Julia Gillard's Baccalaureate

Over four years ago the Howard government pushed for an Australian Certificate of Education (ACE). Their published paper Australian Certificate of Education: Exploring a way forward aimed to “set nationally consistent high standards” and “improve the comparability of results across Australia”. It was a laudable objective but failed because of the constitutional fact that education is the responsibility of each State and Territory.

Each jurisdiction has its own assessment system and all guard that power jealously. It seems evident that the only way that the then government could get the various Education departments to meet together to discuss an Australia-wide Certificate was to agree from the start that the States would be allowed to keep their own assessment systems. Phrases such as “… there will continue to be flexibility in how evidence is collected …” leave no room for doubt.

In an On Line Opinion article “Floating gently on a waft of Edudribble” I argued that the assessment system operated by the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) was a pathetic shadow of its former excellence, being unreliable, totally opaque, non numerate, dependent on student items of dubious provenance, gave no indication as to the worth of a piece of assessment and, because of their dependence on “assignments”, was socially and sexually discriminatory.

It is a fact that the Australian Certificate idea died. To what extent the cause was simple parochialism or party political differences is hard to tell; but it is certain that the differences in assessment systems was by itself a sufficient reason to kill it. There was never going to be the required level of trust in each others States systems to make it feasible. In particular it would be most unlikely that any State or Territory would have trust in the situation in Queensland. I remarked at the time that “for any state to agree to being involved it will want to be certain that an ACE emanating from all the other States will be based on syllabi and assessment systems that are defined, reliable and valid. Current structures in Queensland fail completely to meet those requirements.”

The inherent problems that killed off the ACE still exist and, short of major constitutional change, will remain into the future.

The ALP, as a part of election discussions has put forward the idea of an Australian Baccalaureate.

It is important, perhaps, to note that the best information as to the ALP’s intentions is an ALP release Let’s move Australia forward which has been issued during an election campaign. Such a document does not have the significance of a government white or green paper. Nevertheless it is a significant document in that it indicates that the ALP sees the problems that exist within Australia due to what it describes as “limited national consistency in senior qualifications and certificates”.

The suggestion for an Australian Baccalaureate (AB) tries to avoid the problems that killed off the ACE by suggesting that it would be a “new voluntary qualification that … will sit alongside existing senior secondary school qualifications as a voluntary credential … it will not replace them”. Clearly that is an attempt to placate the various States’ Boards of Study.

As is always the case for anything to do with education these days much of the description of the AB is capable of multiple interpretations, so it is hard/impossible to tell exactly what is intended especially in the crucial area of assessment.

Baccalaureate style qualifications are, I believe, essentially external exams based. That is also the case for UK Advanced level qualification that is held up in the proposal as being “of international standing”. The current proposal uses phrases such as “develop a certificate structure and achievement standards which are benchmarked against the world’s best systems and standards …” and “… leverage work on the senior national curriculum …”

The statement that “it is envisaged that the AB will provide an option for high performing students …”, indicates that individual students will be able to opt to take the AB if they wish to. Whether that student would then also receive the local State certification/Tertiary Entrance score (under whatever name) is unclear. Either way the individual school would have to provide the necessary support, facilities and teaching for the student to succeed at the AB. If it did not then the student has been deprived of the AB opportunity.

Within the realities of actual schools that is going to be very hard to do. In particular the less popular subjects - rigorous maths, the numerical sciences, modern languages, both Ancient and Modern History for example - will be placed in a very difficult position. Enrolments in such subjects are often very small. Many schools struggle to keep those subjects going at all. Unless there is a close similarity between the syllabus contents of the State subject and the AB (which there should be), but also the way in which the subjects are taught and assessed then it is highly likely that two classes would have to be run for each subject. That cannot possibly happen because of staffing restrictions.

It is worth looking at what would probably happen in Queensland in maths and the numerical sciences. To do that it is necessary to know what actually occurs in Years 11 and 12 at present.

The Queensland Studies Authority seems to take the third word of their title very seriously. Certainly “authoritarian” is the kindest possible description of the assessment systems they impose. The students have to do what are called EEIs - Extended Experimental Investigations. These last for weeks on end, the students working in groups. Very little formal teaching takes place during that time. The students also have to do ERTs - Extended Response Tasks. Again these last for many weeks and very little teaching takes place. EEIs and ERTs dominate the assessment “system” and because of the authoritarian behaviour of QSA they dominate what is happening in the classrooms. Last week a Year 11 girl, whom I tutor, in response to my question “what’s going on in Physics” replied “there’s ERT and there’s EEI but not much Physics”. Out of the mouths …!

In the context of a possible “voluntary” AB it is not important whether I think that that is a good way to teach Physics (or Chemistry, Biology and the Maths subjects), What does matter is whether a student doing such a course is being put into a position to succeed at the AB. It is highly unlikely that an AB will differ much in assessment structures from the International Baccalaureate or UK “A” level with their emphasis on formal, supervised, unseen examinations. Hence an EEI and ERT “taught” student will have scant hope of performing well in an AB. Clearly a school cannot offer parallel courses each with a different objective.

It seems highly probable that unless there is radical change for the better in syllabi/assessment systems and educational standards in Queensland, then in reality there will be few students able to take up the AB opportunity.

Hence it all comes back to the same old crew, the QSA. Under them Queensland student performance has gone from top to bottom up to Year 10 exit at least. There has been a decline in maths learning of two years according to the Australian Council of Educational Research. Its subject assessment systems in Years 11 and 12 are eccentric to say the least. It is a demonstrably failed organisation.

Successive Commonwealth governments have seen the problem posed to our students by the parochial State run education systems. Mr Howard’s Australian Certificate crashed and sank on those jagged rocks. It is probable that, in Queensland at least, Ms Gillard’s Baccalaureate will sink as well.

As mentioned earlier nothing short of constitutional change can enable a Commonwealth government to influence what goes on in the States. It is a State power and hence a State responsibility.

In Queensland the dreadful plight of our education system is known to all (except the QSA). State parliament is the only group that can do anything towards putting our students back at the top where they used to be. Both sides of politics know how bad the situation is. To date they have done nothing. How many more children must suffer before they act?

It is all very sad, but just to make sure you feel thoroughly depressed I offer the following happy thought: in the paper today the Prime Minister, commenting about the coalitions views on broadband, said that “without this technology our schoolchildren will fall behind (Singapore, Korea and Japan)”. Obviously Ms Gillard does not know that on the international TIMSS tests about 40 per cent of the children from those countries achieve “Advanced” at Year 9 level in maths. Only7 per cent of Australian children achieve that level and only 3 per cent of Queenslanders. How much “further behind” can we go?