Curriculum & Assessment

I went to a staff meeting on Monday for current teaching staff and they were talking about the transition from VELS to AUsVELS. I think everyone would be comforted to know that even current teachers find progression points really confusing!

It started an interesting discussion about gaps in learning. That is, if a student misses a progression point in Year 7 for example, that would put them behind in all future years, as often teachers don't have time to get students lacking in specific areas back up to speed. It also made me think about trying to make lesson plans fit multiple learning levels. It could be totally possible that there could be a wide range of abilities within one classroom. How can we adjust teaching to foster development in these young people?

I've recently had an experience with a boy who completely hates school, and no wonder. His maths is still at a primary school level (he's in Year 10) and his English probably is too. So I wonder then, what is the teaching and the curriculum achieving while he feels so frustrated as he falls further and further behind? He now refuses to participate. How can we counteract this and give him confidence and learning when his current learning standard doesn't meet with the prescribed progression points set for his level.


I suppose this is really my reflection on this topic. It highlighted for me the complexity of devising appropriate assessment for curriculum that is set by another body.

It also made me question how I establish whether the assessment is too easy or too hard. How do I determine that? To me it covers the progession points but I could easily have created an assessment that totally misses the mark? How do we learn to make assessment not only meet the progression points, but also the learning needs of the students in front of us?