Ravlich Relegated.
The minister of education in WA, Ljiljanna Ravlich, has been assigned a more junior portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle.
Ravlich was the architect of the states ill-conceived foray OBE courses that were to be introduced into the state's senior schools.
Recently the minister was at the centre of a Crime and Corruption Commission probe into the Department of educations mishandling of several sexual misconduct allegations.
The new minister of education is now Mark McGowan, who was previously the minister of the environment.
Education bureaucrats in WA faced a tumultuous year in 2006 with several key players being dumped before Ravlich herself was effectively sacked from educations top job.
Paul Albert (another OBE supporter) who was the director general of the department of education and training accepted a "management initiated retirement'' as a result of the CCC probe.
David Axworthy, another OBE apologist, the acting-chief executive of the curriculum council was also overlooked for the position and has not been heard from since.
The curriculum council itself has been under enormous pressure after bringing OBE to WA and has had four chief executives in 12 months. Norma Jeffery, the last permanent chief executive, was controversially moved aside last August after criticism of OBE. Her replacement, Greg Robson, quit to take up a job at the South Australian Education Department.
OBE itself is still undergoing constant scrutiny in WA and several of the re-written OBE-style "Courses of Study" were reaccredited by the curriculum council last week. Teachers in WA are having summer holidays at this time so undoubtably we will hear more in these issues in late January/early February when the "refined" courses are unveiled.

OBE fails test with High School teachers

The controversy over the introduction of OBE into Year 11 and 12 classes in WA received another blow last week when teachers at Kelmscott High School voted unanimously on a motion of no confidence in the Curriculum Council.

The Curriculum Council are the writers and architects on the OBE-inspired courses which were delayed for a full year after teachers forced them to back down over introducing the courses in 2007. Teachers have repeatedly claimed that the courses were poorly written, impossible to assess accurately and less rigorous than the existing TEE courses. Another criticism is that the council had failed to produce a syllabus with clear content.
The courses are currently being re-written by the Curriculum Council but teachers are still finding the courses to be sufficiently flawed which has resulted in the no confidence vote being taken.
Staff at the Curriculum Council are still finishing writing many courses which will give teachers little time for feedback before the courses are to be implemented.
Feedback is currently being completed via an online survey.
All 13 OBE courses would be accredited by December 6. The council would also accredit another 25 new OBE courses originally scheduled for Year 11 in 2008.

OBE in WA a political shambles - Principal with principles

Outcomes based education in Western Australia was under attack this time from a Catholic Principal.
Brian Maher of Mazenod College in Perth has told parents that the bungled bid to implement OBE in 2007 had left teachers extremely frustrated and turned students into political footballs.
"The shambles of OBE and courses of study can, in my view, only be described as politically cynical," Father Maher said. "We must never allow our children to be sacrificed on the altar of ideological or political theory."

The Principal of Sacred Heart College, Ian Eider is similarly unimpressed with the OBE system and is considering changing his school to the International Baccalaureate. He believed the WA curriculum had been diluted in lower secondary school and the IB was a worthwhile alternative. "And we are still unclear on where we are going with the new courses of study (in Years 11 and 12)"

From The West Australian 1/11/06

WA School abandons OBE

St Brigids College is opting out of the state-run outcomes based education system and adopting the more highly regarded International Baccalaureate (IB).
The Principal of the school, Amelia Toffoli, denied the move to the IB in Years 6 to 9 was a reaction to problems within the WA education system. But she conceded the system offered better resources for teachers. “It has been around longer, it’s got professional development opportunities of a high quality and there are also resources that have been developed that are very attractive to teachers,” she said.
Source

The West Australian offered the following editorial on the schools decision to dump OBE.
"The International Baccalaureate could emerge as a much sought-after alternative to WA's dumbed-down outcomes-based education."The international program has obvious attractions for parents who are dismayed at the deliberate dilution of academic rigour in OBE."The drift to private schools, resulting from disaffection with the State system, could be expected to increase significantly if more of them offered the International Baccalaureate."
Source: From The West Australian 31/10/06

The Saga of OBE in WA continues....

