A monograph (No. 33) completed for the Australian Council of Educational Research in 1989.

Margaret Batten confronted many of the issues that until that time were seen as peripheral (if not completely ignored) in the general educational debate. Central to the research was the question, "just how relevant are the senior years of schooling? Batten questioned the very raison-detre of Postcompulsory schooling in Victoria and created a benchmark study that in my view is unsurpassed in its simplicity, detail and far-reaching implications.

Batten, in both her overview of Postcompuslory schooling and in her detailed research, challenges the "nature and scope of the curriculum and its appropriateness for an ever expanding and increasingly diverse Year 12 population".

Batten recalls the 1984 Ministerial review of Postcompulsory Schooling in Victoria which stated:

"There is a progressive narrowing of the purposes of secondary schooling across Years 10, 11 and 12 until at Year 12 tertiary selection becomes, by default and practice, its overwhelming purpose".

In further research that Batten cites, (Gray,Davis and Poole, 1984) she confirms the earlier findings of her study:

"There is overwhelming evidence in the current literature that the majority of students surveyed, across the nation, are discontented with the school curriculum. They see it as not having relevance to 'education for life'. It is seen as basically academically orientated, as very often uninteresting, as not providing a good educational foundation and as not placing emphasis on the development of the 'whole person'.

In her conclusion, Batten also cites the 1987 'Skills for Australia' report authored by the then Minister Dawkins. This report went outlined that;

"..we need to examine new ways to impart the less measurable skills on which future prosperity depends, life-time learning, enterprise and initiative, pursuit of excellence, communication skills, teamwork and responsibility.

Batten states that year research indicates that there are considerable lessons to be learned for the future of Postcompulsory schooling in Victoria and for that matter the rest of Australia. Batten asserts that the STC course demonstrated the enormous value to both student and teacher of flexible and open assessment policies, the importance of the learning process as much as the content and structure and the need to legitimize affective learning as well as cognitive learning in the school.

In essence, student participation and cooperative learning, flexible assessment and the general preparation of the individual for adulthood are the driving forces in the success of STC.

It will be interesting to peer back in time from 1999 and 2009 to see just how much of this simple lesson we have remembered.

 

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