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”.