Federal education minister, Julie Bishop, wants to cut funding of up to $1 billion on education in WA unless the state abandons it's model of OBE (Outcome Based Education).

Premier Carpenter went on to say "“I don’t think Ms Bishop has got any understanding whatsoever of how the education system in WA works"
Don't worry Mr Premier nor do most of the teachers, parents or students.
The only thing we all do know is that the education bureaucracy is a circus and the clown is called Ravlich....

Source

Excellent article by Paul Kelly (editor for The Australian) entitled
"A clarion call for the sake of our kids" on the corruption of the social
sciences curriculum in our schools.
OBE in WA gets a mention "Western Australia’s experiment in
outcomes-based education has failed and Queensland has
“absolutely no external assessment in the entire preparatory
year to Year 12 spectrum”. This means they have “no way of
knowing what standards their schools are achieving”
The article has recieved a massive number of responses from readers
and is well worth a read, can be found here.

Lastly I found an easy to install site-meter from www.sitemeter.com
Very excited

Outcomes Based Education - The flawed option

The following is an extract of an article written by Kevin Donnelly and a fairly accurate summation of the failure of outcomes based education (OBE).
"As stated in the Curriculum Council’s Curriculum Framework document, published in 1998, Western Australia’s school curriculum is based on an outcomes-based approach. Since the late 90s, OBE has been implemented during the compulsory years (K-10) and now the intention is to extend it to years 11 and 12.
The above document defines OBE as: “… identifying what students should achieve and focusing on ensuring that they do achieve. It means shifting away from an emphasis on what is taught and how and when, to an emphasis on what is actually learnt by each student.”
While, in theory, OBE might sound fine, in practice, both in Australia and overseas, it has proven to be a dismal failure and those countries, such as the USA, that have experimented with OBE have forsaken it in favour of more academic and rigorous alternatives.
Bruce Wilson, the recently retired CEO of Australia’s Curriculum Corporation, freely admits that Australia’s adoption of OBE is inherently flawed and that it represents, in his words, an “unsatisfactory political and intellectual exercise”.
The flaws and weaknesses of an OBE approach are manifold. Firstly, unlike syllabus documents that give teachers a clear and succinct road map of what is to be taught at the start of the year, OBE documents are inefficient, cumbersome and impossible to implement in the classroom.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3431

OBE Course of study - Assessment problems with scale
of achievement

The Science Teachers Association of Western Australia
(STAWA) conducted a survey of it's members regarding
the OBE Courses of Study for the Sciences.

On of the most damning statisitcs is that the teachers surveyed
had major problems with the scales of achievement and their
lack of clarity.

In other words students cannot be assessed accurately using
the ill-concieved "scale of achievement".

From : http://www.stawa.asn.au/uploads/surveyresults.doc

"Assessment and Scales of Achievement

Results

When asked about whether the Scales of Achievement are clear,
the majority of respondents indicated that they are not. The
breakdown of responses by Course of Study is presented in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Proportion of respondents answering ’yes’ and ‘no’
to the question: ‘Are the Scales of Achievement clear?’."

Apologies to the original concept artist who came up with the campaign pictures on the WA governments attempt to mislead the public on the benefits of the OBE style Courses of Study.
Ye Gods - Imagine Lil teaching a class! She'd probably spend all lesson mumbling "Google it".
Outcomes Based Education will be the destruction of education in Australia and the WA government is spending thousands of dollars in advertising saying the exact opposite.
It really must have hurt Ljiljanna and her flunkies in the Curriculum Council when the report they had commissioned to find the benefits of OBE came back to say that the levels produced
by OBE were as good as useless.
So firstly the taxpayer pays for the report then pays for the propaganda to ignore the reports finding.
The only thing that Ljiljanna Ravlich does better than "dumb down" education is waste money on dumbing down education.

