Curriculum crisis a tale of politics over performance

“Federal minister Jason Clare has prioritised a lift in school standards. But that won’t work without curriculum reform,” writes Paul Kelly.

The question is: After years of concern, what is the breakthrough point to reverse the decline in our school standards now it is apparent most state governments and the designated curriculum authority refuse to accept accountability for the scale of this debacle?

This week, Ben Jensen, the former director of the Grattan Institute’s School Education Program and now chief executive of the Learning First research and advisory company, released a curriculum benchmarking analysis the government authority has conspicuously failed to conduct.

If you want to know how serious is the decline in school education, how futile is the huge school funding agenda and how entrenched is the resistance to confronting the problem, just read the report on the Australian curriculum Jensen released this week. It should be compulsory reading for all school systems, public and private, and for philanthropists who think their funding programs are assisting school quality.

Jensen was shocked by what he found. “We knew the situation wasn’t great,” he told this column. “But we were shocked at just how much content was missing. None of us expected that in the first nine years of schooling there would be half the content missing in the Australian science curriculum compared to other country systems.

“We were shocked there were only five topics dealt with in depth compared with 22 topics covered in depth in the science systems of other countries. The thing that just hits you in the face is when you look at the documentation side by side and you hear teacher after teacher saying that (the alternative) would be so much easier to teach.

“This was the immediate shock. But I get incredibly frustrated and almost angry that we have a national curriculum body in this country that clearly hasn’t done the research and benchmarking required to ensure a world-class science curriculum.”

Jensen is now doing that job. He and his small team based in Melbourne set about assessing the science curriculum by benchmarking it against other systems – Alberta, Quebec, England, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the US – picking science because it offered more precision as a benchmarking project.

The real significance of the Jensen project is that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, the independent statutory authority, has not done its job during and after the development of the Australian curriculum during the Rudd-Gillard era.

In criticising ACARA, Jensen told this paper neither the research on quality curriculum nor the benchmarking against other systems had been done to deliver a world-class Australian curriculum.

Ben Jensen

By selecting science Jensen was able to penetrate at depth comparing Australia’s curriculum to other nations in a study ACARA has never attempted.

“I have written many reports advocating for reforms in Australian school education,” Jensen said in the report. “But I have never produced a report that expressed so much alarm about a fundamental aspect of our education system. I have never conducted analysis that showed such severe problems as those presented here. I take no joy in presenting these findings but I am certain that the only way we can improve Australian education is to be honest about them.”

Jensen’s 44-page report shows by the time Australian students finish year 8, they will have covered less than half as much science content as the average of every other system compared.

Australia is a curriculum outlier. Experts often analyse curriculum as a trade-off between breadth and depth. But the Australian curriculum, unfortunately, lacks “both breadth and depth”.

A vast range of issues is analysed, including biological, physical, chemical and Earth and space sciences. In biological sciences Australia has nearly 70 per cent less content compared with the average of other systems; in physical sciences and Earth and space sciences, Australia’s inadequate coverage is 56 per cent and 43 per cent respectively.

At the same time, international PISA tests show the performance of Australian students has steadily fallen since 2010 and that by 2018 average science scores had declined by the equivalent of nearly one full year of schooling.

The curriculum situation is dire. There has been spasmodic alarm for years but with few results. The report said: “Many teachers, school and system leaders also expressed to us their deep concerns about the Australian curriculum, yet significant curriculum reform is not part of Australia’s policy debate. We are on a mission to change that.”

Former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard greet the crowd during the Labor Campaign Launch in May 2019.

There are two pivotal problems in education – politics and evidence-based research. The politics of education is about pacifying the many institutional stakeholders – these are professional groups, with the teacher unions top of the list. State education ministers, bureaucrats and organisations such as ACARA function to manage stakeholders, offering concessions here and there, to minimise political trouble. Politics not performance is the priority.

There is no political accountability for school performance. None. There is no measure of overall school performance advanced at state elections. The decline continues, always masked, yet doing immense damage. Political leverage for improvement is almost non-existent.

Governments keep announcing pledges to improve Australia’s STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) skills but seem unable to confront the demise that Jensen’s report documents at school. The decline in senior students taking science is known. How many more reports are needed before somebody in charge breaks the glass?

The absence of evidence-based research is pervasive. What Jensen’s report shows is that ACARA doesn’t have a good analysis of what’s being taught in classrooms. If it doesn’t know, what hope have the rest of us got?

The resistance to evidence-based research is notorious. It took decades for phonics to be accepted as the method for teaching kids how to read. Most schools still operate in defiance of evidence that direct, explicit instruction is the superior method of teaching. Most universities refuse outright to run evidence-based teacher training courses.

Education Minister Jason Clare

One of Jensen’s most important findings is that teachers want a better curriculum. They carry the load for a curriculum that lacks content and has poor sequencing. Jensen said teachers have done “an incredible job” to prevent standards falling even further. He said while school reform is high-cost, curriculum reform is remarkably cost-cheap. Indeed, in cost-benefit terms it is highly effective. It is also fundamental for equity. “It can significantly reduce achievement gaps between rich and poor students,” Jensen said.

Federal minister Jason Clare has prioritised a lift in school standards. But that won’t work without curriculum reform. Shadow minister Sarah Henderson is focused on the school crisis – the Coalition needs to go to the next election making school standards a frontline election issue. That means a new curriculum and recasting flawed institutions such as ACARA.