In lockdown last year I started my 7th university qualification, after all, there’s only so much bread you can bake. (Full disclosure, I didn’t actually bake any bread).  I’ve continued my study this year, and my current subject is Analyse: Evaluation and Assessment in Learning Design. It has brought to the surface, yet again, something that has bothered me for a long time, what we teach and how we assess our senior high school students in NSW. I was blogging a lot about this before the blog was hijacked by Covid. My personal self-imposed mission is to help students cope with the academic demands of school, in a system that I think is outdated and places unnecessary stress on them. Even more so this year with the uncertainty around the HSC examinations (we are still waiting for the new timetable to drop.)

But what is the purpose of Year 11 and 12? One could argue that Years 7-10 is about grounding students in a comprehensive general knowledge and understanding of the basics of things like mathematics, literature, history, geography, science, music, the arts and so on. I am on board with this. We want to make sure we grow a generation of students who know a bit about the world they live in and have developed skills of critical thinking and analysis.

However, that argument doesn’t hold in the senior years as otherwise all subjects would be compulsory. If I want to be a scientist, why I am made to also choose at least 3 other unrelated subjects that I have interest in learning in-depth. This is one of the reasons students get frustrated. “Why am I learning this? I am never going to use this in my life.”

Students who choose not to go to university and study a non-ATAR pathway have much better options these days. They can study VET subjects and subjects more relevant to their future life. Sadly there still remains some stigma around this pathway, yet the reality is not everyone wants to attend University and that is a perfectly valid path.

For those students looking at a potential university pathway, there currently are limited options for more relevant or life skills subjects.

As an ex-teacher, it always bothered me in staff meetings when people complained, but didn’t put forward a solution. I’d love to say throw out the whole system and re-design it from scratch, but I am a realist.  That is never going to happen sadly. So here is my proposal to modify our existing system to make it more relevant and palatable for more students.

Step 1: Create a new suite of academic subjects that can be counted for the ATAR, but that offer skills or learnings that students may find relevant and useful for life after school. I am talking about subjects like Psychology, Financial Skills & Investing, World Politics, Thinking Skills, Saving the Environment, Civics and Citizenship…just to name a few off the top of my head. Many of the non-ATAR subjects actually fit into this category, and could be beefed up to make them a more academic version of the subject that could then be counted towards the ATAR. So many of the current subjects do not have real world applications. The biggest complaint I hear from senior students is this is such a waste of time why do I need to know this I will never use this in my life. We need to give them at least some options where we can justify why it might be useful for later on. Yes there are still students that won’t be happy, but let’s get to that going then we can see what we need to do to address the needs of this then much smaller group.

Step 2: Year 11 is asked to look at the traditional range of subjects available and choose subjects that they think will be useful for their future career or university course, or are something they are interested in. They might plan to be a marine biologist, but they also have a passion for Modern History or Visual Arts. Great, go for it.

(As a corollary to this, I’d like to see a lot more time and money invested in careers education for students in Year 10. Some schools do a great job, in others it is tokenistic, but overall there is not nearly enough funding or allocation of lessons for students in Year 10 to really help them explore different careers or courses they might find interesting.)

Step 3: If there are not 6 subjects they are keen on, then for Term 1 Year 11 students still need to fill up the rest of their subject options from the traditional courses. This is to ensure that they don’t later say, oh I should have also studied Economics. Also good for students who still have no idea what they want to do when school finishes. So to start with, Year 11 would be just like it currently is, and a chance to try before they buy.

(A conversation with another educator who asked why do we need this step prompted me to add this: Many of the ‘traditional’ subjects would kick up a hell of a fuss if other more relevant and appealing subjects were offered. Plus people  argue ‘oh but they need to give these traditional subjects a go as they might find they actually enjoy them’. I don’t agree with either of these viewpoints, and I’d be happy to skip this, but to pacify the naysayers I thought well let them choose from traditional subjects first, give them a go for a term, then they can drop the subjects they don’t find appealing and move on.  Now I think more about it, the way to go would be to introduce just two new relevant subjects each year for a period of 5 years. Change by stealth.  If there were another 10 subjects available that were more relevant, interesting and appealing to senior students, I think that would stem much of their dissatisfaction and frustration with the senior years.)

Step 4: At the end of Term 1, having had a good taste of their subjects, Year 11 students decide which ones they will keep, and which ones are not relevant or interesting for them and will be replaced with one of the new Life Learning subjects. So none of those new subjects start until Term 2.

This would mean that some students would continue with their 6 traditional subjects. Some would keep say 4 of those subjects, and pick up, for example, Psychology and Financial Skills instead.

