Education experts say school week could be cut, online lessons added

[Joseph41]

Article here.

What are your thoughts on this? Some interesting excerpts from the article:

THE school week could be cut to three days as Victoria’s growing cohort of students are taught in shifts, according to an education expert.

He said schools could introduce shifts — rotating students through fewer classroom lessons and offering top-up education online.

Education experts also predicted schools would stop teaching maths, science, reading and music as individual lessons.

Instead, project-based learning would combine multiple areas of the curriculum.

Prof Apperley said lessons could also be “gamified” — a teaching style borne out of video games. Students would earn rewards or digital badges for small tasks and a string of little tests would replace bigger exams.

“Students will need to unlock lessons A, B and C before they can go on to D,” he said. “It makes learning fun and gives people incentive.”

[S200]

Interesting read J41!!
But I don't recon it'll work.
That last part you quoted...
The student is unlikely to even DO part A, let alone unlocking parts B, C and D!
What do you think??

[Aaron]

I LOVE the idea of 'gamified' classes. Although I think I just love this because I am a techhead

The three day week.. ehh... i'm not so keen on it. I think forcing students to come to school, they have the opportunity to learn without the distractions at home. This same argument can be applied to that discussion about cloud learning/online learning. I should be all for this, given my quals in education and IT... but I can definitely see a downside to this. As well, some students see school as a safe place.. one where they can forget about their home problems temporarily.

I guess it's really similar to university - when you're at home trying to study, you have all these other distractions. When you're at the education institution in a physical capacity, you are more likely to engage with the education program in some way (I chose my words very carefully, more likely meaning it isnt always achievable lol)

Another thing: It is really difficult to even cover all the various disciplines outlined in the curriculum in a given week. As a result, some disciplines get neglected more than others (IT being one). I cannot see how reducing it another 2 days would be beneficial.

[Quantum44]

I don't like the idea.

Cutting the number of days of school relies more heavily on students being self-motivated, which is generally not a strong point of teenagers.

Having school in shifts sounds really weird. It seems like they are trying to fit more students into existing infrastructure in order to avoid increasing government expenditure, by compromising on the quality of education.

As for the last part: they are trying to sugar-coat learning, adding unnecessary filler to make the 'boring' classes more palatable. In the time of the 'instant gratification generation' and 'everybody gets a prize' mentality, I see the meritocratic nature of the current VCE system as a breath of fresh air as the only true reward for spending hundreds of hours studying occurs at the end of the year. Exams are also important as they teach students the valuable skill of managing stress, which would be eliminated in this new system that seems to encourage laziness and mediocrity, incentivising students with meaningless digital badges.

[zhen]

I feel like making schools all online would mean that students wouldn't be able to socialise and I feel like it would make students miss out on some things that can only be done in proper classes. I mean I wouldn't have been able to meet lots of different people and participate in lots of different events if lessons were all online.
Edit: I just realised that it was proposing a 3 day week and not having all lessons online, but I feel like my point still stands because that would be halving the amount of time to socialise and really bond with high school friends.

[miguel_1]

Click at own risk.

Spoiler

The teaching of students in shifts is of good intention but is the worst way to teach a massive cohort. What kind of 'education expert' would suggest this idea. 3 days of school would be one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. The growing cohort should be tackled by creating more schools instead of shortening the days of school. The 3 day attention students get would be insufficient, why are we working backwards. This creates more excuses for students to not submit work or not study during their 4 day weekend, wasting the tuition fee paid by their parents. We should maximise the learning capacity of students and cut the time needed to be taken to do a curriculum of a year level to as much as half. We need to assess is whether the Australian curriculum is getting unnecessary with all the advances in technology. Classes should be more difficult, at the same time more interesting, but not gamified. We should stop praising our children for achieving small achievements because this just boosts their ego. Making school online will get the kids excited for a week at most. When they get bored, they will just stop. There won't be a teacher to make them do it anyways since they're at home having their 4 day weekend. Gamifying secondary education will encourage mediocrity and laziness. They should not teach secondary school knowledge into secondary school in a way a primary school would teach it, but instead teach secondary school knowledge to primary schools in a way a primary school would teach it. We should aim to teach more, not less.

