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Declining standards should not be ignored : Comments
By Peter Abelson, published 2/12/2005Peter Abelson argues falling pass rates paint a dismal picture of student competence.
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Because OBE renames objectives as "outcomes" and in doing so adds social and behavioural characteristics to the traditional academic emphasis, it is possible to get a high "outcome score" without having achieved anything much in the way of academic knowledge and performance. By removing a syllabus and permitting teachers themselves to design what knowledge, skill and understandings they use as the basis of their curriculum OBE basically guarantees that academic standards will decline over time.
What Peter Abelson has reported is simply what could have been prepicted had we fully understood what OBE was at the time it was introduced in Australia. In WA we now have students in High School who have had all of their educational experience through OBE. And now the Government is committed to the introduction of OBE in years 11 & 12.
Until parents fully appreciate the harm OBE is causing and push for a return to a syllabus knowledge based approach to education, we will continue to see a decline in stands in our schools and universities.