Templestowe College: Changing the traditional curriculum?

[Orb]

*and let alone the terrifying potential scenario of "super keen parents tailoring their child's schooling from 14 years of age to complete 15 VCE subjects for the perfect score simply because the school will let them" (way to talk about ruining a childhood)

^^ have to put in my 5 cents' worth with that statement

If you've ever lived in a predominantly asian or just extravagantly competitive neighbourhood, you realise that it's generally in the Year 11/12 years when parents amp up all their expectations and regulations. It's because these parents realise that it's this period where it's crucial, critical for their children.

So if we made Year 7 and Year 8 count towards this crucial period, what's to stop these parents from enforcing stricter regulations, because they've realised that the 'ever-important' time is here? This potentially shifts the mentality back into a high-school regime like China, where Chinese students are forced day-in, day-out to 6-8 hours of academic rigours, not to mention the top students the recipients of 12-14 hour crippling mental activity periods.

As a member of a competitive family, I can safely say that I had one of the best Year 7-9 periods where I was allowed to participate in whatever I wanted and pursue my interests, because parents encourage it too (saving the major academic pursuit in Years 10-12). If this plan was implemented, it's again, safe to say that my teenage period would be severely affected due to academic regulations. Some of the co-curricular activities that i've been in have had a significant impact on my future desires and career choices, something that I may have never had the chance to had Year 7 been a repeat of Year 11.

 

[pi]

off-topic

This potentially shifts the mentality back into a high-school regime like China, where Chinese students are forced day-in, day-out to 6-8 hours of academic rigours, not to mention the top students the recipients of 12-14 hour crippling mental activity periods.

I was actually reading this article last night, which was really shocking and eye-opening. One quote which really got me was: “To be honest,” one of my Chinese friends, a new mother, told me, “the gaokao [hardcore Chinese equivalent of VCE] race really begins at birth.”

It'd be a real shame if that happened here.

[Orb]

off-topic

I was actually reading this article last night, which was really shocking and eye-opening. One quote which really got me was: “To be honest,” one of my Chinese friends, a new mother, told me, “the gaokao [hardcore Chinese equivalent of VCE] race really begins at birth.”

It'd be a real shame if that happened here.

response to off-topic

That article is surprisingly incredibly accurate, albeit very slightly exaggerated.
"During the day, Lin timed her cooking to coincide precisely with class breaks, so her son could devour his meals without wasting a second of study time. “We have to do all we can,” Lin said. “Otherwise, we will always blame ourselves.”
It really puts our freedom to learn what we want to learn in perspective.

"school administrators were so keen to have a student admitted to one of China’s top universities that they were offering a sizable reward: nearly $50,000 to be divided equally among Xu’s family, his middle school and — naturally — his teachers at Maotanchang."
When you think of $50,000 in Chinese Yuan (around 270,000rmb) it's the equivalent of 3-4 years of a family's income. All for someone who gets into a top-tier high school.
Crazy.

[pi]

Going to necro this, interesting to see what this school is now up to http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/school-dumps-cutthroat-vce-ranking-20160226-gn4gk0.html?utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#link_time=1456536201

School dumps cut-throat VCE ranking

Students at one Victorian school will become the envy of all teenagers, as they wave goodbye to the ATAR from next year.

Under a proposed new model, students at Templestowe College will be given the option of applying for any course at Swinburne University without an ATAR.

Entry into the university's courses - which will include the full gamut of undergraduate degrees - will be based on new measures of student ability: grit, leadership and strong inter-personal skills.

"The ATAR is simply a ranking tool, people imbue too much status in that," said Andrew Smith, vice president of engagement at Swinburne University, who is calling on other schools and universities to take part in the pilot.

"There are many students who have talent and show commitment, but to whom the ATAR system is not suited. This gives them an opportunity to come through university using a different pathway," he said.

Students who opt in to the new scheme at Templestowe, will apply for a Swinburne course 12 to 24 months before finishing school.

They will decide how many VCE subjects they wish to undertake, and will be given the option of ditching the ATAR (this would not be compulsory).