Specialising should take place as early as year 7 to ensure the student knows which work force he wants to work in at an early age, at the same time being given the freedom to change his decision. Year 6 should be the year they prepare students for the specialisation process in year 7. Some VCE students in year 11 are still unsure about their subjects and are still changing their subjects. Year 11 should be the final lock-in to your desired subjects and VCE should be taught at the year 7 orientation day. An academic year in high school should be more difficult. My old school was what you could call a selective school. Only 100 students would be able to enter in kindergarten, and through years 3-12 they had to pass their subjects or get kicked out of the school. You had one chance though to repeat the subject you failed in, but only one chance. This made the students work very hard in their studies, and none of the remaining cohort (Year 10 atm) disliked school enough to an extent where they want to drop out of the school. School should be hard and students should work hard. Year 7,8,9,10 is wasted and are what should be taught at a primary school. It looks bizarre since year 6's will be doing content 2 years ahead of their year level; but believe me, they are capable.

Here's what I think should be taught at each level of schooling

Year level                                    Difficulty in terms of current curriculum

Primary school
Year 1                                         Year 1
Year 2                                         Year 2
Year 3                                         Year 3/4
Year 4                                         Year 5/6
Year 5                                         Year 7
Year 6                                         Year 8 + secondary school training

Secondary school
Year 7*                                         Year 9 (Electives)
Year 8*                                         Year 10 - (Electives)
Year 9                                         VCE 1/2
Year 10                                       VCE 3/4
Year 11                                       First year uni
Year 12                                       Second year uni

Year 7
1   English subject (English, English language, literature, EAL)
2   Maths (General, methods, specialist)
3   Science/Humanity
4   Science/Humanity
5   Sport elective (Basketball, soccer, etc.)
6   Other (Metalwork, woodwork, cooking) (Can be another english, maths, science, humanity, or sport elective)

Year 8
1   English subject (English, English language, literature, EAL)
2   Maths (General, methods, specialist)
3   Science/Humanity (Biology, chemistry, physics) (Humanities subjects)
4   Science/Humanity (Must be same same field as first science/humanity elective)
5   Sport elective (Basketball, soccer, etc.)
6   Other (Metalwork, woodwork, cooking) (Can be another english, maths, science, humanity, or sport elective)

Uni
Uni begins first year with third year curriculum
New curriculum for third and fourth year

Difficult transition but I reckon we can do it

TL;DR 3 day school = bad

but then again what do I know...

[Wales]

I feel like making schools all online would mean that students wouldn't be able to socialise and I feel like it would make students miss out on some things that can only be done in proper classes. I mean I wouldn't have been able to meet lots of different people and participate in lots of different events if lessons were all online.
Edit: I just realised that it was proposing a 3 day week and not having all lessons online, but I feel like my point still stands because that would be halving the amount of time to socialise and really bond with high school friends.

100% Agree. I honestly would prefer to get rid of technology in schools as a whole. It only creates more distractions and is hardly ever used as a productive learning tool. It really decreases the human interaction. My relationships with my teachers is something you cannot establish through online chat or alike, I like to participate in face to face discussions. You cannot achieve the same level of teacher student intimacy through online means. The aura of being in a classroom feels completely different to home, you feel more obligated to work and contribute. There's also the social aspect surrounding friends but others have covered that already.

Pro's to Online schooling would be cost. Teachers would no longer need to be paid or attend school. Hardly a pro in my opinion though..

[patriciarose]

Click at own risk.

Spoiler

The teaching of students in shifts is of good intention but is the worst way to teach a massive cohort. What kind of 'education expert' would suggest this idea. 3 days of school would be one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. The growing cohort should be tackled by creating more schools instead of shortening the days of school. The 3 day attention students get would be insufficient, why are we working backwards. This creates more excuses for students to not submit work or not study during their 4 day weekend, wasting the tuition fee paid by their parents. We should maximise the learning capacity of students and cut the time needed to be taken to do a curriculum of a year level to as much as half. We need to assess is whether the Australian curriculum is getting unnecessary with all the advances in technology. Classes should be more difficult, at the same time more interesting, but not gamified. We should stop praising our children for achieving small achievements because this just boosts their ego. Making school online will get the kids excited for a week at most. When they get bored, they will just stop. There won't be a teacher to make them do it anyways since they're at home having their 4 day weekend. Gamifying secondary education will encourage mediocrity and laziness. They should not teach secondary school knowledge into secondary school in a way a primary school would teach it, but instead teach secondary school knowledge to primary schools in a way a primary school would teach it. Specialising should take place as early as year 7 to ensure the student knows which work force he wants to work in at an early age, at the same time being given the freedom to change his decision. Year 6 should be the year they prepare students for the specialisation process in year 7. Some VCE students in year 11 are still unsure about their subjects and are still changing their subjects. Year 11 should be the final lock-in to your desired subjects and VCE should be taught at the year 7 orientation day. An academic year in high school should be more difficult. My old school was what you could call a selective school. Only 100 students would be able to enter in kindergarten, and through years 3-12 they had to pass their subjects or get kicked out of the school. You had one chance though to repeat the subject you failed in, but only one chance. This made the students work very hard in their studies, and none of the remaining cohort (Year 10 atm) disliked school enough to an extent where they want to drop out of the school. School should be hard and students should work hard. Year 7,8,9,10 is wasted and are what should be taught at a primary school. It looks bizarre since year 6's will be doing content 2 years ahead of their year level; but believe me, they are capable.