If students feel they can choose subjects that they are interested in, or will find relevant for their future life, engagement and satisfaction levels would shoot through the roof and frustration levels would markedly decrease. NESA did this for non-ATAR students, gave them a chance to study subjects that are more relevant for them. NESA now needs to do the same for the ATAR students. 

When I was in the senior years there were 2 subjects I wanted to do, the other 4 I chose were the ones I hated least. How depressing. I don’t want this to continue for future students.

Just in case you aren’t clear what I want, NESA needs to develop a greater range of life relevant and contemporary subjects with enough academic rigour that they can be counted for the ATAR.

Step 5: Make the final HSC exams open book. Why oh why are we still testing memorisation skills so heavily? This just creates massive stress and undue pressure on students. I can’t remember the last time I had a test at university that was testing my memorisation skills. Time to draw a line in the sand. They have had enough memorisation practice by the end of Year 10. (Although if we took it away in the senior years it would trickle down to the junior years too over time.)

Step 6: Apparently only 30% of students still use an ATAR to get into university. So why are we even having these final high-pressured exams? Perhaps instead, the highly competitive courses have an entrance exams students sit (like the GMAT and UCAT) and we ditch summative exams altogether and move purely to formative assessment. This would be transformative as we could focus purely on the learning experiences over the senior years, expanding students’ minds, and having students achieve benchmarks and standards rather than grading to a curve.

(An educator sent this to me:  I worry that if unis are allowed to sit their own exams, they will become de facto the important thing, and the HSC credential will lose something widely applicable. (I worry that we may already be there with the announcement that the ATARS this year will come out before the HSC results!). I want there to be one respected credential for kids going to uni, and those who aren’t, and those who don’t know…)

I don’t know the answer for university entrances, there has to be a better system somewhere in the world – and if it is not sorted by then that’s another thing I’ll research in retirement…

There is so much widespread dissatisfaction with the current model for Years 11/12 in NSW, but nothing seems to change. Surely there are some people in positions of power that can open these discussions?? Would love to know who they are. Maybe if you share this post I’ll find them?

(If you are interested in what sparked this rant, chapter 10 of this book: https://cetl.ppu.edu/sites/default/files/publications/-John_Biggs_and_Catherine_Tang-_Teaching_for_Quali-BookFiorg-.pdf )

If you made it to the end of this post, well done. At least it made me feel better to get this off my chest.

This is all part of a long term plan, when I ‘retire’ in 15 years or so my mission and retirement plan so I am not bored is then to push for serious reform of the education system. I’ll have time then, no pressure to earn income and nothing to lose.

PS:

An educator also sent this to me: I also wish we were having a discussion about how many subjects we think should be required for the HSC. Maybe we should have students doing 7 subjects in Year 11, and present three for the HSC…?? Or stacks of other options too?? Maybe 12 units for the HSC, which could be 6 2 unit courses, or 3 4 until courses, depending on your interests and ambitions…?

I also like this idea – it is a bit like a model of what you do in University as you progress from first year and then become more specialised. Now I think about it, why do we make them do 5-6 subjects for the HSC? That is a heavy load. Even if we kept it so Year 11 you do your 12 years and Year 12 you only do 8 units? There are many other options that could be debated.

https://www.smh.com.au/education/schools-need-to-go-beyond-imparting-and-testing-knowledge-mark-scott-20181206-p50klj.html?csp=b824b9bdbcf23c712edf0f0f108122e6&fbclid=IwAR15wUAj2-ZSZtTUsft1OTXfyEg78EkypazemFe69sZPxtnCjz-sUs_oZVg

https://www.smh.com.au/education/sweeping-changes-to-hsc-and-syllabus-proposed-by-government-review-20191021-p532sk.html

And this is an interesting development, I need to look more into the organisation referred to:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-11/slow-death-of-atar-as-school-leavers-head-for-jobs-cliff/12529898

Dear Student soon to be embarking on Year 12,

I just wanted to apologise to you. Our senior school system in NSW really really sucks. I wish we could change it. Let me tell you what I don’t like about it:

1. WE AREN’T ALL ACADEMIC! Our school system only tests and celebrates a narrow range of skills. So if you aren’t an academic type of student, you spend two years feeling pretty crappy and inadequate and like a failure. And yet we all know of lots of people who weren’t successful in school are highly successful in life. And we as adults also know that lots of people leave school and suddenly go, wow, I am really good at blah (whatever that might end up being), I just wasn’t academic. So the fact we make so many students feel so bad about themselves and their abilities for 2 years is just wrong. And feeling like this really knocks your confidence in yourself. So if you are sick of being at the bottom or middle of your assessment rankings – just remember – this too will pass. It is a short and sometimes painful phase of your life and you have many, many years ahead of you to find out what you enjoy, what your are good at and what makes you feel like a success. Hang in there and give yourself a chance to get out in the real world and find your place in the world. Maybe you are lucky and already know what non-school skills and talents you have, but if not, then keep your eyes open and you will eventually find out what things you enjoy and are good at in life.
   
