Is school education outmoded?

Policy borrowing, policy learning testing times in Australia’s learning
Bob Lingard 2010

• The emergence of national curriculum’s. Julia Gillard as deputy prime minister argues for a focus on numeracy and literacy. Authors argue this is narrow, and not in line with current needs for a creative knowledge based global economy.
• Naplan looks to the emergence of national schooling and test focused schooling
• Ball 2008 these are neo-liberal policy frames that look to market choice values, compeiti0on between schools and the pressure from parents to push up standards and accountability. Again this is the private school problem. And one that I am in now.





Darling Hammond 2010, All experts agree except in Australia that the Queensland core skills test, stretches the curriculum, it adds diversity and validity to learning. This is the same as the BSSS Canberra system, its hard because,
1. It’s not HSC no pressure in exams, it continuous assessments.
2. perceived standards are lower, students only work in units effectively of 17 weeks
3. Its possible to have teachers who cannot engage students they rely on the same four units for stage 6, there is little professional development and the teacher can fudge through.
4. content can be banal, and strategies can be misguided.
5. students may not the progression of topics and strategies and structure of HSC VCE
6. The model is sound, but has little accountability; teacher moderation is not an expert panel. I have been in these positions yet it is not the rigour of HSC marking, the model is in danger from the personalities involved.
7. HSC VCE have a structure and standards that are progressive in visual arts, the ACT and Queensland models sometimes open to the whims of individuals in schools

• The author comments on measuring on what is easy to measure, the fetish for measure and control and the danger of not being concerned with which is significant in educational systems.
• Schools and education are responsible for equipping students the skills and capital, as with Bourdiau, it is this personal quality that a nation builds national cumulativeness, innovation, economy.
• What skills do we give our boys? What do we send the m out with, the culture we create.
• Cultural audit 2005, no learning, bullying, sport orientated, repour based discipline, parents not want any change in academics
• Teachers felt disempowered.
Now we have changed ideas program, the school wide pedagogy, from a rugby school to one that plays rugby,

• When a measure is short term to focus on litracy and numeracy it is inevitable that a long term goal is lost and the effects degrading to school teachers work. The curricula is counter productive Hursh 2008, Stobart 2009
• The author recognises the quality of teacher practice in the classroom that effects student learning, especially from students of disadvantaged backgrounds. This again takes us back to the ideal teacher, my situation of non selective boys school. All the measurement and short term focus won’t help sound engagement and challenge activities in the classroom. It wont foster respect, it wont form a habit of learning

• . The author cites jean Anyon and Allan Luke 2010, high stakes testing means scripted pedagogy, we teach to the test, facilitating compliance and rule recognition. we no longer have the creative reflective learners. we don’t have active learners, we don’t have the cultural capital for a globalised knowledge based economy

• We must acknowledge the importance of intellectually demanding material, responding to student learning, and social justice and quality agendas.


• Blair made a shift in the Green paper 1998 the learning age, a shift a break in concept that education goes beyond a social issue but a wider economic policy, it rests on social justice national prosperity and cohesion. Again it is the formation of the creative reflective learners. active learners, with cultural capital for a globalised knowledge based economy


• The importance of the teaching profession as key to how to move forward. The author illustrates this point by discussing the finding in the OECD report, Teachers Matter 2005 and Mckinsey report, how the worlds best performing school systems come out on top 2007



Policy Trends and tensions in Accountability for educational management and services in Canada 2007
Sonia Ben Jaafar and Stephen Anderson

• Educational accountability policy permeates all management of financial instructional, professional and learning domains.
• Accountability according to Wagner 1989, is a process that is operated without any evidence of understanding the effects of various parts of its system.
• My review was a process for process sake; it had little understanding what it was doing. Beyond the end goal of rationalisation.
• The rationale for a decentralised democratic curriculum increases the relevance of education and learning in a local context, This is Canberra to some extent, although not all our issues are local we are democratic. Eg, the study of local architecture unit,
• Yes the top down curriculum provides structure equity and quality.
• Again this is the argument.
• An interesting compromise to the national verses local debate is a standardised test based on provincial curricula; this is very post modern as it reflects a mastery of content that is not pitched in competition in a hierarchy of knowledge.