Outcomes based education - Levels are flawed says Andrich report

I was going to write an article on the uselessness of levels which is probably the greatest failure of outcomes based education in western australia (and everywhere else it is used) but an interesting article appeared on perthnorg that caught my eye.

Outcomes Based Education levels are flawed

The much maligned OBE system in WA has once again gone under the microscope now that a meeting of teachers from ten state high schools have labeled the leveling system as "inaccurate, unworkable and too difficult for parents to understand".
The lack of precision and accuracy in the leveling process has also lead to students all being graded the same with the teachers commenting that ".. it was so imprecise that 90 percent of the students in a year group were often awarded the same level, removing any incentive to strive for better results"
This report comes shortly after a report by Professor David Andrich an international assessment expert from Murdoch University whose report found that teachers should use traditional numerical marking systems based on percentages when ranking students for University. Other finding included that the specialized jargon of OBE was difficult for parents to understand and that the "outcomes and levels" assessment system was too crude to rank students for tertiary entrance.

Written by "Darren" as well, so he must be a good bloke!

http://www.perthnorg.com.au/

OBE suffers setback in Tasmania

Can Western Australia learn from the Tasmanian OBE experience?

Outcomes based education has suffered another serious setback this time in Tasmania where it was introduced under the banner of “Essential Learning”. The new minister of education, David Bartlett, has now had to step in and replace the overly complicated Essential Learning framework with a new streamlined and user-friendly curriculum.

“Tasmania’s New Age school curriculum - widely criticised for being vague and meaningless - has been thrown away in favour of an old-fashioned syllabus in traditional subject areas.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20300726-13881,00.html

Outcomes based education is suffering under immense public scrutiny in WA at the current time, with most parents, teachers and students also not liking what they are seeing.

“While, in theory, OBE might sound fine, in practice, both in Australia and overseas, it has proven to be a dismal failure. Those countries, such as the USA, that have experimented with OBE have forsaken it in favour of more academic and rigorous alternatives.”
Kevin Donnelly
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3431

Although OBE was introduced into WA schools in 1998 under the guise of “The Curriculum Framework”, the heat really cranked up when the Minister for Education, Ljiljanna Ravlich, attempted to implement the OBE-style “Courses of Study” in 2006 into the states senior school classrooms.

OBE instantly went under the microscope and the new courses were found to be wanting. Teachers dismissed them as inferior to the current courses, because they lacked the most basic elements of an educational course such as a well defined syllabus and a sensible grading system.

“Western Australia’s proposed Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) courses of studies have none of these features. They have no syllabus, no support materials, nebulous “outcomes” written in edu-babble and “anything goes” assessment. A trainee teacher who developed such a course for her university assignment would flunk.”

An opinion from retired Associate Professor Steve Kessell, Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University
http://www.platowa.com/documents/Kessell_5-06.html

Teachers also found the “Outcome Statements” and “Level Descriptors” that they were expected to use in assessing students to be incredibly vague and completely useless in any form of assessment.

Example 1: Earth and Environmental Science Course of StudyStudents use their understanding of the Earth System and society’s need for resources to make balanced and informed decisions about personal, community and global impacts on the environment.

Example 2: Physical Education Course of Study
The student: uses skills, strategies and tactics in response to a wide range of variables that are constantly changing; and selects and applies an extensive range of highly refined skills, strategies and tactics with precision and consistency in varied and complex physical activity environments.

Example 3: Engineering Studies Course of Study
The student: applies a range of technology skills and knowledge to work with materials both co-operatively and independently, applies know (sic) solution to predictable problems, recognises potential hazards in the work environment and adopts safe work practices.

http://newwace.curriculum.wa.edu.au/pages/teachers_courses.asp

The above statements are ljargon-rich and too difficult to assess with any accuracy and were often ridiculed by teaching staff particularly on the PLATO website where a discussion thread elicited 128 separate responses under the banner “More examples of silly Level descriptions needed”
http://pub39.bravenet.com/forum/3280197123/show/538412

The Courses of Study received a seemingly endless series of criticisms from professional teaching bodies and academics such as the following from Peter Ridd, a senior lecturer in physics at James Cook University.

