Curriculum
5.4 THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL'S CURRICULUM RESPONSIBILITIES
v) demonstrating their accountability to parents and principals by reporting children's performance in relation to expected outcomes and the action they intend to take, where necessary, to improve that performance.
These responsibilities place obligations on principals and the Director-General to remove barriers to their being met. Teachers will not accept this recommendation without a commitment to a clear and achievable implementation plan by the system.
Teachers' responsibilities should be linked to a framework which maps children's entire schooling. The job of each teacher (supported by the school as a whole) within such a framework is to match students, outcomes, available resources, local expectations and pedagogy to produce the highest possible levels of achievement.
A framework which does this well has the potential to:
• focus teachers' practice on assisting children's progress towards known outcomes;
• orient the expectations of children, parents, teachers and principals to the common learning outcomes;
• enhance teachers' professionalism by providing them with greater flexibility;
• provide teachers with a better diagnostic tool for children's learning; and
• provide a common language for assessing and reporting children's progress across all curriculum areas, classrooms and schools.
We stress that we are not rejecting current (or future) use of Departmental syllabuses.
Rather, we are stressing that teachers should not be required to use them if they are convinced there are better ways to meet their responsibilities to children, the school and the system'. In this way syllabus selection should become a more deliberative decision by teachers and principals. In the final section of this chapter we revisit teachers'
throughout the system as the "Green" syllabus, it stood for many years as the definitive statement as far as Regulation 36(2) was concerned.
But now there are literally thousands of pages of syllabuses, policy statements, teachers guides and curriculum support materials. Collectively, these documents contain a mixture of advice and prescription on curriculum content and delivery. The problem is that it is no longer clear what it means for a "school's programme of instruction" to be "in accordance with the Curriculum".
The problem came to a head after 1987 because of the Education Department's avowed policy of giving schools greater decision-making powers. For schools, the main question was "what parts of the published curriculum do we have to follow?' The answer could not be "all of it!", for two main reasons. The first was that already many teachers did not follow the syllabuses closely (except those for Years 11 and 12). The more important reason was that such an answer would have negated the very point of devolution. It made no sense to say on the one hand that schools were to have greater decision- making powers if on the other all local curriculum decisions had still to made in strict accordance with the existing centrally-published documents.
It became apparent then (and it remains the case) that Regulation 36 (2) needs to be reconsidered:
• to what ought the term "the Curriculum" refer?
• what ought it mean for teachers, principals, school councils and boards to be "in accordance"?
It is our view that the current wording of the Regulation is appropriate to a system in which the central controls are on what is taught - on curriculum "inputs". In future, the central controls should be on what is learned - on outcomes. "The Curriculum" should be a statement of what children are expected to learn. Teachers, principals, school councils and boards will be "in accordance" if they are delivering these expected learning outcomes: "accordance" should be judged through the achievement of outcomes rather than curriculum offerings as such.
5.4.2 Towards a Purpose-driven Statement of "the Curriculum"
Since 1987, the Education Department, in acknowledgment of the underlying problem, has proceeded on a number of fronts. A Statement of Ethos and Purpose has been prepared - every school should be guided by the Purpose, which is:
... to ensure that our students develop the understandings, skills and attitudes relevant to individual needs, thereby enabling them to fulfil their potential and contribute to the development of our society.
This is followed by 12 brief statements of the outcomes that are expected if this Purpose is being achieved:
• effective literacy skills;
• effective mathematical skills;
• an ability to find and use information;
• a capacity to utilise technology;
• an ability to work co-operatively with others;
• an approach to learning which is both responsive and critical;
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• an understanding of their historical, social and cultural contexts;
• an understanding of the natural world and of scientific principles;
• an appreciation of, and confidence in, the creative and practical arts;
• a concern for, and an understanding of how to achieve, physical health and wellbeing;
• a respect for the rights of others; and
• personal qualities of self-acceptance, initiative and self-confidence2.