okay, um, not to totally rain on your parade, but ... what? i get that you're at/were at a selective school, so you're probably used to those type of people, but i'm fairly sure that if you put regular students into vce during year nine it'd be a complete mess omg. aside from that, maturity is a factor that you have to take into account – asking a twelve year old year seven what they want to do for the rest of their lives and forcing them to make a decision about it makes literally no sense. if they'd done that to me, i'd have listened to my parents and gone straight into sciences and probably dropped out lmao. my friends would have done what their friends were doing. twelve year olds are not super logical and also not really developed enough to know conclusively what it is they want to spend their lives doing. similarly, putting sixteen year olds into uni makes very little sense to me. i'm not saying there aren't people who can and would excel (ahem, probably most of this community ahaha), but they're not the majority. flexibility or not, it's important to be exposed to a lot of disciplines for a few years so that you actually know what you're committing to. even if you do start them on harder content earlier, you're still going to naturally cut out a lot of the extra subjects they'd have got to try (i.t., arts, etc). also, mentioning that your old school was selective in literally kindergarten means you have parents who are at least slightly dedicated, probably got a good foundation/work ethic early on, which a lot of people don't have. idk haha.

but anyway. i'm with everyone (?) else: three days isn't long enough, you miss out on a lot of human interaction which, whether you like it or not, is developmentally important, and considering i'm almost eighteen and still pretty awful at private study, i don't want to think what it'd be like having a bunch of junior level kids trying to motivate themselves to learn maths at home two days a week, haha. also, that would be such a pain for a lot of families – if all parents are working, who minds the younger children when they're not at school for 2/5ths of the working week?

[Aaron]

I would love to hear someone that has done or is doing Distance Ed, give their thoughts on online learning using Learning Management Systems such as Moodle for their VCE.

The face-to-face element of schooling is so important. I can understand why higher education providers are offering fully online courses for adults who work and live busy lifestyles.. but for an adolescent who has absolutely no responsibility whatsoever.. it is quite unnecessary.

Think there can be a balance though (e.g. proper use of Compass as a learning portal etc)... but definitely should not replace traditional face-to-face learning.

I agree with miguel where he states that more schools should be built as opposed to doing these ridiculous 'shifts'. You should see the designs of new schools being built right now. Most are adopting the vertical model where it utilises every square metre by building up, instead of out. It's actually really interesting and will definitely change how we view school in terms of infrastructure.

I honestly would prefer to get rid of technology in schools as a whole. It only creates more distractions and is hardly ever used as a productive learning tool.

Sorry Wales... But given my qualifications and interests in eLearning and so forth I will have to respectfully disagree. The power that technology has to enhance learning far outweighs the disadvantages. 'Technology in schools' is such a broad statement, I can't figure out whether you're just referring to the online learning mentioned in the article, or all types of tech that can be utilised in a schooling environment.

[miguel_1]

okay, um, not to totally rain on your parade, but ... what? i get that you're at/were at a selective school, so you're probably used to those type of people, but i'm fairly sure that if you put regular students into vce during year nine it'd be a complete mess omg. aside from that, maturity is a factor that you have to take into account – asking a twelve year old year seven what they want to do for the rest of their lives and forcing them to make a decision about it makes literally no sense. if they'd done that to me, i'd have listened to my parents and gone straight into sciences and probably dropped out lmao. my friends would have done what their friends were doing. twelve year olds are not super logical and also not really developed enough to know conclusively what it is they want to spend their lives doing. similarly, putting sixteen year olds into uni makes very little sense to me. i'm not saying there aren't people who can and would excel (ahem, probably most of this community ahaha), but they're not the majority. flexibility or not, it's important to be exposed to a lot of disciplines for a few years so that you actually know what you're committing to. even if you do start them on harder content earlier, you're still going to naturally cut out a lot of the extra subjects they'd have got to try (i.t., arts, etc). also, mentioning that your old school was selective in literally kindergarten means you have parents who are at least slightly dedicated, probably got a good foundation/work ethic early on, which a lot of people don't have. idk haha.

