Kevin,

I've used chapter four in my curriculum studies classes to highlight how clumsy, futile and politically charged and ideologically driven your agenda is.

I’ll leave it up to Allan Luke to put it more succinctly:

“As any teacher knows, approaches old and new coexist within staffrooms and across schools despite the best attempts by materials developers, researchers, and governments to swing the system in particular directions. Instead, the power and idiosyncrasy of the "local" is at work in all curriculum reform:

In classrooms particular approaches tend to coexist, blending and creating hybrid approaches to teaching that no textbook developer, researcher, or bureaucrat could have conceptualised.

By definition, curriculum and pedagogic discourses have a way of taking on lives of their own once in circulation in schools. So while many of the dominant discourses, professional debates, and research about literacy education moved toward whole language and personal growth in the mid-to-late 1980s in Australia, traditional approaches to literature study and basic skills approaches to reading remained-with (radioactive) half-lives and continuing influence.”

Critical literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint
Allan Luke. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. Newark: Feb 2000.Vol.43, Iss. 5; pg. 448, 14 pg

My school has a budget of some $8.4 million. This is about $7,000 per student. This is called 'throwing money at education'. Top private schools charge $16,000 or $18,000 per student. This is called 'investing in your children's future'. In order to cut government spending on children in government schools, the Right had to change the focus of public thinking. It did this by creating the concept of 'provider capture', mercilessly libelling teachers, attacking spending as meaningless inputs and seeking an emphasis on outcomes. This is the genesis of outcomes based education in Victoria.

This campaign to change the language in which people thought began with a relentless softening up process:
'…teacher unions have “captured” the operation of education services in regard to staffing and working conditions so that the education system has become unduly teacher-driven.' (Institute of Public Affairs, Schooling Victorians, 1992)
'There is extensive over-staffing of teachers, inefficient work practices and “union” capture of education expenditure.” (IPA, Schooling Victorians, 1992)
'The schools are simply a racket and a rort for teachers who use it as a fully salaried system of outdoor relief.' (Peter Ryan, “Teachers fail to get the point”, The Age, 1/8/1992)
'Socialist Left ideology…is nicely entrenched throughout the state education administrative system, thanks to a continuing infiltration of the faithful throughout the Cain/Kirner years.' (Michael Barnard, 'Labor could not learn”, The Age, 28/8/1992)
'The perks and privileges of this cosseted profession were absolutely sacrosanct.” (“A lesson in anarchy”, Herald Sun (editorial), 19/11/1992)
'Schools…appear to be run more for the benefit and convenience of their employees than for their users.' (Claude Forell, “A reckoning unions had to have”, The Age, 25/11/1992)
'The Kennett Government is pledged to a course that promises to break the debilitating union stranglehold…” (Michael Barnard, “Teachers in a state of intellectual undress”, The Age, 27/11/1992)
'A strong moral case for the present Government unilaterally renouncing all agreements entered into by the previous Government with its employees can be made on the grounds that they were not arms-length agreements.' (Professor Ross Parish, “Let the Public Service pay towards cutting the ranks”, The Age, 11/12/1992)

The Right had to undermine the teaching profession by labelling their view as self-seeking, so teaching hours, class sizes, teacher numbers and the involvement of teachers in decision-making became 'provider capture', justifying cuts to spending and the need for outcomes based education.

'Mr Kennett…set out to break the power of the education unions which had been running then system…' (“A hundred high speed days” (editorial), Herald Sun, 11/1/1993)
'The present system has allowed education to become captive of its bureaucracies and powerful lobbies.' (“A testing year in education” (editorial), The Age, 25/1/1993)
'Money for schools was channelled into creating more jobs and better conditions for teachers.' (“School lessons in economic necessity” (editorial), The Age, 27/1/1993)
'The emergency teacher system…had not existed before 1980…' (Don Hayward, quoted in Denis Muller, “Schools already feel bite of education cuts”, The Age, 1/3/1993) [As a school daily organiser, I knew this was untrue because I had employed emergency teachers without restriction in 1978.]
'Money which could have been saved by reduced teacher numbers has been used to improve teachers' working conditions…the education budget has been allowed to become unnecessarily bloated…Throwing more money at a problem, by itself, can never be guaranteed to achieve the desired result.' (Kevin Donnelly, “Why we're inefficient”, Herald Sun, 3/5/1993
'That structure is prone to “capture” at the centre and the extremities by organised interest groups such as teacher unions…(page 9, Vo. 2, Report of the Victorian Commission of Audit, 1993)
'The powerful public sector unions were permitted by default to run…education…' (“Jim Kennan scratches”, Herald Sun (editorial), 29/6/1993)
'…during the 1980s, the union movement “captured” the operation of the public sector. This led to considerable over-staffing and restrictive work practices…' (Des Moore, “Why government needs to be rolled back”, The Age, 5/7/1993)
On and on and on it went.