They will spend much of their final year of school completing a long-term project, in which they will demonstrate their skills in their chosen area, and write a thesis about their project, and their reasons for choosing their university course.

They will also be assessed on their involvement in extra curricular activities, their leadership skills and community engagement.

The school, rather than the university, will ultimately decide whether the student will be admitted into the degree, said Templestowe College principal Peter Hutton.

"In most circumstances, I would argue that schools and teachers know their students far better than an ATAR score can determine.

"For example, a student may be able to achieve an ATAR of 70 or 80, but may not be suitable for university, because they lack a degree of independence needed, or struggle to complete their work to deadline."

Mr Hutton said the ATAR system had led to high degrees of stress and depression among students, as it pitted students against each other in their bid to succeed.

"Sometimes in the school system, we seem to place greater value on those students who are more academic. That, to me, is abhorrent.

"We can't afford to have a system where half the kids come out knowing their ATAR score is less than 50. While that doesn't define them as a failure in our mind, we, as a society, consider them a failure."

Swinburne University's Mr Smith said the new model did not risk lowering standards at the university, as the school would closely monitor the students' progress throughout their year, and advise the university on whether the student was ready for the course.

It comes as a growing number of universities are selecting their students based on interviews and portfolio work, with Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre data showing that only one in four Victorian university courses published a clearly-in ATAR this year.

University of Melbourne emeritus professor, Patrick Griffin, said while the ATAR was a good mechanism of "sorting and selection" for universities, it did not accurately predict students' success at university.

[HopefulLawStudent]

"Swinburne University's Mr Smith said the new model did not risk lowering standards at the university, as the school would closely monitor the students' progress throughout their year, and advise the university on whether the student was ready for the course."

What's to stop a school from saying a student was ready for the course? This model heavily relies on schools honestly monitoring and gauging student progress and whether they were ready for the course.

I feel like it's a cute idea but large-scale, can you imagine what sort of mess that would result in?

[pi]

I'm also not a fan, I think TC is tying to be revolutionary, but they're being way too idealistic in their approach.

[Aaron]

I think we need to look at the bigger picture here, the actual VCE/ATAR system itself, rather than creating pathway x, y and z. I am 100% against the current system (e.g. ranking) and believe it should be based on student merit, rather than an entire process of ranking/scaling/whatnot. It would be a challenge to balance the difficult subjects vs. the not so difficult, but the way it is at the moment is broken (in my view).

There are many students who have talent and show commitment, but to whom the ATAR system is not suited.

We have to ask ourselves, why is the ATAR system not suited to these individuals? Is it because of stress (due to so many complicated calculations from scaling, weighted marks and so on)? Is it because of the workload? Is it because they simply can't be bothered to do the work? These are questions that should be answered before taking any sort of action.

Do Year 12's really understand what will happen if they 'ditch the ATAR' so to speak, and apply for a place at Swinburne. I can only hope that there is proper career counselling available and that the students who do choose this 'pathway' are fully aware of what will happen, and don't choose it to avoid the demands of Year 12.

[lurkering]

I remember in year 7 absolutely despising the amount of 'research projects' with forced electives with an unmotivated cohort. But I made some great memories, goofing off in Food Tech, playing Papa's Pancakeria on Cool-math during IT and the whole idea of ATAR and uni not being something that would've come up. Also... how do you expect a 13 year old to have some sort of idea of what they want to study? The premise sounds great but how you make sure the system can't be manipulated?

How can assessments be monitored properly all the time with this type of 'curriculum'. I'd hate for my parents to choose my classes, but it certainly can happen at such a young age and with the amount of 'innocence' a 13 year old would have.

[thushan]

This is a very interesting development.

I see why TC is doing it, and firstly I commend their guts in innovating and trying out something different. However, I think this proposal is rather risky.

Allowing 13-15 year olds to choose their own academic pathways COULD be beneficial; however, a working knowledge of English (and how to express oneself clearly in the written and spoken format) and Mathematics (so as to be able to perform arithmetic, think mathematically and learn how to think critically, apart from the specialist knowledge that can be acquired) is essential.

