I’m not sure this is related, but I certainly think that it’s appropriate at the current time.

I recently heard that the Rock Eisteddfod (and the JRock program) look like they might be canceled, due to a lack of funds. I heard about this on Channel 7 News, and I haven’t found anything on the ‘net or in the press, but I still think it’s worth a mention. Although this is being cancelled due to a lack of sponsorship money, I can imagine a future where these kinds of activities don’t exist at all – simply because school has become so focused on the NAPLAN testing agenda.

Let’s think about this for a moment: if, as a principal, you had to choose between directing your staff to spend time preparing students for NAPLAN or for the Rock Eisteddfod, which would you choose? Especially considering that, while, at best, you might get a bit of local press coverage for the Eisteddfod, your success or failure will be trumpeted in much-publicised detail on the myschool website.

Hmm? Not a hard question, I imagine.

I know there are principals and teachers out there who will say, ‘Be damned to these ridiculous dictates of testing. We will have an Eistedfodd team, and, by Jove, our parents will know us for the good school we are!’ But I think those kind of educational professionals will soon become few and far between.

Of course, it won’t stop with just an Eisteddfod. Excursions will go. Extracurricular activities will go. Enrichment activities will go. Personal, social, moral education will go.

You’ve been warned.

By Justin Ballis
A leaked Victorian Department of Education memo, revealed by two
newspapers this morning, has made a lie of official denials that
publication of data from the My School website will lead to the
narrowing of the curriculum and “suck the oxygen” out of primary school
classrooms.

The Australian reports that the memo directs teachers to “explicitly
teach” to the NAPLAN tests in order to improve overall literacy and
numeracy results in Victoria. This vindicates Federation warnings that
the publication of NAPLAN data would push Australia towards replicating
the failed English experiment with league tables.

The memo also formalises what President Bob Lipscombe feared would be
teachers’ natural reaction to being unfairly ranked by test results.

“Teachers aren’t fools. And if they are going to be judged by such
measures, as inappropriate as it is, you’re going to see [them]
teaching to the test,” he said of league tables. “You’ll see the very
things that they warned against in England, and most recently warned
against by Dr Ken Boston, former Director-General of Education in NSW.

“The very man who was previously in charge of education in this state
warned us not to go down the pathway they’ve followed in England. The
person who told us that in England up to 70 per cent of teachers’ time,
up to 70 per cent of students’ time – in the time leading up to the
test in England – is now spent coaching to the test.

“The very man who warned us that drama, music, art, excursions all
suffered enormously in the English education system as a result of the
distortions that occurred around league tables.”

According to The Australian, which obtained a copy of the memo, the
directive tells principals to appoint a NAPLAN coordinator and offers a
“blueprint for classroom approaches” that includes coaching skills for
passing the tests such as learning the “test question vocabulary” and
“skim and scan”.

The memo was emailed to all school principals in the Loddon-Mallee
region of Victoria two days before the launch of the MySchool website.

“We are now heading down the pathway that’s been followed in England,
where they’ve had league tables for the last two decades,” Lipscombe
said. “Despite those league tables being in place…there has been no
significant improvement in student outcomes. In fact, if you look at
the international measure of student assessment, Australia ranks well
above England in those measures.”

Boston, the former chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority in England, has been an unexpected ally of opponents to
league tables. “Despite their formal qualifications, many young people
[in England] are…deficient in the soft skills that form an essential
component of each individual’s human capital, some of them to the
extent that they are in fact unemployable,” Boston wrote in Britain’s
The Sunday Times last year.

“The present problem is not the result of inadequacies in the primary
curricul…The real problem is that teachers and schools aren’t able to
get on with teaching it. That is because the government’s approach to
the key-stage tests has sucked the oxygen from the classrooms of
primary schools.”

Lipscombe added: “It’s a sad day when we decide that that’s the example
we wish to follow, that’s the pathway we wish to go along. We are very
concerned now that we are going to see distortion of what’s taught in
our schools.”

The Victorian memo indicates that at least one state Education
Department is determined to repeat England’s mistake.

TO: FEDERATION REPRESENTATIVES, ALL SCHOOLS

RE: UPDATE ON LEAGUE TABLES

As you are aware, the launch of the Federal Government’s “My School’ website last week immediately led to invalid comparisons, the
publication of simplistic league tables across Australia, the naming of the supposedly ‘best’ and ‘worst’ schools, and unwarranted damage to the reputations of many schools and their students.

Anticipating this development representatives from teacher unions in all states and territories at the Australian Education Union Federal Conference on 19 January 2010 unanimously endorsed the following as part as a longer resolution of league tables:

“Given our ethical and professional responsibility to our students and broader school communities, the Federal Conference of the AEU resolves that

* the profession cannot and will not cooperate in the implementation of NAPLAN unless satisfactory measures are introduced to stop the further creation and publication of league tables; and

* the AEU together with its Branches and Associated Bodies will allocate its full resources to

* mobilize and organize the profession in support of this campaign, and

* provide the necessary information to parents and the broader community about the critical importance of stopping the further
creation and publication of league tables. The AEU will continue to work closely with the parent movement to achieve
this.

A special meeting of the Federal executive will be convened on April 12 2010 to assess the extent to which the government may have heeded the concerns and calls of parents, teachers and principals to introduce appropriate measures to stop league tables.”

If the Federal Government refuses to take action to prevent the publication of league tables, the NSW Teachers Federation is fully
committed to implementing this decision.

Members in schools that have been adversely affected by the publication of league tables should not hesitate to contact their Federation organiser for support and assistance.