"To most of us, the idea of a syllabus without some content or facts is almost inconceivable, but in the ethereal world of education theory, teaching content is for the dinosaurs. To many of our educationists and academics there is no such thing as a fact; everything is open to interpretation. "

“That may be OK for psychology and philosophy, but in physics there are facts with a capital F. It is impossible to teach science and maths without some minimum level of content, and it is the role of the syllabus to guide teachers on what to teach.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19835058-12332,00.html

The Australian Institute of Physics was also quick to condemn the WA Physics Course of Study
“Quality education is facing a major threat from an educational philosophy called Outcome-Based-Education (OBE) that on the surface seems fine, but can be applied to the assessment process with disastrous consequences. In Western Australia its application means that all you can assess are broad and coarse levels of achievement. No marks out of a hundred and no competition in the classroom! The levels are so vague that if three different levels were provided for comparison you would not be able to place them in the "correct" order of achievement with any confidence.”
http://www.aip.org.au/news.php/95

So is OBE to die a slow death in WA? Probably. OBE has been a resounding failure wherever else that is has been introduced and has only survived by being seriously modified.

“We roundly condemn what OBE has become in practice … setting standards that are not academic in nature and cannot be verified through objective testing. Outcomes which are so soft and fuzzy that student understanding and proficiency cannot be verified are intolerable. How do you test a student's values and beliefs, and what, or whose values, set the standard? At best, these Outcomes distract from more important knowledge and skills. At worst, some of them intrude on the sanctity of vulnerable adolescent minds.
We do not have and desperately need schools based upon the first kind of Outcome; we cannot risk the future of our children, our nation, and our world on the second kind.”
http://www.halcyon.org/obeinfo.html

Western Australian education bureaucrats now must learn from the mistakes made in Tasmania and rethink their position of the value of outcomes based education and the implementation of the OBE inspired “Courses of Study”.

Could this be the death knell for OBE in WA?

It appears that the University of Western Australia has finally woken up and admitted that it has no faith in the OBE style English "Course of Study" introduced last year into all schools in Western Australia.
Article from "The West Australian"
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=4531
The other Courses of Study were unanimously rejected by the teachers in WA earlier in the year causing the courses to be delayed for yet another year while they are re-written (to make them legible?).

OBE still remains a sensitive issue to the Minister of Education (and Google) Ljiljanna Ravlich who in a recent mail out to all year 10 parents that we now have a system of education called "Standards and Outcomes based education".
Of course this is nothing more than a ploy to dress up the festering chancre of OBE in another cloth. The minister must think that parents are as stupid as she is if she thinks they will see the system having undergone any change at all.

Outcomes Based Education and the Courses of Study.
OBE and COS

The failures of Outcomes Based Education are well documented and the "proof" of its benefits are, of course, non-existent.
The Courses of Study (COS) being introduced into Western Australia are OBE gone insane.
These courses have NOT been trialled, they are based loosely on the VCE that failed in Victoria in the late 1990's.
OBE apologists will argue that the curriculum framework implementation in the late 1990's demonstrates that OBE is a success. No proof exists and a review of the "success" of the system is long overdue.
Other OBE apologists will argue that the COS has proven itself now that the the Aviation, Engineering Studies, English and Media Production & Analysis have been run for a year.
Again there is no proof that the courses are better or provide greater benefit to students, their success sems somehow related to the courses having lasted as long as they have.

The COS courses have been delayed due to their inadequacies in Western Australia despite the best efforts of the Minitster of Education, Ljiljanna Ravlich, to implement them as fast as possible. Teachers, parents and students will continue to fight against these ill-conceived courses until they are at least comparable to the current (and very successful) TEE courses.

