Eltis progress on outcomes slows

By Jennifer Leete

Progress has been slow toward implementation of the recommendations of Professor Ken Eltis in his Time to Teach -- Time to Learn report.

The Office of the Board of Studies (OBOS) is currently managing the process of identifying mandatory outcomes in K-6 syllabuses. The OBOS had intended to do this during term 2 and was proposing a six-week period of consultation with teachers. It is now clear that this process is taking longer than the OBOS expected and it is more likely that a draft document will be available for consultation with teachers during term 3.

The OBOS began the process with a two-day consultation with about 36 practising teachers and has also established a project team of promoted primary teachers to oversee the project.

The purpose of identifying the mandatory outcomes, as stated by Professor Eltis, is "to free up teacher time to allow more time to be spent in planning for teaching and devising of innovative learning tasks for students in all areas of the curriculum". At the same time there is no intention to reduce the vigour or scope of the curriculum.

Federation is aware that there is, and will continue to be, much debate among primary teachers about which outcomes should be mandatory. Some DET officers promoted the view that teachers must teach and report to parents on every outcome in a syllabus, which led to the imposition of huge workload onto teachers. This matter was well canvassed in Federation's salaries case before the IRC. It was also the "trigger" which caused Federation Council to call for the Eltis Review to be conducted.

It is clear that some school staffs took a more reasonable approach and took decisions about which outcomes to prioritise and which to report on so that the task was more manageable and allowed for greater teacher discretion and judgement.

The danger is that in identifying mandatory outcomes, schools will now feel great pressure to cover all of them. It must be added that Professor Eltis said even if outcomes were identified as mandatory, there should be no expectation that these will all be reported on to parents.

This debate will no doubt concern all primary teachers when the documents finally get sent out for consultation.

Eltis Reference Group

The group is currently looking at proposed "template reports" which are proposed to be made available for schools. The status of these templates and their final form, including the question of just how prescriptive they are, has not yet been determined. At its last meeting the committee determined that this work must not occur in isolation and that what was required was a revision of the Department of Education and Training's document "Principles for Assessment and Reporting". The committee also discussed a communications strategy to make its work known to schools and to receive input from teachers.

A meeting of the committee was planned for May 27, but was cancelled because of Federation's strike.

Federation's advice to schools on this issue is that now is not the time to be making major changes to their processes for reporting to parents, unless of course, it is to pull back from onerous and time-consuming work. The ban on portfolio based reporting remains in place and even if this ban is lifted at some stage in the future, the implementation of the Eltis report will more than likely lead to further changes in this area.

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

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June 2004 contents