Serious concerns about draft reports

Serious concerns have been raised about the new draft primary school reports, writes JENNIFER LEETE.

Education Minister Andrew Refshauge's announcement of "New report cards for primary schools", in a press release of October 31, arises from an ALP policy commitment in the 2003 state election.

It also overlaps with implementation of the Eltis Report Time to Teach, Time to Learn, where Professor Eltis made recommendations about syllabus revision, programming, assessment and reporting.

The Eltis reference group, set up to advise the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the Office of the Board of Studies (OBOS) on the implementation of the Eltis recommendations, has been attempting to incorporate the preparation of and consultation about the template reports into the broader work on Eltis implementation. From a professional and educational perspective it would be foolish to make decisions about reporting to parents in isolation from other decisions about curriculum, programming and assessment. A set of DET consultation materials including the sample reports are now out for consultation despite the fact that significant organisations represented on the Eltis reference group have raised serious concerns about them.

Members are reminded that the first part of the implementation of Time to Teach, Time to Learn is the distribution by the Office of the Board of Studies' consultation paper Defining Mandatory Outcomes in the K-6 Curriculum. That document should create much debate among all primary teachers.

The DET consultation materials are called Curriculum programming, assessing and reporting to parents: expectations and support. These materials have been on the DET website since week 5 and the DET has told Federation they will be distributed in hard copy in week 6.

At a meeting of the Eltis reference group at the end of October, Federation raised serious concerns about the complex nature of the consultation materials. The materials include five different documents, one of which is a survey form on which teachers are to provide their views on the other four. DET's original plan was not to provide hard copies of all of the materials but to require teachers to go to the DET website to look at the draft reports and the support materials as the teacher worked through the survey form. Federation insisted that hard copies of all materials be provided to schools in sufficient numbers so all teachers who wanted to could engage with them.

While there was some attempt to address Federation's concerns DET has now sent out the materials, largely unamended. They are very complex and there are still not enough hard copies for every teacher. Federation is very concerned that this will make it very difficult for practising classroom teachers to have the input required.

As reported in the November 8 edition of Education Federation asked the Minister to extend the timeframe for consultation on both Eltis related documents, the one from the Board on defining mandatory outcomes, as well as this DET package. Director-General Dr Andrew Cappie-Wood has since extended the submission deadline for the DET component of Time to Teach, Time to Learn until the end of term 1, 2005.

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

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November 2004 contents