The OBE COS are a nightmare manifesto of edubabble that teachers, students and parents are unable to comprehend (see some of the lowlights in my first post)

Two Foundational Facts from 1987 Johns Hopkins Report on OBE:
1. The structure of OBE demands:
Achievement level for every student should be held constant. (Puts a ceiling on learning.)
Time is allowed to vary. (Presently, time in school is the same, achievement level of students varies.)
All students who achieve at any point are generally given an 'A'. (Stops competition or excellence.)
2. With these changes, OBE will accomplish two central goals:
Reduce variation in student achievement. (No student will learn more than another.)
Reduce or eliminate any correlation between aptitude and achievement. (Natural abilities ignored.)

The following is quote from "Outcome Based Education (OBE): A Cultural Transformation" by Ann Wilson
"OBE is not education. It's a combination of academic control and behavior modification. It is social engineering which uses behavior modification and values clarification to control the level of knowledge acquired and change attitudes, behaviors, beliefs and values.
OBE restricts academic achievement to the level of the lowest achiever. No student will achieve more than another. Fast learners will be held back until slow learners catch up."

Educators, parents and students of the world must unite against the stain on learning that is OBE

Ahh.. I'm rested and revitalised after a week off in Phuket.
Of the many things I managed to do while on holidays was read "How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the world" by Francis Wheen.
An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century.
Written with great insight particularly the nice opening broadside on the rise of postmodernism and how deconstructionism has infected many institutions of learning. It parallels nicely with the rise of Outcomes Based Education in Western Australia and I cannot wonder if we will fare any better in the war against the creatures who adore such gobbledegook.


An excellent review of the book can be found at he link below:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA53C.htm

The Origin of Outcomes Based Education (OBE )

The origins of Outcomes Based Education or OBE are as perplexing as the outcomes statements.

I always imagined a committee of sociologists, sensitivity trainers, ethicists, middle-managers, cultural experts/commentators, humanists, critical theorists and anyone else who has an opinion on education but has never actually taught a class came up with the multi-headed hydra that is OBE.

As it turned out I was wrong...

OUTCOMES-BASED EDUCATION AND THE DEATH OF KNOWLEDGE
Richard G. Berlach
College of Education
University of Notre Dame Australia
Abstract
In a far off time, in the confederacy of Oz, teaching and learning coexisted in an artistically symbiotic relationship. Then the experts came along. No, not experts in educational theory, but experts in the art of Isms – scientific rationalism, reductionism, Fordism, Taylorism, sophism, postmodernism and above all, obscurantism.
They took their Isms and applied them to the art of education, and lo and behold, outcomes-based education was born. The Ismistic parents cooed and gloated over their cleverly conceived offspring.
In fact, the Ismites within one state of the confederacy hailed this birth as a watershed in education, a paradigm shift, and the dawning of a brave new era. “Let us devise a Curriculum Framework” they shouted with glee. The teachers, however, hung their heads in despondency, knowing that a dark beast of mammoth proportions and with great deceptive power had been created.
The Paradigm Outcomes-based education (OBE) is like a chameleon – at the point when its defining attributes are becoming discernable, it changes form and colour. Even its chief architect keeps changing his mind, moving from traditional OBE through transitional OBE to transformational OBE (Spady, 1994; Spady and Marshall, 1991) .

Article continues at: http://www.aare.edu.au/04pap/ber04768.pdf

Outcomes Based Education is currently a contentious topic in Western Australia.
The state labour government is planning on replacing the traditional Tertiary Enterance Examination (TEE) system with a system called the Courses of Study (COS).
At the commencement of 2006 four courses were introduced, these courses were Aviation, English, Engineering and Media.

A further 20 courses were to be introduced by the commencement of 2007 but fortunately the level of teacher outrage was far greater than the government had expected and the courses will be delayed by another year while the courses are rewritten to a satifactory standard.

The main difference between OBE and traditional education systems is two-fold:

1) Assessments are not marked in a regime where a percentage can be used, instead students must address outcomes and they are awarded levels. There is no failure in OBE.