    
2. RIDICULOUS WORKLOAD: I really don’t like the amount of work involved and in particular the memorisation involved in the senior years. I wrote about this in my last post. In a world when we can look up anything, why do we have to spend so much time memorising and how come the people with good memories then get a real advantage? I’d much rather the exams were open book. Sadly they are not. So what can you do? Basically just do what you can. Make notes, get study guides, ask for help on how to learn and memorise. Yes it’s not exciting or sexy, but what’s the alternative? Not doing anything and getting even worse results and feeling even worse? We all have to go through the process of Year 11 and 12 so the best way to do that is really a bit of ‘suck it up sunshine’, and do some work and ask for help in getting the best marks you can. .
   
    
3. ONE NUMBER IS NOT WHO YOU ARE: I don’t like how we place so much focus on one number like the ATAR. You as a person are not defined by a single number in life! Don’t fall for the hype. The HSC is a means to an end, you use the ATAR solely to get to the next step then no-one ever asks you again what your mark was.  Ever. I promise you.
   
    
4. MORE CAREER PATHS THAN YOU REALISE: This leads me to the next point! There is not just one path to get to where you want to go. If you are passionate about a career you will make it happen. There are always multiple paths in life to get to where you want to go. For example, if you don’t get the mark you need for a course you can do a course with a lower mark then after a year transfer to the course you wanted – and often many of the subjects you have done will be credited to the new course. It’s much easier to transfer to the course once you are in the university. Also some universities offer bridging courses, this is where you do a particular course for a few weeks or months at uni then you can get into the course you want. Another popular option is to wait a year or so and apply as a mature age student where it is easier to get in. In the years in between you could get a job for awhile and earn a bit of cash or go to TAFE and do a related certificate course for a year which will make you a more attractive employee when you finish your uni course. So if you are stressing and worrying about whether you will even get near your course mark, just stop. Cause firstly I am constantly amazed at how some students who I thought would have no chance are scaled up or else get much better marks because of their bonus points etc and end up with respectable ATARs. And secondly you aren’t going to be left with no options, there will be a way to do what you want it just might take a little longer that’s all.
   
    
5. SO WHY STUDY? So then given all this, why should you even bother studying? The main reason is to give yourself as many options as possible, but I think it is more than that. I don’t think these 2 years are really about the content you learn.  I think it is about learning other more important things. It’s about learning how to make yourself do stuff when you don’t want to it. It’s about learning how to ask for help when you get stuck, or don’t know what you are doing or how to improve. It’s about learning to deal with feelings of frustration and anger and how to communicate with people like your parents (who really just want to help you) without lashing out. It’s about learning how to deal with your own strengths and weaknesses and personal challenges.  And it’s about learning how to learn which will help you in everything you do when you finally get to focus on things you want to learn.

One last thought. Don’t try and go through this alone.  Talk to your parents (even if they are annoying!). Talk to your friends. Talk to your teachers. If you are really stressing and depressed don’t just hope it will go away, talk to your school counsellor or ask your parents to find you a counsellor or psychologist. I really love now how the stigma of talking to professionals is gone. We all recognise now that it is the brave and smart people who reach out – that sometimes you need to talk to someone who isn’t family or friends and who can help you find some perspective and help you find ways of coping. Seeing a counsellor each week or fortnight throughout Year 12 is something lots of students find really useful. I did this the first year when I was doing my PhD and my mum was diagnosed with cancer and I was overwhelmed. It’s hard to think clearly when you are super stressed or really depressed. Many students have to see a counsellor it as part of their special provisions application process and start doing it grudgingly, but then find it is actually really helpful. And if you don’t like the first counsellor you see, then try a different one, different people will have different things to offer.

And if you have study skills questions – I’m always happy to help.

Dr Prue Salter

info@enhanced-learning.net

 

 

I have just so many concerns about our current educational system. The lack of relevance of what we are teaching. The outrageous pressure on our senior students. The way memorisation skills plays such a big part of success in the senior years.

Which is crazy! We have so much knowledge that we can access at any time at our fingertips. So why are we still making students memorise huge amounts of information for their final years of school? Some might argue that the exams are not just testing memorisation skills, there is critical thinking, analysing etc -and that is true. But the reality is that you could be the best essay writer in the world, but unless you have memorised the content you need for your essay then you are in big trouble.

