Without doubt, educators should be focused on educating children for their entry into life’s world and for their engagement with a future that is well and truly beyond the school gate.  Education for life means that we need to be aware of development that is holistic. While academics are important, so too is developing the individual in a social, emotional and moral/spiritual context. Characteristics and traits - the elements that make a person what he or she happens to be - are important and often neglected.  Late last year, in Australia, education ministers of all State and Territory Governments signed the ‘Melbourne Declaration’ which attested to the fact that we should be conscious of holistic development and working to ensure that young people were fully ‘rounded’ in terms of their educational development.

Setting the 21st century educational agenda

It seems to me that this declaration and many that have preceded it in past years may be fulfilled in a lip service context alone. The emphasis placed on schooling, particularly in respect of compliance demands levied on systems by Governments, focuses on student performance in the academic domains of literacy and numeracy. Quite absolute demands are being made on state and territory governments and therefore education departments by the Australian Government in relation to student competencies in these two areas. Annual tests are set for and sat by students in year 3, year 5, year 7 and year 9 in all schools in Australia. This year was the second year of the National Assessment Program (NAP) testing requirement. In a special week during May this year, all children and students sat tests that covered numeracy, reading, writing, spelling and grammar and punctuation.  The educational focus during this particular week for these students right around Australia meant that on 12, 13 and 14 May children were engaged in this testing program. There was one catch up day allowed on 15 May.

NAPLAN (National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy) measures and demonstrates outcomes for all test sitters, with them being compared against territory, state, and national norms. Parents and caregivers receive statements issued through their schools which show student competence in this comparative sense. Schools are able to look at their rankings in a comparing and contrasting sense, both in terms of how performance this year compared with last and how they measured up against other schools within the (in our case) territory, against states and nationally.

Next year, 2010, will be the third year of national testing.  While data generated from this program can be useful, I don't believe that it can be the ‘be all and end all’ of what education is about. My worry is that the focus now happening is disassociating teachers and educators from the needs of children in developmental terms that go beyond testing regimes.  

David Salter in The Week (25 September 2009) wrote of the testing/reality juxtaposition in these terms.

This is the week that the Federal Government is persisting with plans for the publication of school ranking tables betrays its mania for simplistic measurement as a substitute for genuine accountability. Statistics, in themselves solve nothing. If taxpayers are entitled to information on the relative performance of schools, why not on all public services?

Why don't we have similar rankings for post offices, Centrelink agencies or the roads and traffic authorities? The whole notion is preposterous - a shallow political appeal by Labor to the anxieties of aspirational parents who fret that their children could be getting an educational leg-up if only they went to a ‘better performing’ school in another suburb.

The tables themselves will be next to useless as indicators of anything other than how well particular age cohorts can be trained to do the so-called ‘basic skills’ exams.  The dominant subject areas tested - language and maths - are just two elements of what constitutes a worthwhile contemporary education. We can't test crucial qualities such as tolerance or a sense of social responsibility, yet we rightly expect our schools to teach those values. Nor do we need comparative tables to tell us that the children of Toorak are likely to have a better command of irregular verbs than students of the same age at Thargomindah. Every school will reflect its local community - even if every teacher in it has a PhD in education.

Salter’s statements appeal to both logic and common sense. In socio-economic and background terms, there is no way that the thousands of children across our diverse Australian community can be expected to meet a stereotype expectation in outcomes terms. The NAPLAN program as we are presently confronted by it, fails to recognize that accomplishment and performance will be affected by environment and social factors that are microcosmic.  To suggest that the macro applicability of testing meets the needs and considers the situations of all students defies logic.

Any narrow focus to setting school priorities fails to recognise that talents are varied and go beyond capacity in the context of formal schooling alone. Some children who may be challenged by academics are gifted musicians, others outstanding artists with quality fine motor and artistic skills. Other children are strong sportspeople, have the capacity in the areas of performing an expressive arts and so on.  It is a distinct worry that a wide ranging talent pool could be discounted for the sake of focus on one area (numeracy and literacy) alone. For those concerned about the narrowing of schooling priorities, Tom Chapin’s ‘Not On The Test’, which can be accessed at http://www.notonthetest.com/,  is well worth a listen!

The prime focus of schooling

There are many factors that go toward setting requirements held of schools and educators in the 21st century. Over the years, more and more of the responsibility for developing young people has been handballed to schools. A major justification for this paradigm shift is the parents and primary caregivers have to work on making economic ends meet: With more time required for work, less time is available to provide for what used to be the meeting of traditional family responsibilities.

