Curriculum lies at heart of progress

The need is obvious but few can agree on the best way to improve education standards.

Preschool is a big deal in Estonia. By the age of three, most children are enrolled in a municipality-funded preschool program that has a rich offering of arts, movement, language and mathematics.

While learning through play is the main focus, a smattering of teacher-led instruction ensures that by the time children turn seven and head to school they have their ABCs down pat. Once there, all students are expected to be able to achieve and there is a strong focus on the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic).

Across the gulf, Finland is renowned for the relaxed, student-centric nature of its schools. Classes start late and finish early, and there is plenty of time in the day for eating and playing. Too much homework is frowned on and private tutoring is almost non-existent in a school system that prides itself on having a “holistic” approach to education.

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Contrast that with China, where exam success is of utmost importance to students and their families, which has had a significant impact on teaching methods. Classrooms are traditional; teachers teach explicitly and learning is frequently done by rote.

Although each nation is very different, they all have one thing in common: producing solid academic outcomes for students.

When the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment results were released this week, the Chinese provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang emerged at the top of the rankings in all three domains: reading, mathematics and science. Estonia was the top performing European nation in maths and science. Finland, whose early success in PISA saw it hailed an education utopia, remains in the top 10 for reading and science, although its maths performance has taken a slide.

In contrast, Australia’s consistently declining performance on the test has prompted significant hand-wringing. The reality is that the 15-year-olds who took the maths test last year were more than a year behind in their learning than those who took it back in 2003.

Calls for Australia to look overseas for solutions will be inevitable. However, Greg Ashman, head of maths and research at Ballarat Clarendon College in Victoria, cautions against blindly chasing overseas trends. Nations differ considerably in regards to culture, demographics and wealth, he says, making true comparisons difficult.

“It may, however, be worthwhile to look at the recent rebound in performance in England, particularly for maths,” he says.

Ten years ago, England was in much the same predicament Australia now finds itself, having plummeted down the PISA rankings. However, substantial reforms introduced from 2010 by the Conservative government appear to be producing some green shoots.

At a Centre for Independent Studies event in Sydney in 2017, visiting British schools minister Nick Gibb outlined his party’s “evidence-based, commonsense approach” to education reform.

That included giving greater autonomy to head teachers to improve their schools, overhauling the curriculum to ensure students were being provided with knowledge-rich content, introducing a phonics check for early primary students and giving schools a mandate to take control of school discipline. It also imported some of China’s explicit teaching methods for its maths classrooms.

“While there is plenty of data to demonstrate the success of the academies and free schools program, the most compelling evidence for providing teachers and schools with greater freedom comes from visiting some of the highest performing academies and free schools in England,” Gibb says, singling out the Michaela Community School in northwest London.

“A month ago, I was fortunate to visit this remarkable school.

“Marking is kept to a minimum; behaviour is immaculate; children move briskly and silently between lessons, cordially greeting teachers as they go; children have a voracious appetite for reading; teaching is done from the front of the classroom, with frequent whole-class response to check understanding; the curriculum is knowledge-rich; and the results are extraordinary. I have never been to a school quite like it.

“Michaela’s pupils are fiercely knowledgeable and proud of it. And they are some of the happiest pupils you could hope to meet.”

Ashman, who hails from the UK and is an advocate of the school and its dynamic head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, says the pick up in England’s scores, particularly maths but also reading, could be attributed to the improvements in the curriculum.

“You need that rich knowledge in the curriculum — the history, science, geography — to understand what it is that you're reading,” he says. “There is a lot of fluff in the national curriculum.”

Learning First chief executive Ben Jensen has examined education systems worldwide. He says improving Australia’s curriculum could be a key to improving academic outcomes. However, he stops short of endorsing a curriculum review, as was suggested by Victorian Education Minister James Merlino this week.

“One key difference if you compare the Australian curriculum with those countries that are above us in PISA is the level of specific detail that is provided in the curriculum,” says Dr Jensen.

“In a nutshell, our curriculum is much more high-level than in other systems. And high-level doesn’t necessarily provide the teaching and learning programs that schools need to effectively deliver the curriculum to students.”

In the US, references to the “curriculum” typically mean the textbooks used and the content taught in the classroom. Here in Australia, the national curriculum outlines the required knowledge and skills across eight learning areas, as well as the expected achievement standards at the various grade levels. It does not prescribe how schools are to teach the curriculum.

Compare that with the US, where education authorities vet and endorse various curriculum materials, and Finland, where pre-service trainees use the same textbooks they will eventually be using to teach in the classroom.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is expected to report to the Education Council in the first half of next year on potential changes to the national curriculum, while the NSW Education Department has its own curriculum review under way.

These processes have churned up furious debate about the essential knowledge and skills young people need and the purpose of education more broadly. Calls for Australian education to shake off its industrial-style roots and reform for the 21st century, when the pace of technological advancement has been tipped to render many past jobs obsolete, making skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration superior to knowledge, are getting louder.

But there’s a tale of caution across the Tasman, where New Zealand was one of the first nations to embrace the futurist push, largely abandoning the idea of a knowledge-based curriculum.

Education researcher and commentator Briar Lipson of the New Zealand Institute says the decline is a direct result of a weak curriculum accompanied by progressive education policies such as inquiry-style learning, which lack evidence as to their effectiveness. She says Australia should be wary of going down the same road.

“It’s all part of this romantic idea that puts children at the centre of learning, that they are all innately creative and if left alone they will create their own paths to knowledge,” she says. “It is seductive but dangerous nonsense.”