I guess xD

I'm not saying that year 9's should do VCE itself but a toned down version where they can get a feel on what it's like. I think that students should be taught how VCE works at an early stage and not just 1 semester away from it. Maybe the uni material at year 11 was over the top, maybe I'm just biased. I only learnt about how VCE works in my own time on ATAR Notes, and I wish it was taught in Year 9 because most people from my school right now still have no idea what to do for VCE. Okay the workload will be too much for twelve year olds, but I do believe that year 9 should be the minimum year level for students to start considering their pathways.

asking a twelve year old year seven what they want to do for the rest of their lives and forcing them to make a decision about it makes literally no sense. if they'd done that to me, i'd have listened to my parents and gone straight into sciences and probably dropped out lmao

I do see your point, I hated school tbh in my old school where we were expected more of.  But right now, looking back, I wish I had put more effort into it. The thing is, we don't see the importance of education until it is taken away from us. We need to make students realise the importance of education without taking it away from them. Then maximise their individual potential to the pathway they want to take.

but anyway. i'm with everyone (?) else: three days isn't long enough, you miss out on a lot of human interaction which, whether you like it or not, is developmentally important, and considering i'm almost eighteen and still pretty awful at private study, i don't want to think what it'd be like having a bunch of junior level kids trying to motivate themselves to learn maths at home two days a week, haha. also, that would be such a pain for a lot of families – if all parents are working, who minds the younger children when they're not at school for 2/5ths of the working week?

At least we agree on something, it's absolute rubbish to have weekends longer than school days.

[jamonwindeyer]

From what I've seen of technology in classrooms, allowing it does introduce distractions. At least the experiences I had, introducing technology was gimmicky. "Oh look what we can do with our phones if we download this app!"

I think technology can assist learning in many ways, particularly taking education beyond the classroom. I kind of like the 'flipped classroom' model that a lot of schools are doing right now, at least in principle. But in terms of assisting learning in the classroom itself, I'm not sold. The best teachers I've ever had, high school and university, work magic with a pen and paper, chalk on a board, marker and whiteboard. Introducing other stuff for the most part just seems like gimmicks. The one exception I can think would be using technology to model scenarios that would be impractical to model practically, or visualise things you can't see physically.

@miguel_1, I like some of your thoughts, but I'd disagree on a few counts:
- Asking a 12 year old in Year 7 to choose their path in life in any sense, even in a non committing fashion, is unrealistic. You barely know what the world is at that age, let alone your place in it. I believe the education system should enable students with the skills to enter any workforce, with the later years enforcing skills to tend towards a specific workforce. I feel like, right now, we do this pretty well!
- In general, making school too difficult discourages engagement. At the same time making school too easy subtracts from its usefulness. It is about a balance.
- Teaching second year university level content to a Year 12 student is asking for trouble. I'm all for increasing difficulty a tad, I do think the current HSC courses are a little lacking in preparing students for tertiary study in STEM fields for example. However, I think the jump you are proposing is probably a little too extreme, at least in my opinion

Anyway, responding to the initial topic - Personally not for the 3 day week. On top of all reasons mentioned, full time work is five days a week. So is school - That's a good pattern to establish

[K888]

@miguel_1: I'm curious - does university as an institution not become slightly redundant if you start doing uni stuff in high school?

My response to miguel_1, slightly off topic so in a spoiler

Personally, I don't see the need to push students to be years ahead - let people work at their own pace. Also, I think when you advance people too much, it can compromise their social development, which imo is an incredibly important aspect of schooling. There is the additional factor of not everyone being at an academic level to be put ahead. There's a reason we study the things we do at specific year levels  - it's mostly an appropriate level for people Plus, like I believe it's unrealistic expecting someone in Year 12 to know what they want to do. Expecting someone in Year 7 to know what they want to do? Downright crazy.
I also see issues with people's maturity when they do stuff years ahead - particularly if you have students in high school doing uni stuff. Realistically, there are some things, where you need to be an adult and have a bit more maturity, in order to handle it. In my course, we do a lot of anatomy work with cadavers. There's no way I would have had the maturity to do that in high school. Plus, like school isn't meant to be that full on - let kids be kids still, let them have fun and freedom and not have their lives dominated by academics.

