[...]Pedagogy or assessment – what comes first in PBL? « Kelli McGraw[...]…

My feeling is that most students have mastered the ‘basic’ English and Maths needed to ‘survive in the community’ before they get to Year 11…but surely we want more for our kids than that?

English is compulsory in NSW for Year 11 & 12 due to a recognition that students in fact require a very sophisticated level of skill in communication and understanding of language to experience success in society today.

The question is: would students also benefit from being made to study sophisticated levels of Maths? I’m not sure what the answer to this is.

I just wish that a unit of English wasn’t compulsory in the calculation of the UAI The pressure that this places on teachers to ‘teach to the test’ is crazy bananas!

As a rule, Advanced is the place for students who ‘love English’ – you have to love scrutinising language and critiquing different points of view and polishing your writing.

Yes, it is definitely possible to change from Advanced to Standard (you can ‘try before you buy’), though you should check with your school about the best times to do this. Moving up from Standard to Advanced is also technically possible, but less frequent.

Sadly it is very difficult to get a Band 6 in Advanced English, and EVEN HARDER to get one in Standard English. (There are not good reasons for this, and the English Teachers’ Association has been lobbying the Board of Studies for a more generous grading system for years, to no avail.) This doesn’t mean they don’t ‘scale well’…that side of things is very hard to punt on.

My advice would be to ask the English head teacher for the exact texts that your son will be studying. Sometimes students who are capable of doing Advanced end up hating the books and films that their school chooses to study, so it’s worth asking about that. FYI: Students in the Advanced course MUST study Shakespeare.

I hope that helps!

Since girls are more advance in language, it may be why more girls do better than the boys in HSC.

I suspect everyone has a tale to tell about The Way Things Are in one system of education as opposed to another, but it’s important that we keep our eyes on the prize – that is, the improvement of public education.

For example, if it is true that students and teachers from privileged backgrounds constitute a radically different demographic, or come from a different culture, how will this be catered for in a public school?

Without better resources it is very hard to cater for diversity in a school community, and I think this is problematic for everyone involved. Public schools may already embrace a culture of diversity, but without more support it is difficult to combat factors like student absences or low teacher retention. Many teachers are now leaving the profession within the first 5 years due to burn out (I’m not sure if the rate of retention is different in public versus private though?)

On the other hand, independent schools by their nature are already wrestling with diversity in some way. Whether the school operates to exclude the poor, or to instil a set of values (perhaps religious), or to uphold an elite ‘tradition’, a culture of diversity is not something I imagine you can take for granted there. Where a school has a selection criteria for entry, or a way to price some people out of entry, the diversity of the population has already been constrained.

At the end of the day though, if only all students had access to high quality learning resources I would be happy.

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