The purpose of my paper is not to argue the rights or wrongs of this strategy shift, but simply to confirm the shift has happened resulting in schools and teachers being required to work with students in a deeper and wider context than ever before - indeed as pseudo parents. Conversations within community often reveal parents and caregivers expect, indeed demand, that the educational fraternity will be about the bringing up of children. That often occupies hours before the formal school day starts and goes on long after the school day has ended with before and after school hours care. There is also a significant impact placed upon the curriculum during the school day to take account of these needs.

Against this backdrop and expectation that teachers will provide an education that is holistic in nature, is the contemporary context of the Australian Government and its absolute imperative of compliance requirements with an educational focus that is orientated toward NAPLAN. This shift means a defocus from holistic aspects of development because of the need to concentrate more exclusively on elements of literacy and numeracy.

NAPLAN and NAPCAN: is there an interface?

A great deal has been said and written in recent times about the need for agencies and organisations to be aware of the need for nurture and care of children.

There is some sort of safety nets through which children are not supposed to slip because of overall surveillance, awareness and care that is provided. All too frequently, sad stories reflect the failure of this awareness, often with detrimental consequences for children who suffer. There is a ‘National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect’ or NAPCAN. Without wanting to get into the situation of parody over serious matters I wonder whether we are in danger of contributing in some neglectful way to children in education developmental terms if we over focus on a limited aspect of educational priority while discounting or minimising broader needs. 

If NAPLAN commitments engage an overall energy by teachers and schools toward meeting compliance requirements and building results toward the ‘great Australian norm’, might it be that the social, emotional and moral/spiritual development attested to as being so important within the preamble of the Melbourne Declaration are overlooked? Are schools who work on developing children, to shape them for the whole of life, going to be considered as successful as schools that do wonderfully well in literacy and numeracy outcomes because of their concentration of time into this rather limited domain?  Without doubt, strategies can be developed to help children excel in particular tests measuring outcomes within limited parameters and sat on particular days. It could be that the ‘four May days’ each year (three testing days and the catch up day) become the height of the educational pinnacle. It could also be that little else is seen to count because of the importance placed upon NAP testing.

Around Australia one hears and reads (albeit in anecdotal context rather than by empirical confirmation) of strategies employed by schools to enhance the test results achieved by children. In Western Australia for instance there was a discussion about limiting the number of days or hours that schools could devote to preparation of children for tests.

There was a concern in that regard which obviously reflected upon what was not happening in order for test preparation to proceed. With testing, expectation and emotion can get in the way of rational reflection and thinking. Indeed, principals, their leadership groups, teachers and community tend to ‘sweat’ on results and what the school’s over all profile is going to look like by comparison to other schools within the Territories and States.

It's true to say that beyond May, apprehensions and tensions prevail until test results are available in mid to late September.  One has to ask whether this pressure is good for the overall school organisation,  especially with talk around schools being compared and contrasted in national media along with teachers being paid on the basis of performance results by students.

I believe that our approach to pedagogy through teaching and learning in the 21st century means that we have to be aware of and devoted to the development of children through a ‘broader and deeper’ curriculum. Foundational work which prepares children for the whole of life is complex, time-consuming and necessary. Scaling back on these needs, minimising attention to broader developmental domains and focusing almost exclusively on literacy and numeracy is not necessarily the best way forward. A rethink is necessary.

Part of that rethink needs to be willingness on the part of educators to speak up and be heard, so they become proactive in setting an agenda that takes into account the needs of children and students. It is when educators in schools are muted, complying while feeling discomfited and resistant to an agenda set from on high, that discontented attitudes take over. I hope that we can work on reprioritising system needs and that educators providing for children and students in schools will have the courage to speak out and voice their concerns.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Henry Gray is Principal of Leanyer School, in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. He commenced his teaching career in 1970, having entered training college as a mature age student.  He has taught in remote, town and urban schools in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory and has been a teacher for 40 years, 38 of those as a school leader.  He holds several degrees.

Mr Gray is a member of various relevant professional associations and was president of the Northern Territory Principal’s Association from 1992 until 1996 then media officer for several years beyond that date. His is presently a member of the Northern Territory Board of Studies. He was awarded the Centenary of Federation Medal in 2002 for service to Northern Territory Education.

 

Go to top of page     Go to online discussion