Consultation to begin on mandatory outcomes

By Jennifer Leete

The Office of the Board of Studies is about to commence consultation with primary teachers on mandatory outcomes in the K-6 curriculum.

This arises from one of the key recommendations of the report of Professor Ken Eltis -- Time to Teach, Time to Learn, an evaluation of the implementation of outcomes based assessment.

Officers of the Board have worked with a group of practising teachers to identify across the six primary syllabuses which of the current outcomes should be considered mandatory.

The consultation document will arrive in schools early in term 4. As well as the proposed mandatory outcomes it includes consultation questions on the context in which the outcomes need to be considered. These include:

• What it will mean to have some outcomes mandatory?
• How can programming and teaching with outcomes be manageable?; and
• What about assessment and reporting?

The document comes with a consultation pro forma which teachers or groups of teachers may complete. The consultation period is planned to extend between October 13 and December 3.

In addition, the Office of the Board will be conducting a series of after school meetings with teachers in each of the Board of Studies liaison officer areas across the state. Details of the meetings will be on the Board's website.

It is vitally important that Federation members actively engage in and respond to this consultation process. Teacher unionists must ensure that the outcomes make the workload associated with assessment and reporting manageable and at the same time promote teacher professional judgement and creativity.

In the meantime, work is continuing on the development by the Department of Education and Training of revised guidelines on assessment and reporting as well as proposed formats for reporting to parents. Consistent with the recommendations of Professor Eltis, these will also be sent out for consultation with teachers before being finalised.

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

For further information

September 2004 contents