “assessment procedures must, as a first requirement, provide information about students’ knowledge, skills and achievement on the subject, and not be a de facto examination of students’ English comprehension and expression.”

When the operatic Mussolini was in power in Italy his Minister of Education - a dedicated book burner - decided to bring in assessment methods other than exams. He wanted the sort of assessments that we have nowadays. The Communist Deputy Gramski spoke against the idea in Parliament arguing that a move away from exams would adversely affect the poor and the peasants. All absolutely obvious of course - except to the Education Establishment.

For some time now there have been moves by Commonwealth governments and to some extent State Education Departments to list what are called “essential learnings”. Translated into humanoid that phrase means the things that must be taught to all students. These “learnings” are by subject or by grouping - e.g. SOSE. By definition these “learnings” are aimed at, written for, the weaker students. The “learnings” are accompanied by an assessment system. In the case of the recently released version of “learnings” in Queensland (QCAR), the assessment system is, inevitably, meaningless.

As mentioned earlier Australian students do appallingly badly in terms of the percentage that achieve the TIMSS level “Advanced”. Singaporean students are more than six times as likely to reach that standard. Listing “essential learnings”, the rock bottom minima, will do nothing to improve the shockingly feeble performance in mathematics demonstrated by the upper half of Australian students. For them the problem is that the subject syllabi themselves are feeble and non-challenging, especially for Years 8,9 and 10.

Assuming that Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard want to improve our performance in STEM then they have no choice but to face the reality that the basic STEM subject, maths, is a sequential subject. It is foolish and very cruel to teach the same material to all students when it is a fact that at, say, the Year 8 level those students will have maths attainments varying from seven-year-olds to 15-year-olds, and whose Piagetian development levels vary from the lowest level to the highest. And no amount of “eduprattle” about “differential teaching” is going to help.

In Queensland the problems caused by the weak, poorly defined syllabi and their essentially non existent assessment systems are compounded by the wild variations in the time allocated for both maths and science in lower secondary years. Research that I did showed, without argument, that time allocations for those subjects varied between schools in a ratio of 2:1 for both subjects and for both school “types” - government and non-government. That is a ridiculous state of affairs.

To compound the problem even further schools these days just love mixed ability classes. Some schools do operate a form of “streaming”, a crude and inflexible system, which assumes that a student is equally talented in all subjects, an assumption that is frequently false. It is common for a student to have differing abilities in maths than English. Another problem inherent in “streaming” is that when a student shows that she or he is now in an unsuitable group it is hard to make the necessary adjustment.

A far better structure is “setting”. With that structure all the maths (and English perhaps) classes for a particular year are timetabled at the same times. That system is flexible - a student can be moved easily without causing problems for other subject area. It recognises that a student often has differing abilities at different subjects. “Setting” used to be common. Nowadays it is regarded as too hard to timetable - which raises the question “if school administrators could do it years ago why can’t they now?”

Unless and until all subject syllabi at all levels are such that the knowledge, skills and concepts to be handled are clearly defined, and the assessment systems structured so that they produce valid and reliable student results, then all else is in vain. Syllabi must be written in English and assessment systems must be such that the students (and parents) know the rules of the game they are playing. That is surely not too much to ask, after all nobody would expect somebody to play League without knowing how many points for a try or a penalty goal or a field goal.

With decent subject syllabi and sensible internal school organisation we would be providing the children with structures that give them a chance to excel. Without those changes - which would cost nothing - all other actions are doomed to failure.

As with all revolutions there would be losers.

All the Boards would have to be instructed to rewrite all subject syllabi and assessment systems to meet the triple criteria defined, valid and reliable. They must be instructed to complete the task within six months and the verdict as to whether the syllabi meet the criteria should be delivered by people from outside the Education Establishment, probably professional mathematicians, historians, physicists and so on. If the Boards cannot do the job, then they will have to be dismissed and replaced with people who can.

All the peculiar ideas that have permeated, infected if you like, education, trainee teachers and particularly the Boards emanate from Faculties of Education. They need to face the reality that either their “research” has influenced what happens in schools or it has not. If it has then they are in major part responsible for the mess we, or to be precise our children, are in. If it has not influenced what happens then it is very hard to think of any reason for their continued existence.

Education Unions have nothing like the power that they are generally thought to have. Their influence is almost entirely within the ALP party itself - in other words it is an internal party matter. Both Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard show signs that they are capable, and if necessary willing, to tell them to butt out and to get back to what they should be - an industrial union.

Unless Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard get serious about subject syllabi and assessment systems so that they are all defined, valid and reliable, then we will not, can not have the radical revolution we need. Instead we will have lots of talk, hype and media opportunities, but no change in direction - just chucking 360s.