I would say - so long as these two subjects are compulsory, I would be happy for this new model to pass.

As for selecting students based on things other than ATAR - I believe unis do this already to an extent (given ATAR is not the sole determinant of doing well at university), but to allow schools to decide which of their students can study which courses makes selection a lot more subjective, and at worst, lead to corruption.

On another note, you might like this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGA11A340Ck

[meganrobyn]

This is a teaching fad that has developed in the UK, USA and Australia over the past couple of decades. Broadly speaking, save for some discrete cases, the cross-country research shows that the enthusiasm for self-direction and discovery learning isn't borne out in practice, and the model leads to lower performance across the board. There are obviously other social factors going on, but, in the countries that have moved closer to it in recent decades, that's when academic performance in a global comparison has started falling. Arguably, this coincidence/correlative suggests it's not falling because of 'traditional' classroom methods - it's falling because of moving away from them and into things that look more 'fun'.

In my own experience teaching, anyway, the teachers who used more of this approach got 'oohs' and 'aahs' at first, but most students got bored with feeling like they weren't learning or being challenged enough. Over time it tended to be the more 'traditional' teachers with high content and performance demands who got better results and across-the-board engagement. I always felt the pressure to be a more 'fashionable' teacher, but every time I tried I cringed at the waste of time - and usually the students would ask if we could go back to normal anyway (except for a few, who said "No, that was fun!" but couldn't necessarily show too much for it).

I think this tends to change the more advanced the student becomes (eg you benefit from way more freedom in a PhD, for instance), but my personal experience certainly coincides with the trend of the research on this one. In a lot of education circles people are starting to ask why this 'failed experiment' keeps on being implemented, and the answer many people give is that it sounds really good. And 'fun'. So it sells well.

Eg, from a quick search, because I haven't kept copies of the research I've read:

https://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/review-australian-curriculum

http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/great-teaching/

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic951140.files/whyMinGuidInstructionDoesNotWork-kirschnerSwellerKlark2006.pdf

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/Why%20Mental%20Arithmetic%20Counts.pdf

https://educhatter.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/open-concept-schools-why-is-the-failed-experiment-making-a-comeback/

[cathiwalker]

I'm not totally for it, but I do like some aspects.

I like the idea of starting VCE subjects earlier, but I don't want to compromise "years" and the "normal" school subjects such as high school maths, science, english, history, PE, etc. I'd be in favour of a system allowing students to accelerate up to 2 subjects, starting the 1/2s in Year 9, and another 2 in Year 10 (with options of repeating).

So for example:
Year 9: 1/2 English, 1/2 Methods, yr9 Science, yr9 PE, yr9 History, yr9 Geo, yr9 Art etc
Year 10: 3/4 English, 3/4 Methods, 1/2 GMA, 1/2 Chem, yr10 PE, yr10 History, etc
Year 11: 3/4 English (repeat, for example), 3/4 Spesh, 3/4 Chem, 1/2 Physics, 1/2 Economics
Year 12: 3/4 Physics, 3/4 Economics, 3/4 Biology, uni Chem

I'd be in favour of something like that. Would be a timetabling nightmare for schools though.

To some extent, this system already exists, the schools have the capacity to make the choice.  My daughter did a 1/2 Biology unit in Year 9, and 3/4 Biology in Year 10, at Box Hill High.  She then did what is now fairly common, two 3/4 subjects in Year 11.  Box Hill won't let students do English or Chemistry early, their feeling for some reason is that they don't have the maturity (I can see the point in English, I'm not convinced about chem!).  Some student have ended up doing 3 Year 12 subjects in Year 11.  I guess that you'd get around the timetabling issues by subject 'blocks' (doing a Year 12 subject in Year 10 did mean that she couldn't do other options for Year 10, like Duke of Ed, from memory).

I think that the Templestowe College option sounds great for kids that get bored easily, you have more option to work at your own pace.  I hope that it works out well for the school and their student (I know of a couple of kids going there, and their parents are certainly really happy with the school structure).