The lunatics have taken over the Asylum - OBE Physics in the UK.

Read this sorry tale about the state of science education in the UK.
A Physics teacher named Wellington Grey has put on open post on his blog to AQA (The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, the UK equivalent of the Curriculum council) and the
Department of Education in the UK asking for his subject back.
The UK introduced Outcomes Based Education way back in the late 1980's and it appears to have corrupted education to a state that is almost beyong repair.
OBE in the UK is quite possibly what OBE in WA will resemble in 5 - 10 years time.

Wellington was also good enough to publish a sample exam that OBE examiners may find of interest.
Needless to say I wish him all the best in his quest against the lunacy of dealing with an education bureaucracy gone insane.

OBE in WA - Guilty as Charged

One of the first acts of the new minister of education, Mark McGowan, in January of 2007 was to implement "Teacher Juries" to decide on the readiness of the new OBE style courses of study that were set to be introduced in January 2008.
I must admit that I thought, very cynically, that the juries would be made up of the very small percentage of teachers who were vocal supporters of OBE.
As it turns out the juries were neutral and have voted that all the courses of study are not ready (in fact fundmantally flawed) and will be delayed until at lest 2009.
The ABC new described OBE as a failed philosophy which is a fairly apt description of OBE in WA if you were to ask any teacher in the state.
In short, The Curriculum Council has designed 50 OBE courses, eight of which have been implemented, including English. But the decisions of the teacher juries mean just 19 will be in place when school starts next year.
Most of the courses that will be implemented in 2008 have no TEE course that is comparable, hence teachers would have nothing to compare it with.

OBE: Try before you buy.

In a sane and rational society, if someone has a bright idea, what would they do?
Let’s imagine (the Curriculum Council are good at imaging things) that you dream up a new system of education. Let’s call our exciting and innovative new system of education OBE.
What would you do next?
Let’s make this a multiple choice question (although teachers are not allowed to use multiple choice questions any more as they can only be right or wrong and don’t allow the student the freedom of justifying their answer regardless of how little they know about the subject matter).

What would you do with your exciting and innovative new system of education called OBE?

a) See what education systems actually work in the rest of the world and find that OBE is not one of them.
b) Test it in a small number of schools to see if it works.
c) Test it in several schools to see if it works.
d) Implement it immediately in all schools to see if it works. Publish masses of documentation that is written in pure edu-babble jargon that the average teacher, student or parent finds completely incomprehensible and then create an atmosphere of oppression for anyone that speaks out against your educational vision.

A sane and rational education department would choose a (Thus saving WA taxpayers $250 million and having our education standards compromised) or possibly b) (if they really thought they were on to a good thing that had decent syllabi and assessment regimes produced).

The WA government chose d).

Professor Bill Louden (Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia and Curriculum Council chairman) said "All school changes should be researched, tested and independently evaluated before they are implemented across the State.”
He said that did not necessarily mean that Education Department changes had not been successful, but they should have been independently evaluated by "someone other than the people who wrote it."

The fact that this untested system which has had poor results in other countries was even introduced in the first place speaks volumes of the competence of decision makers within the Department of Education and the Curriculum Council.

Meanwhile Mark McGowan seems to be having difficulty in comprehending the depth of ill-feeling towards OBE in WA with a vague statement of "I will be working on ways in which to progressively implement the recommendations”.
Take some advice minister – Dump levels from K-12 then dismantle this ridiculous system of OBE ASAP.

OBE music hits sour note.

The curriculum council of WA have decided that the OBE music exam will allow students who cannot read music will have the option of answering exam questions using storyboards instead of musical notation so they are not disadvantaged (1).
This step pretty much typifies everything that is wrong with OBE.
Reading music is a skill that takes years to develop. Students have to work exceedingly hard to master this skill and now the students who have chosen to pursue their education in music are suddenly being told that this skill is not essential.
This is, of course, total lunacy. Allowing a student to graduate from a music course without them being able to read the language of music is like allowing a student to graduate from a french course without being able to read or write in French.
And yet OBE supporters still claim that OBE is not responsible for "dumbing down" educaion or lowering standards.
What is the next step?
Mathematics exams where students don’t need to be able to add or multiply?
Chemistry papers where chemical equations are no longer used?
Geography exams where mapping skills are no longer required?
I wouldn’t be surprised as it seems that once again the lunatics have taken of the asylum that education in WA has become.

OBE in WA, Where to now?

