Educational publishers respond to Grattan report
The Australian Publishers Association (APA) has criticised a recommendation by the Grattan Institute that governments should consider buying curriculum materials overseas ‘as an immediate priority’.
In its report Ending the lesson lottery: How to improve curriculum planning in schools, which is based on a survey of more than 2000 teachers, the Grattan Institute emphasises the value of whole-school curriculum planning and ‘a shared bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all subjects’. The report states that half of the teachers surveyed plan on their own, and the typical teacher spends six hours a week sourcing and creating materials, with only 15% having access to a common bank of high-quality curriculum materials for all their classes.
In its recommendations, the institute says governments ‘as an immediate priority … should consider buying high-quality curriculum materials from overseas, and adapting them for the Australian context’. However, APA CEO Michael Gordon-Smith says that while the APA supports many of the report’s findings, ‘the recommendation that governments should immediately purchase digital classroom materials from overseas makes no sense’.
According to Gordon-Smith, education ministers ‘should focus first on ensuring teachers have access to the excellent resources already available in Australia’.
‘If teachers are not getting access to the resources they need, there’s work to be done in connecting teachers, schools and curriculum bodies to educational publishers. Many Australian teachers and schools already access and set Australian published materials as excellent as any in the world. Through one of the world’s best statutory licensing arrangements, Australian teachers can also copy the materials they want to use without the administrative burden of checking licences and permissions.’
Oxford University Press Australia and New Zealand managing director Arthur Baker said: ‘Australian educational publishing is a highly skilled sector, drawing on the knowledge of leading and experienced teachers. Publishers invest tens of millions of dollars annually to develop world-class, digitally progressive planning, teaching, learning and assessment resources for Australian schools.’
‘Educational publishers would welcome the opportunity to sit down with curriculum planners across the nine different jurisdictions earlier in the process, to ensure the best possible materials are made available to teachers,’ said Gordon-Smith. ‘That’s the model used in high-performing education systems like Singapore and Finland.’
The report also recommends government could make investment building ‘off materials already made or under development in several states, such as Queensland, South Australia, NSW, and Victoria, and through Ochre Education, provided these meet robust criteria for quality’.
Category: Local news