2) There is no syllabus, instead any teacher or student can go in any direction in any subject. The students must only address the outcomes.

In order for teachers to award a student a level the teacher must read the "outcome statements" then the "indicators of achievement" and then basically guess which level the student is working at.

The problems that were attributed to the new courses of study were mostly due the the ludicrous outcome statements provided to teachers by the Curriculum Council of WA.

Some examples of Outcome statements and Indicators of achievement are below:

EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE COS
Outcome 4: Sustainability
Students use their understanding of the Earth System and society’s need for resources to make balanced and informed decisions about personal, community and global impacts on the environment.

Level 5
The student: understands models and concepts that explain the interrelationship between Earth resources and quality of life. Explains and assesses reasons for the differing opinions in sustainable practice and how these affect social, environmental and economic management. Explains how particular decisions and actions are deemed ‘responsible’, and can assess their appropriateness for sustainable management in their homes, school and broader community.

Level 7
The student: analyses systems and applies theories to explain the interrelationship between Earth resources and quality of life. Demonstrates a willingness to rework their own understanding of earth and environmental science as a result of critically and ethically evaluating regional decisions about practices that affect social, environmental and economic management. Analyses and evaluates management plans for sustainable management in their homes, school and region and in terms of achieving policy goals and regional aims.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION STUDIES COS
Outcome 1: Physical Activity Skills
Students apply decision-making, movement, strategic and tactical skills to enhance personal participation in physical activity.

Level 6
The student: considers a wide range of variables and adjusts skills, strategic and tactical responses; and displays elements of technical proficiency in adapting and applying a wide range of specialised movement skills, strategies and tactics in changing conditions in physical activity environments.
This will be evident when students:
• select and adapt skills, strategies and tactics to counter or adjust to a changing physical environment or an opposing individual or team strategy;
• display elements of technical proficiency in applying a wide range of specialised movement skills in selected forms of physical activity; and
• apply a wide range of strategies and tactics in selected forms of physical activity.

Level 8
The student: uses skills, strategies and tactics in response to a wide range of variables that are constantly changing; and selects and applies an extensive range of highly refined skills, strategies and tactics with precision and consistency in varied and complex physical activity environments.
This will be evident when students:
• select complex skills, strategies and tactics in response to a wide range of constantly changing variables;
• apply an extensive range of highly refined movement skills with precision and consistency to maximise performance in complex environments; and
• apply an extensive range of highly refined strategies and tactics with precision and consistency to maximise performance in complex environments.

ENGINEERING STUDIES COS
Outcome 3: Engineering Technology Skills
Students use materials, skills and technologies appropriate to the engineering industry.

Level 5
The student: applies a range of technology skills and knowledge to work with materials both co-operatively and independently, applies know solution to predictable problems, recognises potential hazards in the work environment and adopts safe work practices.
(The typo in the above is as written in the CC document and is not my mistake)
Level 6
The student: applies skills and knowledge to solve a defined range of predictable problems, efficiently uses materials, operates tools and equipment considering the requirements of designs and achieving defined standards of quality and safety.
Level 7
The student: controls and manipulates processes to fulfil design specifications and applies knowledge of materials, theoretical concepts and technical skills to manage problems that achieve engineering industry standards of quality and safety.
Level 8
The student: uses a wide range of specialised technical, creative and conceptual skills to manage complex production processes, modifying and adapting them where applicable to optimise resources while achieving safety and quality standards comparable with industry and community expectations.

As you can see the complexity and verbosity of each statement renders it pretty much unusable and these are the statements that John Howard and Julie Bishop (Federal Minister of Education) have labelled as gobbledygook.

To cap it all off most subjects have 4 outcomes and 8 levels each with 4 (generally) indicators of achievement using another wee beast called an aspect (Maybe one day I'll talk more about aspects).
So calculating the total number of combinations that a teacher can use to level a child is 128 statements (some of which you have seen above).

Sound like a nightmare? Well, according to most teachers it is. No right no wrong just a level.