Australia to introduce middle-years specialist
MINISTERS will be taking a keen interest in radical reforms
to be piloted in Australia in an attempt to boost the performance of nine
to 14-year-olds. Innovations in Australia are likely to include a new class
of teacher specialising in teaching this group, plus easy movement by staff
between primaries and secondaries, and big changes to the traditional academic
timetable.
While British researchers are still investigating transition-aged
children's underachievement, their Australian counterparts are setting out
detailed
plans for reform. University of Melbourne academics Jean Russell and Peter
Hill's recent report called the Middle Years Research and Development Project,
is believed to be highly thought of by key policy-makers in the Department
for Education and Employment.
The report calls for fundamental changes in attitudes
towards secondary schooling. "Any serious reform of the middle years involves a more student-focused
approach to teaching and one less driven by the imperative to cover curriculum
content," they say. "Action will be taken to curb uncontrolled
expansion in the breadth of the curriculum for students in the middle years;
identify a manageable core of knowledge appropriate to this stage of schooling
and allow greater opportunity for sustained personal endeavour, in-depth
learning and the pursuit of excellence."
They say there should be a new breed of specialist
middle-years teachers with "in-depth knowledge of at least two specialist areas" They
should also be able to "promote high standards of literacy, numeracy
and other core knowledge, including the use of new information technologies.” Teachers
would move between the two sectors easily and be organised into "middle-years” teaching
teams, with school timetables rewritten to ensure longer "uninterrupted
blocks of time for learning and close relations between students and the
teams teachers".
By Chris Bunting
TES September 3rd 1999, page 4
posted 03/09/1999 top
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