In and through to outcomes – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

An article in the weekend papers grabbed my attention. It’s a debate about falling education standards in schools and featured Alan Tudge, the federal minister for Education.

Debate on the cause comes down to one of inputs and throughputs – the tension between child-centred discovery learning and explicit instruction. It has been around as long as the tension between the phonics and whole language movements in learning to read. (Phonics has a tough gig given it is not spelt phonetically – fonics).

It’s salutary for the VET sector which is in the middle of an experimental frenzy with trials on qualification redesign and pilots for industry input plus a review of the RTO standards, self-assurance to underpin quality and pricing just to name a few.

If we think in outcomes approaches to course definition, VET has long been the leader in the education field in Australia, and often to its detriment. There was a deliberate policy position taken to say that VET is standards based, akin to outcomes. It is deliberate in saying that the input and process doesn’t matter as long as the outcome is assured. It was an approach for bringing more people into recognised learning through a range of pathways.

The problem is VET course design hasn’t lived by this founding philosophy as specification upon specification of assessment and delivery conditions effectively render standards as regulatory input.

The duplicity is evident across the whole supply chain. ASQA’s Users Guide to RTOs says training and assessment is adjusted to the needs of the cohort and the AQFs volume of learning is simply a guide. Yet, the rest of the supply chain without compunction readily inserts input controls and regulation – hours of instruction per week for international students, regulated training durations for apprenticeships and minimum hours of work placement. Joyce proposed hours as quality control, and you bet the inevitable from national prices will be more specification of inputs.

Outcomes as we know them within training packages have severe limitations anyway.

The most egregious extreme is the approach taken to literacy in training packages. Small pieces of literacy need to be demonstrated in the context of a unit’s performance criteria. I have seen some assessment tools that literally requires evidence that the person has read a simple instruction and ticked a box, in Pavlovian fashion. Literacy is called foundational because it is broad in learning and application and a tick in a box is hardly an outcome.

The Pavlovian nature of things is worse when it comes to knowledge. Knowledge in training packages is an afterthought, at best subservient to the performance that must be assessed. It would not line-up with the views of Professor John Sweller of the University of NSW. He says in the weekend report in support of explicit instruction, “the key to thinking critically .. is ..  ‘sufficient knowledge’ in the first place. Teaching critical thinking strategies as opposed to core knowledge is ‘useless’”.

The beauty of good education is that it imparts knowledge which gives power and possibilities. Subjugating it to some artificial behavioural outcome, is limiting.

We need to take heed of the report from Deloitte in June 2019, The Future of Work is Human. Eighty six percent of the jobs created between now and 2030 will be knowledge worker jobs (and two-thirds of jobs will be soft-skill intensive by 2030).

Jenny Donovan, director of the Australian Education Research Organisation – the body created by state and federal ministers to spearhead research, also had comment on throughput – the very nature of teaching and learning:

We are talking here about explicit instruction, the teacher being responsible for the learning of students; teachers revisiting the content to ensure it is learnt and maintained. This approach is supported by cognitive science and our understanding of how the brain learns.

It appears the VET sector is hard at play in the qualification design space again, with little regard to the broader picture. If VET is a standards-based shop then accreditation (training packages) and regulation should be outcomes focused and the trust put in providers to do the rest – knowledge, course design, delivery and assessment.  Bets each way spread across inputs, throughputs and outcomes simply overloads and confuses accountability and ultimately, kills quality.

It’s not too hard to see why VET is in this mess. Ever since the standards approach was implemented and the VET sector opened-up, concern about quality has been a constant policy refrain.

If it is standards, then let it happen. If there are providers which cannot be trusted, deal with them. Figure out the providers that can be trusted and let them get on with the job.