Dr
Neil Béchervaise
NB
Consulting (Australasia) Pty Ltd
Millennium Myopia and the Educational Sleepers
© Dr Neil Béchervaise
Everywhere we look, educators are focused towards 2000. Towards
increased use of technology, increased literacy, higher tertiary
entrance scores, improved home-school partnerships, even a more
youthful teaching staff! In the face of this millenium myopia,
less obvious moves - towards privatisation of public education,
national curriculum and the entry of universities into secondary
education have become educational sleepers. Exploring the
debate sleepers, this first of three articles focuses on the potential
impact of university entry into the secondary sector.
While John Dawkins amalgamated teachers' colleges with universities
and unified technology institutes to universities, joint meetings
of state and federal education ministers accepted national frameworks
for education based on agreed outcomes and teams of educators set
to identifying essential learning in key areas.
Amalgamation and unification were federally controlled and they
happened. National frameworks and standards were state controlled
and they have also happened - even if apparently idiosyncratically.
Though these two events seem unrelated, they form the basis for
offering full fee-paying courses to secondary students by both secondary
and tertiary sector providers.
Most commentators have responded to the West Review on Higher
Education, Learning for Life by bemoaning the demise of the
University as a centre for what Robert Manne from Latrobe University
has described as 'the disinterested quest for truth'. Regardless
of West's acceptance of the economic reality of tertiary sector
resourcing, universities are in pursuit of real dollars. Cash-in-hand
beats budget speculation every time.
Universities have now been offering year 11/12 equivalent tuition
for several years. State-by-state year 12 hoop-jumping assessments
are by-passed and students are offered direct entry to their faculties
of choice as they successfully meet the universities' academic demands.
Before the much maligned VCE, Victoria offered a range of tertiary
entry programs through secondary, TAFE and College providers. The
shift to a single certificate on equity grounds effectively destroyed
the tertiary orientation programs [TOP]. Furthermore, it created
a surplus of highly skilled teachers with no room to move. A number
of these were absorbed into English Language Intensive Short Course
teaching. ELICOS centres proliferated across the tertiary campuses
of the country. The amalgamation and unification programs have generated
similar staffing surpluses and the funding squeeze, coupled with
inter-state credentialling differences, has made entry into the
secondary educational field extremely attractive - full fee-paying
students available and a surplus of teaching staff to be mopped
up.
The success of these focused early entry [or tertiary orientation]
programs is related to their vocational credibility. For students
who have the funds and the desire to enter an Australian university,
methods of by-passing statewide competitive assessment programs
are highly attractive. Specialist support for non-English background
speakers through ELICOS-style programs, substantial pastoral support
and a recognition by university staff that they are teaching unabashedly
towards university literacy deliver coherence and high levels of
motivation for all members of the program.
In a competitive tertiary market with declining federal funding
for teaching and an emphasis on degree completion and research dollars,
the success formula becomes clear: well defined outcomes are achievable
with time, work and talent. Achievable outcomes are worth paying
for. Tertiary students already pay [albeit subsidised] fees so why
wait until the end of year 12 to begin paying fees for university
services?
The current tertiary orientation market is predominantly composed
of highly motivated and highly able overseas students - many initially
attracted to the promise of a strong English teaching program. Uncertainty
in the Asian economies has caused the enrolment promise of this
sector of the market to falter but it is an ill-defined market.
Not all students need to build their English skills - Hong Kong
students and many Japanese students are already effective English
users. Not all come from the Asian region, many are seeking high
level Australian vocational qualifications as a precursor to full
migration. And many have the funds to select where they will live
to capitalise on their preferred university access
Increasingly, Australian students are recognising that paying
high fees to a recognised academic school is not a guarantee
of entry to the faculty, or even the university, of choice. The
wish for strong tertiary entrance scores can be traded for the certainty
of tertiary entrance with possibilities for acceleration - at little
extra cost. The West Report may refer to students as clients and
customers, it may even accept vocational colleges of advanced education
as universities but, in doing so, it is merely acknowledging a funding
reality. Students with money can shop for the university and the
faculty of their choice.
University shopping is not an equity issue for full fee-paying
students - overseas or Australian. Independent school students already
pay substantial fees. Selective school students, despite experiments
to change the mix, are drawn largely from the same socio-economic
pool. Though the increase in school retention rates has increased
the numbers of students attending universities, it has done little
to change the socio-economics of tertiary success. The schools which
dominated faculties of Law and Medicine in the middle of the century
are still dominating those same faculties at the end of the century.
Tertiary sector education has become a competitive field. Research
funding is driving university agendas and recognised research comes
from the retention of outstanding students. Early identification
and training of highly able students has become a priority. No clearer
indication of this priority can be shown than in the fact that many
universities are now training their teaching staff to meet the needs
of students as customers, as paying consumers with the facility
to withdraw their custom and buy elsewhere. University league tables
rating teaching, facilities, student support, libraries, pass rates
and employment prospects on graduation have become marketable publications
in their own right - as they have for schools. The difference is
that schools write their own information; students provide the bulk
of information available about university quality.
As a necessary consequence of the need to attract the best students,
university teaching is improving. Syllabus offerings are increasingly
marked by their relevance to the vocational path they presage. Assessment
procedures are increasingly transparent and dedicated to the identification
and reward of students most likely to succeed.
Given the poor predictive nature of tertiary entry results for
tertiary success, it is little wonder that universities believe
they can offer more accurate predictors of academic success beyond
school than state authorities are providing. They routinely assess
overseas qualifications for equivalence and, increasingly, they
accept Australian students with overseas qualifications. The virtual
school of the internet has become the virtual examination hall.
Students gaining entry to Princeton at age 16 from a computer terminal
in central New South Wales, northern Victoria or southern Western
Australia have become sufficiently common for Australian universities
to acknowledge the same qualifications. The expansion of distance
education definitions to include students of every age and ability
on the user-pays principle is changing the way formal education
is conceived at international rather than state and national levels.
The forward-looking approach of the tertiary sector in recruiting
excellent students before they complete their secondary schooling
will impact increasingly on schools which currently market themselves
as tertiary preparation factories. High year 12 results, top 5%
students and 100% pass rates may become irrelevant if the top students
have already been creamed off to the tertiary sector at the end
of year 10.
The reconceptualisation of academic success to circumvent formal
state education assessment procedures accords with the Dawkins'
initiative towards education on a national scale. It is supported
by current government funding approaches and by changes in student
support practices. The apparently idiosyncratic development of state
curriculum frameworks which has arisen from the ashes of the national
frameworks and profiles projects has generated a university recopgnition
of the scope of the market they need to tap for immediate survival
and, coincidentally, for longer-term research development. While
the argument appears convoluted, it may well be the imperative for
financial independence that revives the currently trampled integrity
of the universities in their 'disinterested quest for truth'. After
all, the definition arose from a period when universities were fee-charging
institutions.
Schools geared to the definition of student success as tertiary
entrance after year 12 will come increasingly to face direct competition
for students from the very institutions they seek to service. Failure
to recognise the changing nature of this reality may leave many
with a learning curve too steep to climb in the time available.
Niggardly presentation of educational opportunity to students whose
orientation towards university is more problematic than their ability
to pay is a matter for priority in all schools where the school
strategic plan assumes that students will remain through year 12
to attend a university
Students whose academic interest is more problematic than their
ability to pay must become an increasing focus in the development
of school stategic planning.
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