Twelve years ago The Daily Telegraph ran a Page one article under a banner headline: “The class we failed”. Under it was class photo Mount Druitt’s Year 12, no member of which achieved a tertiary entrance score above 50.
The newspaper said it was an indictment against the state’s education system rather than a slur at the capabilities of Mount Druitt’s Year 12. Much controversy and a settled defamation action ensued.
Well, we have another “class we failed” – the whole of Australia’s Year 10 in 2007, and Year 6 is not far ahead.
Last month, the results of the Civics and Citizenship National Assessment Program were published. And this week we had a good example of why. Only 41 per cent of Year 10 students achieved or bettered the Year 10 proficient standard. It was 54 per cent for Year 6. They were up 2 and 3 per cent on 2004 respectively.
The reports says, “The proficient standard represents a challenging but reasonable expectation for typical Year 6 and 10 students to have reached by the end of each of those years of study.”
Still, we failed them – and at the cost of several million dollars.
Small wonder, on two counts. The first is fixable. The report of the assessment contains lots of Key Performance Measures. And the program booklet tells us, “The KPM definitions are further defined by the domain descriptors which reference the main foci of each KPM. . . . Figure 1.2 presents the relationships of the domain descriptors within and between year levels. The professional elaboration is a further expansion of the domain descriptors which identifies key concepts and skills students are expected to be able to have attained by Year 6 or 10. . . . Chapter 3 . . . provides more information through the mapping of the items to the assessment domain.”
Do I have to quote any more?
Nonetheless, the measurement of answers to the questions, such as they were, was rigorous – far more rigorous than the elephant-stamp-for-everyone approach that has dogged Australian education for three decades or more.
The second count, though, is less fixable. How can students get an understanding of the system of Australian Government when our static and archaic Constitution does not describe what goes on?
The civics and citizenship assessment had to skate around the constitutional set-up. The Prime Minister was not mentioned in the teaching materials or the questions. The Governor-General got one fleeting mention in the materials and none in the questions.
Instead, we had an array of woolly, soppy questions about the role of Neighbourhood Watch and the election of a class captain.
We have failed them. We have failed the civics students of Australia because we do not have a Constitution which accurately describes the system of government in Australia to which students can refer.
We could hardly get a better example of the imprecision of Australian constitutional arrangements than the Into Africa venture of Governor-General Quentin Bryce a week or two after the Queen’s representative Princess Anne visited the scene of the Victorian bushfires.
What a confused, funny, little, unself-assured country we are? Princess Anne comes to grieve over the bushfires representing the Queen who is, or is not, the Australian Head of State, depending on whose view you seek, but who certainly is the supreme ruler of Australia if you read the words of the Constitution that should form the basis of the civics course of the class we failed.
Princess Anne aside, we already have someone in Australia representing the Queen – called a Governor-General. The Governor-General can dismiss a government whereas for practical purposes the Queen will not or cannot – the governor-generalship stream flows higher than its source.
We have a Governor-General who is the independent arbiter or the rubber stamp of the Prime Minister, depending on whom you talk to. This person, representing the Queen, is going into Africa to persuade African nations to support Australia for a position on the UN Security Council at the Prime Minister’s bidding – the same Prime Minister over whom she is boss.
And these are the African nations who shed the same Queen as their head of state because she is British.
And this is the same Queen of Australia who dished out MBEs to the members of the English Rugby team which beat Australia to win the World Cup a few years ago. And the same Queen who (along with her family) visits foreign parts and talks up British trade against the interests of her subjects over whom she is Queen of Australia.
So, here we go. Take up your pens for a multiple choice quiz so you, too, can join to class we failed.
1. Is the Queen: a. British, b. Australian c. African?
2. Who is the Australian Head of State: a. The Queen of England, b. The Queen of Australia, c. The Governor-General, d. Sir David Smith?
3. Who is the boss of the Governor-General: a. The Australian Prime Minister, b. The Queen, c. The people of Australia, d. The liquor cabinet at Yarralumla?
4. Australia is a democracy because: a. Its head of state cannot be a Roman Catholic, b. Its head of state cannot be directly or indirectly elected by the people, c. Both of the above?
5. The Bill of Rights was incorporated into Australian constitutional arrangements by: a. Watching too much American television, b. Watching too much American television, c. Watching too much American television, d. All of the above?
6. Neighbourhood Watch is: a. Misspelt because it should not have a U in it? b. A scheme where your neighbours watch you being robbed, c. A scheme where your neighbours rob you?
7. Civics courses should be based upon: 1. The divine right of kings? 2. Don Bradman’s batting average? 3. A text that bears no relationship to the subject being taught?
Answers: In a referendum coming to you sometime in the next millennium.