Gonski 2.0: Australia's going back to learning progressions
Sandra Heldsinger
Founder Brightpath Assessment and Reporting Software and Consultant in Educational Assessment
We have a long, international, and costly history of curriculum change. New curricula are pursued with great gusto, wrangled by committee and then implemented by an obliging teaching force. Why do our curricula not stand the test of time? Or at least last a decade or two?
The UK's national curriculum, which involved learning progressions or levels has been abandoned. Western Australia's curriculum for a number of years consisted of student learning progressions and things got quite ugly in WA because of high levels of dissatisfaction amongst the profession about using these progressions to assess and report student progress.
The murmurings against the US's Common Core Standards are becoming stronger and louder. Australia's national curriculum currently consists of year level expectations and the recently released Gonski review advocates that it is essential to move from a year-based curriculum to a curriculum expressed as learning progressions independent of year or age.
Our curricula fall apart when we get to the pointy end of assessment and school accountability. I strongly believe that our curricula will only have longevity if we solve the educational assessment and measurement challenges first. We need to know how we are going to assess and measure progress and achievement and then devise the curricula. Australian colleagues, starting out again, doing the same thing and expecting different results - none of want to be called stupid!