I think it is too much. Trying to remember a year’s worth of content for 5-6 subjects just places too much pressure on students. One small simple way we could address this- make the final exams open book. Or allow students to bring in a certain number of pages with them. Or even better, create a 20 page document for each subject that has the bulk of the ‘content’ students would need to memorise. In fact I like this idea best as that way you don’t have to police what is brought in – it is provided. You don’t make kids spend hours trying to reduce their notes to a single page that they are allowed to bring in. Instead we are saying, look here is 20 odd pages of pure content that you don’t have to memorise – that has to take the pressure off surely?  They know in advance what is in the resource book and they can focus on skill development rather than wasting so much time creating and condensing tehir study notes and memorising them.

All we need is one progressive subject to take up the gauntlet and the rest will surely follow!

http://amp.smh.com.au/national/education/schools-and-universities-welcome-alternative-to-hsc-exams-20170626-gwyvtq.html

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-29/year-12-exams-our-kids-deserve-better-than-this/7945152?pfmredir=sm

What value is there in pitting kids against each other? It’s a question posed by Lucy Clark — journalist and author of Beautiful Failures — a book that interrogates Australia’s current education system.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/news/school-education-first-hsc-reform-in-17-years/news-story/e6a0bed7d7cc46e68a8030ee5d9d84a4

“All the talk about improving education by improving testing has been heard before­. The HSC is an artefact of last century – rolled out in schools in the sixties when the world and work was very different.

The HSC reforms are a missed opportunity to look long term at how we teach and assess our students. We desperately need reforms on the early years of schooling because getting it right from the beginning makes more sense than playing catch-up at the end of schooling.

While Finland is now focusing on ‘happiness’ as a key educational outcome and our Asian neighbours are looking at how to move beyond high stakes testing to improve entrepreneurism, Australia will continue to be stuck a century behind where we aspire to be.

If we are serious about preparing students for 21st century life and work, we need to schools are innovative.”

And in the mosman daiy:

http://brightside.me/article/the-school-of-the-future-has-opened-in-finland-13755/

Saunalahti school in the city of Espoo, Finland

http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/altering-teaching-to-improve-international-ranking-tests-may-take-joy-out-of-learning-20160623-gpq3pz.html

Beautiful Failures by Lucy Clark

It seems like there are two main issues.

1. I don’t like the pressure students are placed under in the final years of school and in particular the pressure from the need to memorise huge amounts of information (so what it we made all HSC exams open book, how would that change things??although is there some benefit to the mind and memory from rote learning? need to investigate…) and…
2. I think there are probably other things more relevant things that we should also be teaching in the senior years to help students prepare better for life (like knowing how to touch type, understanding taxes, mortgages…)

 

So a student posted this meme in a HSC facebook group:

I really think we have some major problems with the Australian secondary school system. My business is all about helping students cope with the academic demands of this system. I’m a pragmatist – students currently have to go through this system so how can we help them to do their best in the system we have with the least amount of stress.

But why can’t we change the system?

The introduction of the National Curriculum was the perfect time to do this. What should have happened is we should have said let’s start from scratch. Let’s work out what we really want students to learn in secondary school in today’s world, what skills do we want them to enter the world knowing? How can we better prepare them for life and life-long learning? Let’s change the university entrance requirements so we change the HSC (VCE etc.) and stop testing memorisation skills and stop putting senior students under so much pressure and expecting them to study ridiculous amounts of hours each day. We say to students – everyone has to go through this – but why should they have to? It’s time to challenge this.

Sadly the national curriculum just turned out to be a reorganisation of the existing curriculum. No big amazing innovation, no major changes, no forward thinking. Just more of what we already had. And even more bizarrely no national assessment, instead all the different States stuck with the current mode of assessment in that state.

I do believe it is all driven top down from university entrance requirements. The universities have to have a way of deciding who to offer places to and this then impacts what and how is taught in the senior years. So that’s where we need to start – we need to find a better way to work out how students are offered university places. Then we need to have a good hard look at what we are actually teaching students in Years 7-12 and decide do we want to keep teaching this or are we just teaching it because a) this is what we have always done b) there is a lot of money invested in teachers and books and web resources for this content c) it’s too hard and big and overwhelming to say it is time to throw it all out and start from scratch designing a curriculum that meets the needs of today’s students.

So I think it is time to investigate. Somewhere out in the big wide world there has to already be better systems operating. We all know Finland is touted as the educational leader, so perhaps that is the first place to start my investigations.

As soon as I write the books from the PhD this is where I am going to devote my energies. Ok so it may take a few years to get the books done, but in the interim I’ll post my musings here now and then and welcome any comments!

Now the PhD is over, the focus of this blog will change to looking at how we can improve the current educational system, particularly the experience of students in Year 11 and 12. This is something I want to focus on down the track so will record thoughts or ideas in the blog so they are there and ready when I have the time and space to really focus on this issue.