SPC Submission to the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools

With the closing last week of the public submission process for the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian, the SPC believes this is a valuable opportunity to recognise the excellent achievements of NSW public schools. As SPC President, Chris Presland, explains:

“The SPC submission highlights the fact that public schools in NSW are already achieving many outstanding outcomes. Our students are engaged in innovative, challenging and creative learning programs and I am continually impressed by the dedication of the teaching profession to ensure we adapt to prepare students for a rapidly changing world.”

Mr. Presland said he hoped that the SPC submission provided the panel with an alternative framework for understanding educational success:

“If we are committed to preparing young people to be lifelong learners in the 21st century, we must also recognise that learning and assessment is more than simply literacy and numeracy. We need a broad view of student, school and systems success which recognises the wide range of skills, capabilities and interests of students. The SPC recommends that the panel adopts a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes knowledge and learning. This includes providing students with the opportunity to foster both academic and vocational skills in learning, assessment and accessing further tertiary study.”

The SPC submission outlines a number of recommendations including:

  • Recognising that performance measures for all students in all sectors must take into account that the current Gonski 2.0 funding model allocates for need within sectors and not across them. There is a risk that this will undermine the integrity of any improvement measures that are correlated to individual student, school or sector funding or that compare students and schools across
  • Acknowledging the diversity of learning starting points for students, particularly in areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, and the impact this has on educational
  • Establishing an expert educational panel to undertake research into the best practices in student assessment for secondary education. The panel should provide guidance for the design of a broader set of school and system based measures and

The full submission is available at http://www.nswspc.org.au/submissions-responses/

Chris Presland
President, NSW Secondary Principals’ Council
M: 0414986514
E: chris.presland@det.nsw.edu.au

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