Big Ed Review in UK.

[old friend]

The biggest review of Education in 40 years in UK has concluded several interesting points, relevant here.

Read more on The Guardian's site...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/16/schools-report-critical-of-labour

This paragraph, in particular, sounded very familiar.

"The report notes the questionable evidence on which some key educational policies have been based; the disenfranchising of local voice; the rise of unelected and unaccountable groups taking key decisions behind closed doors; the 'empty rituals' of consultations; the authoritarian mindset, and the use of myth and derision to underwrite exaggerated accounts of progress and discredit alternative views."

[Darren]

Sounds very familiar indeed. Pretty much exactly what went on right here in WA.
Yet here we are teaching our dumbed-down second-rate Courses of Study to our Senior School classes and reporting using the completely discredited levelling sytem in our middle school reports.
The addled idealogues still contest (predictably) whether the courses have been dumbed down. The evidence is in the syllabus documents:
TEE course had 8 pages of content dot points, the COS had one page of content dot points (after you remove the 1/2 page of "contexts")
The COS documentation also conatined the completely useless 12 pages out "outcome progressions".
What a disgraceful waste of money that could have been spent on improving education.

[Darren]

Sounds very familiar indeed. Pretty much exactly what went on right here in WA.
Yet here we are teaching our dumbed-down second-rate Courses of Study to our Senior School classes and reporting using the completely discredited levelling sytem in our middle school reports.
The addled idealogues still contest (predictably) whether the courses have been dumbed down. The evidence is in the syllabus documents:
TEE course had 8 pages of content dot points, the COS had one page of content dot points (after you remove the 1/2 page of "contexts")
The COS documentation also conatined the completely useless 12 pages out "outcome progressions".
What a disgraceful waste of money that could have been spent on improving education.