One of the most pressing issues in our education system is the reliance on the ATAR as the primary measure of student and school success. Sadly, this inherently binary system guarantees that roughly half of all students and schools will be deemed "losers" based solely on their ATAR score. Thankfully, a growing number of students are recognizing this flaw and seeking alternative pathways through unscored year 12 programs or other options. It's intriguing to consider the potential impact if a majority of students were to collectively harness their power and opt out of the ATAR system entirely. Such a dramatic shift may not be as far-fetched as it seems, and could ultimately force a much-needed reevaluation of how we assess student potential.
As usual, you hit the nail on the head when you said "My main concern arises in the way that the ideological nature of the ATAR, in framing education as a competition, has particular socialisation effects that hold the potential to shape the thinking and practice of teachers, students and communities towards an impoverished understanding of educational aims and purposes." And I'm sure you know how I feel about the whole competitive scoring issue. It has been my view that this could be solved by letting universities be responsible for 'entrance assessment', rather than school systems be responsible for 'exit assessment' Schools have a much more important and complex purpose than merely preparing students for university. Schools prepare students for the whole of society and the whole of life.
Interesting thinking here, do you think that we have misunderstood (maybe not the best word here) the connection between schooling and university then?
Absolutely, the view of school's role(s) hasn't moved on since schools had academic and non-academic streaming. The role of a school for the academic stream has become the default and any other roles have been (more or less) forgotten. To me it appears currently that schools are supposed to have three major purposes; academic preparation, job readiness preparation and development of life long learners. Of those three purposes, the one with most long term value to ALL people is the development of life long learners because it could be seen to underpin academic and job readiness preparation. The current focus on academic preparation with its older style of assessment for comparison purposes, is unsuited to development of life long learners, in fact, I would suggest it is counterproductive to the development of LLL. Since job readiness and academic preparation still exist as school purposes, while development of LLL underpins them, my view is to have schools focus on strategies supportive of LLL and let academic institutions and businesses handle the task of assessing students after they leave school. Students who wish to follow a specific path could then be assessed by an entry assessment and advised as to what is needed to be successful next time.
Your thoughts on LLL link to the Mparntwe agreement goals, which are rarely mentioned by anyone yet are supposed to frame policy and discourse surrounding education in Australia. One of the things I've learned from reading Brookfield is the importance of considering just who benefits from the policies and cultures we perpetuate through schooling, sometimes it becomes pretty clear our policies are not doing what they set out to do (or as you have suggested are counterproductive to those goals).
Who benefits from policies is an important consideration, but I also wonder if the main 'benefit' of policies is simple continuity, in other words, systemic inertia, which I suppose benefits the policy makers by being low risk. It feels far too often that change is too difficult, even for individuals, let alone in a policy making context where many individuals are effected. The tendency toward maintaining continuity in policy has analogues in Karl Poppers view of science, where most scientists act to maintain the status quo and only a very few ever challenge it. Status quo is a powerful driver. A good example is when I talk to teachers about assessment without comparison and they really can't imagine it, nor even imagine the value of it. Small ramble there. Sorry.
An important ramble to have! Confirms what many have said about the way that educational policy and ideology doesn't just impact what we do but importantly how we can perceive of education and schooling when left unexamined.
One of the most pressing issues in our education system is the reliance on the ATAR as the primary measure of student and school success. Sadly, this inherently binary system guarantees that roughly half of all students and schools will be deemed "losers" based solely on their ATAR score. Thankfully, a growing number of students are recognizing this flaw and seeking alternative pathways through unscored year 12 programs or other options. It's intriguing to consider the potential impact if a majority of students were to collectively harness their power and opt out of the ATAR system entirely. Such a dramatic shift may not be as far-fetched as it seems, and could ultimately force a much-needed reevaluation of how we assess student potential.
There would be a few people out of a job to say the least!
As usual, you hit the nail on the head when you said "My main concern arises in the way that the ideological nature of the ATAR, in framing education as a competition, has particular socialisation effects that hold the potential to shape the thinking and practice of teachers, students and communities towards an impoverished understanding of educational aims and purposes." And I'm sure you know how I feel about the whole competitive scoring issue. It has been my view that this could be solved by letting universities be responsible for 'entrance assessment', rather than school systems be responsible for 'exit assessment' Schools have a much more important and complex purpose than merely preparing students for university. Schools prepare students for the whole of society and the whole of life.
Interesting thinking here, do you think that we have misunderstood (maybe not the best word here) the connection between schooling and university then?
Absolutely, the view of school's role(s) hasn't moved on since schools had academic and non-academic streaming. The role of a school for the academic stream has become the default and any other roles have been (more or less) forgotten. To me it appears currently that schools are supposed to have three major purposes; academic preparation, job readiness preparation and development of life long learners. Of those three purposes, the one with most long term value to ALL people is the development of life long learners because it could be seen to underpin academic and job readiness preparation. The current focus on academic preparation with its older style of assessment for comparison purposes, is unsuited to development of life long learners, in fact, I would suggest it is counterproductive to the development of LLL. Since job readiness and academic preparation still exist as school purposes, while development of LLL underpins them, my view is to have schools focus on strategies supportive of LLL and let academic institutions and businesses handle the task of assessing students after they leave school. Students who wish to follow a specific path could then be assessed by an entry assessment and advised as to what is needed to be successful next time.
Your thoughts on LLL link to the Mparntwe agreement goals, which are rarely mentioned by anyone yet are supposed to frame policy and discourse surrounding education in Australia. One of the things I've learned from reading Brookfield is the importance of considering just who benefits from the policies and cultures we perpetuate through schooling, sometimes it becomes pretty clear our policies are not doing what they set out to do (or as you have suggested are counterproductive to those goals).
Who benefits from policies is an important consideration, but I also wonder if the main 'benefit' of policies is simple continuity, in other words, systemic inertia, which I suppose benefits the policy makers by being low risk. It feels far too often that change is too difficult, even for individuals, let alone in a policy making context where many individuals are effected. The tendency toward maintaining continuity in policy has analogues in Karl Poppers view of science, where most scientists act to maintain the status quo and only a very few ever challenge it. Status quo is a powerful driver. A good example is when I talk to teachers about assessment without comparison and they really can't imagine it, nor even imagine the value of it. Small ramble there. Sorry.
An important ramble to have! Confirms what many have said about the way that educational policy and ideology doesn't just impact what we do but importantly how we can perceive of education and schooling when left unexamined.