Page 1876 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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That approaches to assessment in the senior years curriculum give greater emphasis to comparability—
this is what Ms Bishop is talking about—
and to reliable, rigorous and innovative moderation processes.
So the college review says that to ensure that the college system continues to be the best in the country we have to continue to have the innovation and the risk-taking that the founders of that system had back in 1972. What we hear from Ms MacDonald is “let us put it under a glass case, let us baton it down and not do anything to it”. What will happen with that is that it will go into decay and decline. Anyone who is interested in the educational advantages of their young people should be open to discussion on this. What are interesting are some of the inconvenient things that Ms MacDonald did not talk about because along comes the commonwealth shadow minister for education, Mr Smith. Of course, Mr Smith rained on Mr Barr’s parade by not ruling out external examinations.
Mr Barr obviously failed the fireside chat test because he did not say, “Steve, all I want you to do is hang out until after the election and then it will be all right.” That is what Mr Barr said on radio 666 when he was interviewed. Basically he said, “I will hold my breath until after the federal election and the white knight Rudd-Smith government will come along and save my bacon. In the meantime I will not enter into any debate, any discussion, about whether I am serving the students of the ACT as well as I can.”
Ms MacDonald says in her preposterous motion that there is no educational merit in changing the ACT college system. That is not what the highly prized Atelier review said. The highly prized Atelier review said that we need considerable innovation and risk-taking to fully and effectively meet the 21st century educational needs of young people in the ACT. The report of this review says that it is beyond its competence to discuss the issues of moderation that were raised over and over again in the review process, but it recommends to the government that it undertake a review of the moderation process because of the concerns raised in this report and raised in the consultation over this report. Over and over again in this report much has been said in relation to moderation which is correct. The review rules out a return to an HSC style examination. No-one in this territory, no-one in this place, would encourage the return to an HSC style examination. At page 65 the review states:
Such issues are beyond the province of the Review but may indicate the desirability of a limited external review into assessment, moderation and scaling processes to ensure continued confidence in assessment processes for all secondary college students.
That is not a formal recommendation but it is there in black and white for this minister and the previous minister to read. They have done nothing about that. By the minister’s own admission they have done nothing about it except to put together a couple of papers so that they can debunk some of the criticisms of assessment made by a member of the public who has made it inconvenient for them because he will not go away. Part of the reason why he will not go away is that he has a very strong
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