This campaign was successful: it lead to OBE, and it so influenced the ALP that secondary schools are still more than 2,000 teachers short of the numbers provided by the 1981 Liberal Government's staffing ratio of 10.9:1.

Hi Rainier,

Thank you for stating the obvious. In all the benchmarking I have done and in my book, I clearly distinguish between the intended curriculum, the implemented and the achieved. The primary report I did for DEST, as stated in the intro, focused on the intended curriculum, that is the syllabus and framework documents.

In the book I clearly state that my beef is not with classroom teachers! That is why I have rarely, if ever attacked, classroom teachers - the people I am most upset about are the escapees from the classroom, the educrats forcing curriculum fads on schools.

'…cosy deals with teacher unions…wasteful school work practices.…It is understandable that some union officials who rode the Labor gravy train are resistant to reform.' (Alan Stockdale, “Education's future depends on savings”, The Age, 22/9/1993)
'Unions have focused on industrial relations to build up a cosy bracket of work practices rather than concentrate on professional standards.' (Don Hayward, quoted in Felicity Dargan, “100 schools to go”, Herald Sun, 30/9/1993)
'It is time for objective standards to be set and for reporting to parents about those standards. Parents will ensure that schools are accountable for their performance once they are given proper information.' (David Edwards, “Getting down to the business of quality education”, The Age, 19/10/1993)

'For too long, Victoria has resisted measuring outcomes. The community is entitled to evidence about student progress.' (Denis Muller(?) (reporter) “…Victoria measures up”, The Age, 9/11/1993

We next got official OBE documentation:
'The Victorian framework will be based on the national statements and profiles produced by the Australian Education Council, and will detail intended learning outcomes around which schools will develop their own programs.' (Joanne Painter (reporter), “Standard tests mooted for students”, The Age, 7/4/1994)
'The absence of even a cautious standardisation of school outcomes has made it impossible for employers to know the capacities of school leavers…' (Ronald Conway, “Time to test students”, Herald Sun, 6/5/1994)
'The framework would focus on outcomes, giving parents an idea of what their children should be achieving at various levels.' (Claire Heaney (reporter), “School shake-up to be unveiled”, Herald Sun, 30/6/1994)
'This framework leaves schools the job of fleshing out and clothing the curriculum framework but it is clear as to the general curriculum outcomes.' (Sam Ball, “Why assessment passes the test”, The Age, 26/7/1994)
'For the first time there is now a proper curriculum and standards framework…setting out the key areas for learning and the skills and knowledge students are expected to acquire…' (“Report on Schools of the Future” (advertisement), Diamond Valley News, 21/12/1994

Outcomes based education - not trendy thinking from the Left, but the outcome of the Right's nasty campaign to make teacher's lives worse!

Sure Chris C, Outcomes Based Education was introduced by a Liberal Government in WA too, in the second half of the 90's. Certainly the politicians did so thinking that it would be good for children. But with the passage of time it has turned out to be a lemon. The leftist demon was within it all the time, disguised within the vague, wordy and difficult to understand Outcome statements leading to a process driven curriculum albeit claimed as a standards based curriculum. What I am at a loss to understand is that some Liberal politicians have not had the courage to admit that they got it wrong and the OBE needs to be booted out.

I recall the situation that went on in Victoria when the Kennett Government came in and had to face an awful budget situation. The Teachers Union over a number of years during the Cain and Kerner Governments had implemented teacher / student ratios that were far more generious than anything similar in the other states. Any teaching person running a school in any other state knew that there were far too many teachers employed in Victorian government schools and were not surprised that Kennett introduced the reforms he did. It might have been argued as being justified at the time through the introduction of OBE, but the Kennett Government were really targeting the Unions more than anything else.

It is great that OBE has been watered down in Victoria, perhaps due in no small part to the disaster that followed its introduction into years 11 & 12. In WA we have still to "wake up". But I sense that this will happen before too long.