BLOG POST – AUGUST 2015 The broader purpose of education One of the perennial frustrations for teachers is the extent to which the teaching that we want to do is disrupted by the demands of bureaucracy. Some of it, I concede, performs a valuable function, but much of it does not. In Australia and many other countries, there is an increasing demand for ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ – and arguing against this is like arguing against democracy or freedom. There is, however, a real risk when the tools adopted in the name of accountability and transparency are seriously flawed. Examples abound. The government insists on accountability and transparency but will not let schools have access to the ATARs of their own students. The only way any school can compile any data on this is by asking each individual student to tell us what they got. That’s a lot of telephone calls in the week before Christmas! Schools are given their students’ HSC results in the form of marks and Bands, but these results are not effective for comparisons between schools because they do not take into account the relative difficulty of an exceedingly wide range of subjects. Food Technology is a wonderful course, but it is not as academically taxing as Extension Classical Greek; nevertheless, in something like the SMH ‘league table’, they are weighted exactly the same. The ATAR is far from perfect but it does attempt to adjust for these differences in course content and candidature – and yet this is the data which is not made available. Comparisons based on HSC performance are also of limited utility because they exclude the performance of IB students, and this can also skew the data strongly. NAPLAN is also deeply flawed. It was introduced as a test of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. Predictably, from the start the data was used for a very different purpose, such as comparing schools. Using it for this purpose ignored the design of the test, which could only really support a comparison of how well different schools were reaching the minimum standard. In some contexts, this is vitally important. In other contexts, including ours, the focus of teachers and parents should not be on the minimum, but on how well we are developing children beyond the minimum – something which the test was not designed to show. Over time the declared purpose of NAPLAN has subtly changed, with frequent suggestions now that it is a ‘tool for school improvement’ and distinct changes to its content. Even this is deeply flawed. The Year 3 Maths NAPLAN test may, for instance, include material that according to the Australian Curriculum is not due to be taught until Year 4. So a teacher who is teaching the curriculum very well according to the prescribed schedule will have students who are simply unable to tackle the question. She will see her students judged unfavourably in comparisons and tables based on NAPLAN performance, even if she is teaching what she should exceptionally well. And all along teachers are exhorted not to ‘teach to the test’! The triennial furore over PISA testing is yet another example. There are serious criticisms of the nature of the test and the validity of the rankings produced from these tests, but even if they are accepted as valid, they are only a very small part of the story. The style of education provided in the countries which reliably take out the top places in these rankings would be unlikely to appeal to
most Australian parents. We want our girls to do well academically, but there is so much more to school and life than that. Watching Beauty and the Beast last night was a wonderful reminder of how we educate in other ways. The quality of the production and performances was outstanding – and the packed house greeted the performances with great enthusiasm. My congratulations go to the cast and crew and all the staff who brought this about, and particular congratulations must go to Mr Guy Sherborne, directing his last production (and his first musical!) at Queenwood before his retirement. As I watched, though, I was reflecting on how much this production offered to each individual girl. Their backgrounds and talents and needs are all different but the achievement for each was substantial. Some girls had battled with horrific nerves, and then performed with assurance and flair. Others have been juggling workloads that would make grown adults crack, and have held it all together by sheer force of will. Some girls had to overcome injuries and health problems to get through the taxing rehearsal and performance schedule… Each story is different. They are the stories which explain Queenwood’s purpose, but none of them will ever appear on a test paper, in an exam grade, or on a league table.
Ms Elizabeth Stone Principal