The lesson lottery, equity, teacher workload and all things in between

The recent article published in The Age, based on findings from a Grattan Institute survey on the connection between teacher workload, lesson planning and equity in education seems to have unleashed a war of words in the educational social media circles. Just like many of you, I have read the article, the original op ed on the institute's website and the hundreds of comments from teachers all around the country. I see and hear the exasperation in their voices asking for a solution for teacher workload as much as I also hear a call for justice and an ask to be treated as professionals.

What I have come to understand from this debate is the bottom line remains the same irrespective of which side of the line you stand on. We agree that the curriculum in its current state is overloaded and ambiguous and it can be interpreted differently everywhere. We all want our students to access the same high-quality instruction, no matter which part of the country or which education system they are. We all want us teachers to be seen as professionals who know how to teach students. We all want the teacher workload to reduce as the current expectations are stifling. We want this incessant teacher bashing to stop. However, will the following solution actually address this all?

Let's unpack each of our questions, the solution offered and what is actually needed. For starters I ask you to read the actual op ed https://grattan.edu.au/news/australian-school-education-is-falling-short/ as not surprisingly some messages have been skewed on their way to mainstream media channels.

1. The current curriculum in its shape and form is overloaded and ambiguous. Example statements shared by both the op ed and The Age article highlight how in its current form, the curriculum is left wide open to interpretation and adds extra pressure on teachers. Does having having set lesson plans that unpack the curriculum the answer? I disagree. We definitely need a curriculum reform (and not the ones bureaucrats do every 2-3 years with no input from actual teachers working on the ground). We need curriculum standards to be sequenced and clearly identify the learning progression in each area. For example, the standard statement 'Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts ....' across 5 years of elementary schooling without an actual explanation of how these texts grow in complexity along the year levels is highly unhelpful. It doesn't tell us that students can delve into multiple forms of narratives or can up level their persuasive texts as discussions and debates or can present information in the form of analytical reports by Year 6. Posting some examples as elaborations doesn't help. No wonder teachers struggle to unpack the jargon heavy curriculum statements. Instead of offering premade lesson plans which will fail to take into account each school's context or the ever changing needs of the world, learning sequences or learning progressions might be more helpful. These will help each school to explore the curriculum as a landscape instead of a checklist and tailor the lessons to suit the needs of their students. Before anyone jumps on me, I know that every state has started looking at these and even offered a few solutions around these in one form or other. However, these are far and few between, are not widely known and often get buried under the other ubiquitous commercial resources.
2. If we want to reduce variance in teaching, address lesson lottery and value equity in education, surely a set of premade lessons is not the way to go. Teachers are professionals not robots who can be asked to simply deliver lessons planned by someone else. Standard lessons are the very antithesis to equity as they will fail to consider individual student needs, teacher needs, and school context needs. What if your students are already well ahead in their knowledge and application of the four operations in Maths? Would you still use the bank of lessons meant for your year level or will you explore the idea of extending them with other operations? What if your students were great at fluency and understanding in Maths but needed more work on problem solving and reasoning? Will you still teach the lessons that have all four proficiencies covered or would you like to focus more on open ended problem solving and articulation of their strategies? If you argue it’s just a bank of lessons that can be customised and modified, well then aren't we going back to the drawing board again where teacher variance will creep in. To me the bigger problem is the claim that teachers find lesson planning most problematic. That is far from true! If you leave a teacher on their own to know the curriculum, interpret it, plan lessons for their class based on student needs, plan assessments and analyse them, of course it will all be overwhelming. The answer doesn't lie in lesson banks but in collaborative planning. I can probably write pages on this, but a successful team planning model where teachers collaborate to discuss student needs, unpack curriculum and plan lessons, plan and analyse assessments together actually helps cut the planning time in half, builds consistency within the team, leads to high quality instruction and improves student outcomes. Collaboration can happen in small as well as large schools. Even teachers who are singularly responsible for a learning area can collaborate with others to plan. This requires support from leadership, support from the system and building teacher excellence by investing in their practice. There are a few initiatives that are working towards these and that is a welcome move.
3. Teachers are professionals. Full stop. I don't think this needs any further explanation but here it goes. Teachers are professionals who have chosen the profession for a reason. Teachers are professionals, not robots programmed to deliver programs written by others who have no knowledge of their context. Teachers have studied and worked hard to reach where they are. Do not question their professionalism. Instead support them to keep building their expertise, offer consistent, high quality professional learning opportunities and pay them for what they are worth as the founding members of the society on whose shoulders all other professions exist.
4. Let teachers be teachers. Teachers of students, teachers of language, numeracy, Science, Humanities, Arts, Sports, Social emotional skills, life skills and the list goes on. Don't expect them to also be financial managers, family counsellors and since Covid hit us let me add doctors, cleaners, traffic regulators to name a few. In no other profession are we expected to take on these many multiple hats and expected to do it all with a smile. Let’s get more support services in our schools and let teachers teach.
5. Stop teacher bashing. Not every problem in our education system is a result of teachers. In fact, very few are. There are many overarching issues our system needs to address for teachers to do their work and impact student outcomes the way everyone wants them to.

These opinions and viewpoints are my own, however they come from a well-researched and experienced perspective. Providing a general band aid answer to the current issues is not helpful and in ways actually more harming to teacher morale and wellbeing.

Ramya Deepak Kumar

Classroom Teacher, Learning Specialist and Acting Assistant Principal