The Statement of Ethos and Purpose would seem to set the basic curriculum agenda for all government schools. While not designed to provide the specificity required for detailed curriculum planning, it still sets the broad context for such planning. As we understand it, the key features of the Statement include:
• explicit reference to expected outcomes;
• an acknowledgment that children have different potentials;
• the subject matter of the curriculum should encompass communication and languages, mathematics, the technologies, the natural and social sciences, the arts, physical health and wellbeing;
• personal qualities which cannot be learned through any particular subject matter; for example, respect for the rights of others, self-acceptance, initiative and self- confidence; and
• an acknowledgment that the expected outcomes take time to develop.
From purpose to framework
The responsibilities for teachers we have recommended demand a statement of "the Curriculum" which stands between and links together the Department's Statement of Ethos and Purpose and its substantial volume of published curriculum material. We believe that what is needed is aptly termed a Curriculum Framework, because it would define the overall structure or "shape" of the curriculum but not the details.
As we have noted earlier, submissions have argued for a strong continuing role for the central office of the Education Department. There is no doubt in our minds that final responsibility for the production of the Education Department's Curriculum Framework should rest with the Director-General of Education.
5.4.3 The Architecture of the Central Framework
This section summarises our advice to the Director-General on what the Framework should deal with, given that its central function will be to support teachers in meeting their responsibilities. There are, however, other important functions, the prime one being to ensure equity across the system. The Framework should, in a sense, provide "a guarantee" that each school's curriculum is underwritten by the government and the Education Department.
An expansion of the Statement of Ethos and Purpose
The Framework should expand the Statement of Ethos and Purpose and link it to the responsibilities of all teachers. It should address the development of the
understandings, skills and attitudes listed in the statement in greater detail. It should make clear, for example, what is expected by way of "effective literacy and numeracy skills" and "respect for the rights of others". This should be done not only for the final year of compulsory schooling but also for points along the way. To link with teachers' responsibilities, this expansion must retain the "outcomes" orientation of the purpose statement. If all aspects of that statement cannot be expanded in this way, there will be reason to revise it accordingly.
A central thrust of our report is the need for a sharper focus on the purpose of schools.
While the Education Department's purpose statement, as it stands, refers to some outcomes which relate to the "core business" of schools (for example, "effective mathematical skills"), it calls for others (for example, "respect for the rights of others") which, while also the business of schools, cannot be left to them alone to achieve. If improved learning outcomes will, in part, result from clarity of purpose, the question is, for what can schools be held accountable? The Curriculum Framework should provide a clear direction on the issue of schools' primary responsibilities compared with those for which schools share the responsibility with the home and other social institutions.
We have considered Western Australian work on the preparation of sequenced statements of expected outcomes for the essential knowledge, skills and processes in each subject area. We have looked at similar work done elsewhere in Australia and overseas, where there are some differences in terminology and in the number of discrete subject areas. In the UK, the term "attainment targets" is used rather than "outcomes"
and in New Zealand the terms are "learning outcomes", "achievement aims" and
"achievement objectives". Australian States and Territories refer to eight "learning areas", while New Zealand uses seven.
Regardless of these surface differences, each of these approaches concentrates on what children should be expected to know and be able to do at certain stages in their schooling. This essential feature should be included in the Western Australian Framework.
The framework should not constitute a major departure from the current curriculum
The production of the Framework should be seen as the distillation of current curriculum objectives. As we have noted above, the first Curriculum Framework produced by the Education Department should be designed as a document which links the Purpose statement to the current published curriculum material and to the syllabuses in particular.
Organising and sequencing the expected outcomes
We expect most of the expected outcomes to be organised under a rubric of "subjects", or perhaps, "learning areas". Outcomes should not be tied rigidly to children's ages or grade levels. This is because a child's capabilities are not always closely correlated with his or her age. Where possible, outcomes should be sequenced according to
"developmental continua" based on research and experience related to children's patterns of learning.
A level of prescription attuned to broader flexibility
The Framework should not be prepared as a set of detailed prescriptions to be stamped on each school regardless of its particular needs or educational aspirations. Rather, the
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Framework should establish the boundaries for schools' programs, in terms of expected outcomes, but still leave plenty of room for schools to decide the best ways of achieving them. It will be the responsibility of principals and teachers to deliver programs within the Framework to suit their particular locations and resources. The Framework should be explicit about the flexibility schools have in deciding the details of programs.