My thoughts on the topic - obviously, as society changes and all that as we move into the future, we can expect to see our educational institutions change as well. I think I'll always be a bit biased, having done school the "traditional" way and had it work for me. But I think having students at school 5 days a week is just as important for social development as it is for educational development. Getting taught face to face is important to me, and also I think we need to realise - teenagers probably aren't the most reliable when it comes to driving their own education

[miguel_1]

@miguel_1, I like some of your thoughts, but I'd disagree on a few counts:
- Asking a 12 year old in Year 7 to choose their path in life in any sense, even in a non committing fashion, is unrealistic. You barely know what the world is at that age, let alone your place in it. I believe the education system should enable students with the skills to enter any workforce, with the later years enforcing skills to tend towards a specific workforce. I feel like, right now, we do this pretty well!
- In general, making school too difficult discourages engagement. At the same time making school too easy subtracts from its usefulness. It is about a balance.
- Teaching second year university level content to a Year 12 student is asking for trouble. I'm all for increasing difficulty a tad, I do think the current HSC courses are a little lacking in preparing students for tertiary study in STEM fields for example. However, I think the jump you are proposing is probably a little too extreme, at least in my opinion

Looking back at what I typed, uni in year 11 is wayyy too extreme. All I wanted to say was that we need to put more content and more options in years 7-10, making them make the most of VCE/HSC/etc., without 'gamifying' it with all the technology we have. Pen, paper, markers/chalk, and a whiteboard/blackboard should suffice.

@miguel_1: I'm curious - does university as an institution not become slightly redundant if you start doing uni stuff in high school?

My response to miguel_1, slightly off topic so in a spoiler

Personally, I don't see the need to push students to be years ahead - let people work at their own pace. Also, I think when you advance people too much, it can compromise their social development, which imo is an incredibly important aspect of schooling. There is the additional factor of not everyone being at an academic level to be put ahead. There's a reason we study the things we do at specific year levels  - it's mostly an appropriate level for people Plus, like I believe it's unrealistic expecting someone in Year 12 to know what they want to do. Expecting someone in Year 7 to know what they want to do? Downright crazy.
I also see issues with people's maturity when they do stuff years ahead - particularly if you have students in high school doing uni stuff. Realistically, there are some things, where you need to be an adult and have a bit more maturity, in order to handle it. In my course, we do a lot of anatomy work with cadavers. There's no way I would have had the maturity to do that in high school. Plus, like school isn't meant to be that full on - let kids be kids still, let them have fun and freedom and not have their lives dominated by academics.

My thoughts on the topic - obviously, as society changes and all that as we move into the future, we can expect to see our educational institutions change as well. I think I'll always be a bit biased, having done school the "traditional" way and had it work for me. But I think having students at school 5 days a week is just as important for social development as it is for educational development. Getting taught face to face is important to me, and also I think we need to realise - teenagers probably aren't the most reliable when it comes to driving their own education

I guess it kinda does make uni redundant if we don't change how third and fourth year is structured. I'm not saying that the year 7's should choose immediately, I'm just saying that they should have the knowledge on what career pathways there should be. I guess if you try to teach them that, it will just go into one ear and go out the other.

I did leave out a key factor didn't I. I now remember how fun primary school used to be, and doing high school at that age would be depressing.

Spoiler

How do you name spoilers

[K888]

I guess it kinda does make uni redundant if we don't change how third and fourth year is structured. I'm not saying that the year 7's should choose immediately, I'm just saying that they should have the knowledge on what career pathways there should be. I guess if you try to teach them that, it will just go into one ear and go out the other.

I did leave out a key factor didn't I. I now remember how fun primary school used to be, and doing high school at that age would be depressing.

Again, this is off-topic, but doing things in advance would only work for more generalist degrees. Not to mention - at least in my experience, uni is hard. The difficulty of stuff is consistently way above anything I did in year 12, and it will only get harder.
In my course, I start placement in 3rd year. I become responsible for people's healthcare when I graduate at age 22/23, after a 4 year course. That's still incredibly young. Asking people to go out into the workforce, particularly when they have such strong responsibilities in their field, at an even younger age, is just setting them up for burnout, etc. because you simply need the maturity and life experience to be able to deal with it all.

And naming spoilers - just do spoiler= in the first set of brackets, then type whatever you want it to say

[Aaron]

That's still incredibly young. Asking people to go out into the workforce, particularly when they have such strong responsibilities in their field, at an even younger age, is just setting them up for burnout, etc. because you simply need the maturity and life experience to be able to deal with it all.

This is true