Curriculum Matters

As our Year 12 students begin their External Assessment, it is time to reflect upon the significant changes we have had in Senior Schooling over the past few years. Despite the pandemic, this year is the first time since 1972 that Year 12 students in Queensland are sitting external assessment at the end of their courses of study. This follows a review of school-based assessment in 2014.

From 1972 to 2019 students were taught and assessed on the topics recently covered. Now our students are needing to recall and apply content learned up to 12 months prior. Naturally, regular revision is required to help students (as was the case previously) to be able to prepare for their external assessment tasks. Students should reinforce the content of their lessons by revising the work covered that night, and then setting up a program to continually review their work.

A key to this is the use of learning goals and success criteria. Teachers use these in each lesson to outline the goal of the lesson and then to check for understanding. These learning goals and success criteria should be used to help guide students in the amount of work to be covered on individual topics. When revising, if the student can still meet the success criteria, this topic can be quickly revised and then the next topic can be reviewed. I would encourage students to think about the challenge questions and not to just complete the questions they can answer easily.

Although there is an expectation that students will need to work consistently on their work, a question I often pose is not how hard you are working, but how smart are you working?

Kind regards,

Wayne van den Bos

Director of Senior Phase