Reference points for assessing performance
The specified outcomes for all schools will provide the standards for assessing each child's progress and reporting this to parents and guardians. Such measures are also required to monitor the performance of schools and the system as a whole.
A common basis for educational planning
The Framework must enable the planning of teachers, principals and school councils or boards to connect easily to the planning for the system as a whole. This connection should be two-way: that is, system planning needs to respond to the needs of schools as much as each school's plan needs to respond to any broad system requirements.
The Framework should acknowledge the need for this "creative tension" between the system and its schools.
An aid to communication
The Framework should be a readable and accessible statement of what is expected of children and their schools. It should provide a common ground for discussions among lay people (students, parents and the broader community) and education professionals.
It should not be a document which is prepared only for an audience of education professionals. The community at large should know what schools are expected to achieve. The greater the community understanding and support, the greater the success schools will achieve in improving children's learning.
A way of regulating system-wide curriculum change
Curriculum content and delivery are subject to opposing forces: pressures to change and pressures to stay the same. These pressures cannot be ignored, so they have to be resolved (almost daily in the case of teachers). Avoidance of decision making is not an option. But there are no once-and-for-all answers to which decision makers can turn.
Teachers, and the contexts in which they work, vary and curriculum theory remains an
"inexact science". The result is that curriculum, at the classroom, school and system levels, can never stand still - of its very nature, curriculum is dynamic, not static.
Drug education, driver education, AIDS education, environmental education and major syllabus revisions are all part of this remarkable evolutionary process. But at the same time there is also an expectation that the curriculum will ensure the conservation of the best of what the culture has ever said, thought and done and to maintain certain values and attitudes which are believed to be fundamental.
We are confident that teachers, principals, parents and the managers of the school system recognise the need for the curriculum to evolve. What concerns school staff most is that this evolution be responsibly managed.
The curriculum is already overcrowded: to accommodate something new, space has to be found. Difficult decisions have to be faced about what should be taken out, de- emphasised or reorganised to provide space.
System-wide curriculum change is very expensive. High costs are incurred in development and implementation, particularly the latter. The history of success and failure shows that no matter how good the case for change or revision may be, it is unlikely to meet with success unless sufficient resources are available for quality development and effective implementation. Increasingly, curriculum development initiatives are being placed in a queue to await funding.
These are just two of the management issues to be faced. The Curriculum Framework should be the focal point for managing curriculum change. Arguments for or against change should be sheeted home to the principles and content of the Framework.
5.4.4 Checks and Balances in the Preparation of the Framework
Preparation of the system's first Curriculum Framework (and any subsequent revisions in years to come) will be a complex deliberative process, with the Director-General responsible for the final decision. In particular, we expect the practicality of the Framework to be tested thoroughly before an official version is issued.
We believe that the Director-General's authority and responsibility in respect of the proposed Curriculum Framework should be spelt out either in the Education Act or the Act's Regulations (Regulation 36(2) needs to be reframed in the light of our arguments and recommendations). The Director-General should be accountable to the Minister for Education for developing a Curriculum Framework in accordance with the requirements of the (amended) Act.
We acknowledge the need to revise the Framework in the future. Our approach to curriculum assumes a managed evolution; it follows that we also expect the Curriculum Framework to be revised accordingly. But, in saying this, we would also stress that we do not see a need for frequent revision.
RECOMMENDATION 7
That:
i) the Director-General of Education be responsible for the establishment of the Curriculum Framework for Government Schools;
ii) the Curriculum Framework be linked to the Education Department's statement of purpose, and describe the outcomes students should achieve at various stages throughout their schooling;
iii) in the preparation of the Curriculum Framework (and in subsequent revisions), there be extensive consultation with all stakeholders;
iv) the authority and responsibilities of the Director-General in respect of the development and subsequent revision of the Curriculum Framework be specified in the Education Act and Regulations; and
v) the specifications of the Curriculum Framework be binding on all government schools.