Page 730 - Week 03 - Thursday, 22 March 1990
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restriction of external exams and of a remote curriculum were removed and the results speak for themselves. We have highly educated school leavers and high retention rates. Mind you, I come back to a problem I alluded to earlier; the high praise that we have given the system tends to obscure significant difficulties that are still there.
Let me quote the example of curriculum development because there is a difficulty in that. It has been school based. Over the years that has absorbed enormous energy from teachers, and to a lesser extent from the community.
MR SPEAKER: Order! I draw your attention to standing order 40, Mr Stefaniak.
Mr Stefaniak: I am sorry. I acknowledged you as I walked in, Mr Speaker, and I will do it again.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Please be seated.
MR WOOD: Curriculum development has required enormous energy from teachers; it is time-consuming. They have put heart and soul into that, but it does not mean we have perfect curriculums. I know they cooperate a lot more these days; they swap curriculums and they work together. I note in a remark you made, Mr Humphries, that schools are accepting curriculums from different school sectors.
I think those who sometimes criticise teachers as working a nine to three day do not realise the commitment they give in time to curriculum development and to the assessment that follows that internal examination. It is constant assessment. I used to stand at the door of the school in the morning. It was a convenient place to be so I could open it for the teachers coming in with loads of stuff - they could not open the door themselves - and do the same in the afternoon.
The degree of commitment that is given both in curriculum development and in assessment is not always recognised. These things do not depend on any autonomous outside body. They could have been established free of it. They were associated with the development of the Schools Authority, but they arose from a different report and could as easily have been established by a simple administrative act of a minister for education. There was a major benefit in its coming at the same time as the Schools Authority because it is an appropriate style for a cooperative, self-managing and participative system.
I want to emphasise what is essential to the way our education system runs, and that is the provision of highly qualified teachers. They needed to be under the Schools Authority structure. Teachers had to be responsible for that curriculum development, they had greater autonomy, greater management requirements, they had more contact with the community - difficulties that I have mentioned notwithstanding - and peer assessment, though I will not mention that today. The teachers had a lot to do.
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