From :The Australian" newspaper today. However, the state governments claim it is all a political beat-up by the federal governement. -----------------------------------------------------
New age courses 'failing' students Elizabeth Gosch and Samantha Maiden September 29, 2005 AUSTRALIA'S students are being left with no chance of succeeding under "new age curriculums" being taught in state and territory primary schools.
A damning report commissioned by the federal Government ranks primary school curriculums on a state-by-state basis in science, mathematics and English, and compares them with those of countries that are outperforming Australia in international tests.
Education consultant Kevin Donnelly found the decision of Australian states and territories to adopt outcomes-based education in the late 1980s and early 1990s was disadvantaging students.
"One of the flaws in Australia's adoption of outcomes-based education, especially at the primary level, is that the curriculum fails to give students the necessary foundation knowledge, understanding and skills, without which future success is impossible," he said.
Australia is one of only a handful of countries, including South Africa and New Zealand, to adopt outcomes-based education. "The US, after attempting to implement outcomes-based education curriculum at the same time as Australia, has jettisoned it in favour of a standards approach," Dr Donnelly said.
California, which has abandoned the system and returned to traditional teaching methods, is cited as having one of the world's strongest-performing education systems.
Dr Donnelly found NSW was rated poorly on the academic content of its science curriculum, only marginally out-performing Tasmania on one measure.
However, Queensland and Western Australia's science programs were Australia's most highly rated, being assessed as better than England's.
In mathematics, South Australia's course was rated more highly than those of NSW, Victoria and Queensland, with Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania's judged worst because of "limited evidence" of academic content.
"Compared to equivalent documents used by Singapore, California and Japan, the Australian (mathematics) documents, almost without exception, fail to provide clear guidance for teachers about what to teach at each year level," the report says. "Some Australian documents are poor in that they leave too many gaps for teachers and schools to fill in when planning teaching. Many are deficient in mathematical accuracy and clarity."
In the area of English, the study focused on literature and early years of reading and found Australian curriculum documents were not as rigorous or sound as the Californian and the English examples.
"Australian outcomes-based education documents, on the whole, adopt a superficial and patchy approach to detailing essential learning associated with the disciplines," the report says.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson said the 108-page report - Where Do We Stand? The Intended Primary School Curricula Within an International Context - showed Australia's education system needed to return to a more concise, prescriptive syllabus that teachers could teach from and parents could understand and use to assess the progress of their children.
However, a political storm has erupted over the independence of Dr Donnelly, the executive director of Melbourne-based consulting group Education Strategies.
The author of Why Our Schools are Failing, Dr Donnelly is a Liberal Party member who has previously sought pre-selection for a state seat in Victoria. He also worked as chief of staff to Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews in the lead-up to the last election.
Tasmania, which was the worst performer across the board, yesterday dismissed the taxpayer-funded report as "Liberal Party propaganda".
Education Minister Paula Wriedt said the report was "hardly independent advice", given that Dr Donnelly was a former Liberal staffer.
"Dr Nelson set up a mate to write the report that he wanted - and guess what? He got it," Ms Wriedt said.
Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said: "We will be asking questions through the estimates process about how much Dr Donnelly has been paid."
West Australian Education and Training Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich - a former teacher - said Dr Nelson should be removed from the portfolio after his insulting comments about schools and teachers.
"This is a politically motivated report written by one of Brendan Nelson's Liberal Party cronies. It paints a false picture of falling standards in our schools and is an insult to teachers," she said.
NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt said: "Parents can be confident that in NSW we have a clear and rigorous syllabus for every subject and every stage of schooling."
And ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said the territory was not included in the report. "In other words, the highest performing Australian jurisdiction gets dropped from the minister's analysis, which probably suits his purposes," Mr Stanhope said.
However, Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks backed calls for parents to receive more information about students' results. "Despite a decade of endeavour, the ability to compare school systems across Australia is still limited," he said.
"This is regrettable, given the extent of comparable data available internationally. Why is it all so hard? Admittedly, there are some technical and perhaps privacy issues to be resolved but the experience of the OECD is that these are not insurmountable. The issues appear to be more in the realm of politics and the willingness of the education sector to submit itself to scrutiny."
