“The important thing is that our kids leave school with a passion for the acquisition of knowledge and the skills to make it happen. “

Is this used as an excuse that the teacher has to teach very little while the teacher is paid money to teach, but instead the student has to learn themselves.

Could a grade 12 student understand this:

“how to use a protein to transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels”.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110323135635.htm

If not, then they may not have any idea how fuels will be made in the future.

Could a grade 12 student understand this:

“Next they identified affected vegetation using two different greenness indices as surrogates for green leaf area and physiological functioning.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110329150453.htm

If not, then they may have no idea how vegetation is being studied to determine what would happen if climate change occurred.

The above could be understood by a grade 12 student if they have basic knowledge about chemistry and biology, and the only way to ensure they have such basic knowledge is to test them.

Nicole, thank you for a fine article - insightful and balanced. Let's hope that Australian governments - particularly the Commonwealth - can begin to adopt a more thoughtful approach to what international evidence shows us about successful education policy.

A good article Nicole.

I will take issue with your claim that the 'three r's' are the starting point and not the aim of education. 100% agree that the three r's are the starting point, but I would also say that until a child has those basic competencies, moving on to other material is counterproductive.

We can't have students leaving schools without a fim grip of the basics and this must always come before everythingelse.

Fully agree that teaching to the test is the obvious outcome of standarised testing and ranking schools. What organisation doesn't direct their attention towards meeting their KPI's.

What a great article. It stands as a contrast to the silly reviews in the media over the last few days. Nicole, you have effectively set fire to Superman's cape.

Food for thought! Pertinent points raised Nicole.

I particularly agree with your following statements...

*Seeing education as a process of 'covering' material is an impoverished view of what should be going on in our classrooms.

*The critical thing is that students are curious about the world, have a sense of how much they don't know and can access and evaluate information when they need it.

*The important thing is that our kids leave school with a passion for the acquisition of knowledge and the skills to make it happen.

*The point is that what we need are structures that support all teachers to develop in their professional practice over the course of their careers, and structures that support the very small minority who are unsuited to teaching to exit the profession in a dignified manner.

Benji7
"have a sense of how much they don't know"

I think there are now many people who have a sense of what students don't know, and this is why we now have a skills shortage.

Teachers included in this, but it is surprising how many teachers want to be paid more for not knowing much.