APPA’s Draft Charter captured by Federal Agenda

The Australian Primary Principal’s Draft Charter on Primary Schooling seems to have taken an unexpected turn with a proposal that would be very encouraging for the Howard Federal government education agenda of attempting to control and limit curriculum that might cause students at any level to develop skills in critical analysis and independent thinking.

No surprises there since the development of the Draft Charter was funded by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop.

The draft errs from the outset by stating that, “the main purpose of primary schooling is ensuring that all children learn and gain a permanent love of learning.”

Learn what though? No point at being good at learning if somebody has already made a decision about what should be learned. Surely the main purpose of schools (primary and secondary) is to educate. An educated individual would be recognised as one who has knowledge, skills and understandings in a broad range of disciplines.

One might be simultaneously clever in maths but also incredibly ignorant about their personal contribution to global warming, or be a gifted scientist but unable to consider the ethical issues surrounding their research. Clever and gifted perhaps, but not educated.

In April 2007 the original concern voiced publicly by APPA was that the primary curriculum was “cluttered” What was the primary curriculum cluttered by? Leonie Trimper, President of APPA stated that, “Governments expect schools to give equal weight to the eight learning areas while also dealing with a host of other needs and issues.”

Ms Trimper identified curriculum add-ons such as children’s emotional, nutritional and physical health problems, their interpersonal issues and a host of other things from road safety to limiting television viewing and teaching safe behaviour near dogs.

Fair enough and in fact, in five minutes AEU members from the Murraylands Area listed 26 separate ‘curriculum initiatives’ outside of the eight learning areas.

Primary and Secondary teachers could all tell of politically driven curriculum initiatives that are foisted upon schools without adequate resourcing for professional development or funding for teaching materials or time for implementation.

This is the real issue. More and more, populist politically driven curriculum components are foisted upon schools. Education Departments have bowed to politicians and promoted the curriculum add-ons, without addressing resourcing for schools in terms of cost in time, funds, professional development and implementation or consideration of the impact upon teacher workload that will detract from the eight learning areas.

Members report that principals and schools will commit to any number of these ‘initiatives’ without analyzing the school’s capacity to implement the add-on in terms of the current teaching workloads of staff or the priority of implementing that particular add-on compared to existing initiatives or even the essential learning areas of the curriculum.

There’s only so much time in the day. What stays and what goes?

What is really needed is for teachers to exercise their professional judgment about the value of the curriculum add-ons and their capacity to teach these without compromising the real curriculum.

And then there’s the hours of mind numbing anti educational bureaucracy and administration geared to increasing levels of accountability for state and federal governments who are decreasing funding to public education

This is the second flaw of APPA’s draft charter. Instead of taking a strong position about the workload of teachers because of bureaucracy and inadequately funded politically driven curriculum add-ons and the expectations upon principals to slavishly implement them APPA has chosen to make a comparative judgment about the value of the eight areas of learning.

APPA has stated that it values most highly English literacy and Mathematics (including numeracy) – the core. Next most important is Science and History. What about the Arts? Design and Technology? Health and Physical education? Languages?

Teaching literacy and numeracy are so important that they should and do feature within the eight areas of learning. Certainly literacy and numeracy are necessary skills to be mastered in order to learn effectively and should be taught in conjunction with a broad and inclusive curriculum.

Primary teachers put a great deal of emphasis upon ensuring that every student experiences success. Not all students will come to love learning maths or science or English or history. Many will develop an affinity with one learning area or another. Pity the poor student whose only chance for success in primary education is through physical education or music or a second language.

APPA’s Charter fails to address the real cause of curriculum overload and teacher workloads. Teachers by and large want to focus upon literacy and numeracy and the eight learning areas of the curriculum with control over the implementation of politically driven add-ons and mindless administrative tasks.

The AEU supports a broad and comprehensive and inclusive curriculum for all students.

The AEU supports the professional judgment of its members to determine what contributes and what detracts from student learning and the curriculum in collaboration with parents and students.