Board Chief Eases Worry On School Control
The Age
Monday July 19, 1993
Victoria's new Board of Studies will not seek to exert strong centralised control over individual schools' curriculums, the chief executive, Professor Sam Ball, indicated yesterday.
In a speech to the staff of Firbank Anglican School at Brighton, Professor Ball gave the first public insight into the probable approach of the new board on three key issues: the degree of centralised curriculum control, the future of the national curriculum statements in Victoria, and the modifications in prospect for the VCE.
The board, appointed last month, has not formally discussed these matters, and Professor Ball said he was giving his personal views.
On curriculum control, he took a libertarian approach. ``The classroom teacher and the school itself determine the curriculum," he said.
``What the board of studies will be doing, and what the state is responsible for, is the right to set some general framework about what children should be studying, and some general standards.
There has been a lot of conjecture that the new board would impose tight rules to ensure that the national curriculum statements and profiles were implemented in Victoria's schools. However, the abandonment of the national curriculum at the Australian Education Council meeting in Perth 18 days ago killed off that possibility.
The question now is, what will Victoria do with the national curriculum material? Professor Ball said the Board of Studies would salvage as much of it as was thought useful.
Eight specialist committees will look at the available material _ from other states and from Victoria's Directorate of School Education _ over the next 12 months.
In addition to the review of the national curriculum, Professor Ball indicated that the Board of Studies might also develop its own courses of study in ``a couple of key learning areas".
It would be up to each school to decide whether to use the board's materials.
On possible modifications to the VCE, Professor Ball focused on verification and cheating, which lay at the heart of the report he co- wrote on the VCE last year with Professor Tim Brown of Melbourne University.
He told an anecdote about a letter he had received from a student last week who wrote: ``It says in your guidelines that teachers can edit on only two occasions. My teacher sticks to the letter of the guidelines and I get two edits of my work. I know of other students who are getting six edits. It's just not fair.
``I have to agree," Professor Ball said. ``Some people abide by the letter of the guidelines. When I ask why they're called guidelines and not rules, I am asked, how do you enforce them? Well, if you've got something that's unenforceable, there's something wrong.
Finding a solution was something that had to be looked at.
© 1993 The Age