Outcomes based education in Western Australia has taken a battering over the last year.
The nearly endless stream of consultants,” experts”, spin-doctors and management crisis support teams employed by the department of education and training and the curriculum council delivered a system of education that nobody wants, nobody can use and nobody can understand.
The cost to the community is estimated at $250 million (1)
For this price no additional schools were built, no additional teachers were employed, class sizes were not reduced and the standards in literacy and numeracy in WA fell. (2)
However, the government employed 157 specialists to help children with the basics of reading, writing and maths. Obviously this is not the solution. (3)

For $250 million all the public received were some web-sites and television commercials all trying to sell the supposed “benefits” of outcomes based education. Schools received and tsunami of documentation that is completely worthless trying to prop up a system of education that is inherently flawed.
The endless stream of empty rhetoric used by Ljiljanna Ravlich and her fellow OBE-apologists when they described OBE as “worlds best practice (4)”, “an educational approach that caters to all students” (5) and “future-proofing students” (6) and “OBE is simply good teaching.” (7) is now, more frighteningly, being used by Kevin Rudd.
Rudd has stated “"The government I lead will be one firmly in the reformist tradition. The reformist tradition that we bring to bear on education is the same that we will bring to bear on climate change ….” (8)
Could Rudd possibly believe that OBE is educational reform? Is Rudd as deaf as Ravlich?
Will Labor make the same mistakes federally as they have in WA?
Rudd had best spell out his “reform agenda” and focus very clearly on curriculum issues rather than pork-barrelling. Labor is still suffering in WA as a result of its ill-fated venture with outcomes based education.
The new minister of education in WA, Mark McGowan, has taken one very important step in abolishing levels (9) in senior school classes (except for English and two others) which were found to be “unsuited for reporting to students and parents.”(10).
This begs the question: Why use levels in any year group?
Mr McGowan has admitted that they are clearly unsuitable for assessment and has listened to parents and teachers on this issue. Anti-OBE lobby groups such as PLATOWA have continued to pressure the government about abolishing levels completely. Mr McGowan has taken a first step in the direction that parents and teachers want but he must now complete his journey and dismantle the unworkable OBE system in WA entirely.

(1) “The West Australian” 23rd Jan 2007

OBE Levels: Useful tool or meaningless nonsense?

Everyone understands how a percentage system of marking. It makes sense.
If you have a body of knowledge, say Physics, and you randomly ask 100 questions about Physics then if the student can answer 50 correctly then the student gets a mark of 50 from 100 or 50%.
Parents understand, kids understand and prospective employers understand
If you don’t understand this then you are either not very bright or are a graduate of an OBE school of mathematics.
Levelling, on the other hand, is much more difficult to comprehend.
Levels are the "grades" awarded under the system of outcomes based education in western australia.
Levels are a set of numbers ( 1 to 8 ), but they are not real numbers, they are supposedly a cognitive developmental stage that someone at the curriculum council just made up one day (someone who probably never made it as a teacher).
Interestingly enough no-one has been game to admit that they were the one who dreamt up the levelling system. Considering the amount of time, money and effort that has been spent on explaining the “benefits” of leveling you think the individual who came up with it would show more pride in their remarkable “achievement”.
The process of using levels involves coming up with a “fine grained assessment item” (that’s edubabble for test or assignment) for students to do and then looking at the various outcome statements and the associated level descriptions each outcome statement.
Now this sounds pretty easy but here is an example of an aspect of an outcome statement:
Students understand the scientific concept of energy, give examples of energy sources and describe patterns of energy use around the home and in the community. (1)

And here is one example of a level descriptor:
The student understands that energy interacts differently with different substances and that this can affect the use and transfer of energy. Students begin to explain their observations of the physical world in terms of an abstract idea or non-observable event. They describe multiple effects of energy use and describe advantages and disadvantages of different sources. They explain how different substances can affect the way energy is transferred or changed. They analyse unfamiliar events and describe abstract ideas and interactions and explain changes caused to objects. (2)

For science there are five outcomes with at least two aspects to each outcome with eight level descriptions of each. That gives a teacher at least 80 paragraphs of nonsense to wade through to give each student a level.
The teacher then has to “make a consistent judgement” (that’s decoded as “take a guess”) as to what level the child has attained.
Herein lies another prolem, each of the statements is open to interpretation and no firm rules exist on giving "half marks" for a level.
This is why critics of OBE levels say they are subjective, teacher will often give completely different levels for the same piece of student work.
Many teachers joke about pulling out the levelling dice or using the levelling dartboard to mark students work as this would be as accurate as using the woeful level descriptors provided by the curriculum council.
Now would you rather have your child’s teacher focusing on teaching your chld well or wading through the nonsense quoted above?
The new minister of education has abolished these levels for year 11 and 12 due to public pressure, he should now turn his attention to removing levels from all year groups.

(1) and (2) Source: http://www.curriculum.wa.edu.au/ProgressMaps/science.htm

Levels Levelled.

The new minister of education has seen the light regarding "levels" and wants them dumped.
Levels are the assessment tool of OBE in Western Australia and have been widely criticised by both academics and teachers as meaningless and subjective.
Good News for everyone and not before time.
As one commentator said "Good riddance to possibly the worst feature of this OBE nonsense"
Bad news is the removal of levels only applies to senior schools students in Year 11 and 12 as they move into the ill-conceived "Courses of Study" that will still slowly be phased in over the next couple of years.
Levels will will still be used in K-10 but not reported on, which is self-defeating.
Maybe this will be the first step in dismantling OBE all together and education in WA can move forward.
The many pieces in the media were supportive of the education minister and with good reason.
Article in The West Australian
Article from The Australian
Article from ABC News