Thanks Daisy, of all your recommendations for not what to do, our British Columbia education system has implemented all of them. We are so far behind we’re coming out the other end. It will take decades to fix this mess. How many kids will be sacrificed in the process?
I have been on a rant for quite a while now regarding the curriculum in Australia and its impact on student learning and teacher workload. I have been teaching long enough to see about six different curricula developed from state based to national and back to state based again. In this time schools have gone from having a full time principal, part time deputy and perhaps two part time curriculum leaders (general and religious education in my case) to now having a principal, deputy or two, maths leader, literacy leader, special education leader, all full time, and part time level leaders. Classes are smaller than when I started, face to face teaching time has decreased and planning time increased. All teachers now complete a 4 year training course up from 3 when I started. Schools are receiving more funding than ever also. However, the result of all of this training, personnel, time and finances is a situation where our 15 year olds are now two years behind where a 15 year old was in 2000. The one thing that has remained is a curriculum with statements such as, “Understands and interprets a range of devices and deliberate word play in poetry and other literary texts.” (Grade 4) Such statements in curriculum make it difficult for teachers to plan and report. They leave teachers unsure of the markers a student needs to pass through and therefore make it difficult for real success to be achieved. What drives students and teachers is tangible success. For students being able to readily see how the have achieved outcomes and for teachers to easily see this progress and move the student on to the next easily identifiable outcome. Without this, we are left with a situation where success is not easily identifiable and teacher planning time is spent with too many heads around a table trying to decide what genre of writing we need to focus on next rather than focusing on whether or not our students can actually punctuate a simple sentence. It is the curriculum that is failing teachers, schools and students in Australia. It is nebulous and based on unnecessary ideologies which bog it down to the detriment of students. A test I would like to see is to have someone who wrote the Maths curriculum write an English unit and vice versa. Until we have a simple, explicit, easily understandable curriculum we will continue to struggle to retain teachers. In a school of 500, every extra person employed costs a teacher $4000 per year. This money would go a long way to retaining teachers. If after a 4 year degree we still need a person to oversee a planning session I would have to wonder at the value of the degree.
Thank you, in particular for a little perspective on Welsh curriculum reforms. As someone considering relocating from England to Wales in a few years, I’ve been a bit concerned about the direction of travel there. It’s a relief to hear there’s some pushback.
Do you have any other links to voices of those in the Welsh system, and their experience of working with the recent reforms?
I'm a former English teacher who left the classroom three years ago (in Australia) due to burnout. Now that I've had enough distance, and regained the capacity and desire to read educational research, I've realised that a big contributor to my burnout was knowing that they way I was trained to teach wasn't working, yet being unable to clearly explain why. Coupled with a general lack of confidence in myself, I internalised this as my failure to make the system work, rather than seeing the approach itself as flawed. Feeling like a failure day-in, day-out is a recipe for burnout. Your newsletter is amongst those helping me gain my confidence as an educator back. My feelings were right and I now have the language to explain why. I hope this new generation of teachers is better equipped to help their students succeed.
Thanks Daisy, of all your recommendations for not what to do, our British Columbia education system has implemented all of them. We are so far behind we’re coming out the other end. It will take decades to fix this mess. How many kids will be sacrificed in the process?
True, BC is not leading the way on this one! Let's hope things start to change soon.
Another great read with some links to follow up over the summer!
Thanks Mark!
I have been on a rant for quite a while now regarding the curriculum in Australia and its impact on student learning and teacher workload. I have been teaching long enough to see about six different curricula developed from state based to national and back to state based again. In this time schools have gone from having a full time principal, part time deputy and perhaps two part time curriculum leaders (general and religious education in my case) to now having a principal, deputy or two, maths leader, literacy leader, special education leader, all full time, and part time level leaders. Classes are smaller than when I started, face to face teaching time has decreased and planning time increased. All teachers now complete a 4 year training course up from 3 when I started. Schools are receiving more funding than ever also. However, the result of all of this training, personnel, time and finances is a situation where our 15 year olds are now two years behind where a 15 year old was in 2000. The one thing that has remained is a curriculum with statements such as, “Understands and interprets a range of devices and deliberate word play in poetry and other literary texts.” (Grade 4) Such statements in curriculum make it difficult for teachers to plan and report. They leave teachers unsure of the markers a student needs to pass through and therefore make it difficult for real success to be achieved. What drives students and teachers is tangible success. For students being able to readily see how the have achieved outcomes and for teachers to easily see this progress and move the student on to the next easily identifiable outcome. Without this, we are left with a situation where success is not easily identifiable and teacher planning time is spent with too many heads around a table trying to decide what genre of writing we need to focus on next rather than focusing on whether or not our students can actually punctuate a simple sentence. It is the curriculum that is failing teachers, schools and students in Australia. It is nebulous and based on unnecessary ideologies which bog it down to the detriment of students. A test I would like to see is to have someone who wrote the Maths curriculum write an English unit and vice versa. Until we have a simple, explicit, easily understandable curriculum we will continue to struggle to retain teachers. In a school of 500, every extra person employed costs a teacher $4000 per year. This money would go a long way to retaining teachers. If after a 4 year degree we still need a person to oversee a planning session I would have to wonder at the value of the degree.
Thank you, in particular for a little perspective on Welsh curriculum reforms. As someone considering relocating from England to Wales in a few years, I’ve been a bit concerned about the direction of travel there. It’s a relief to hear there’s some pushback.
Do you have any other links to voices of those in the Welsh system, and their experience of working with the recent reforms?
I'm a former English teacher who left the classroom three years ago (in Australia) due to burnout. Now that I've had enough distance, and regained the capacity and desire to read educational research, I've realised that a big contributor to my burnout was knowing that they way I was trained to teach wasn't working, yet being unable to clearly explain why. Coupled with a general lack of confidence in myself, I internalised this as my failure to make the system work, rather than seeing the approach itself as flawed. Feeling like a failure day-in, day-out is a recipe for burnout. Your newsletter is amongst those helping me gain my confidence as an educator back. My feelings were right and I now have the language to explain why. I hope this new generation of teachers is better equipped to help their students succeed.