We hear confused messages about OBE, but this was in The National today 29 Jan. 2014.

OKAY, schools will continue to use the Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) system until the Education Department completes rewriting the new curriculum. Too much talk by the bureaucrats at the top without proper consultation.
***
WHEN the government made the decision to remove OBE it did not consider that this will take some time. We are told the process to have the OBE curriculum completely removed from schools will take up to three years. We hope allowance is given for the teacher training programme.
***
STUDENTS who graduated in 2012 and 2013 were the first and second lot of students to be certified under the OBE system. Students will continue to learn and graduate under this system until this ship is turned around completely. All examinations will still be conducted in OBE.

Robin thanks for your contributions.

Barbara, thanks for the compliments and for sharing those bits of Scottish too.

There's a word in the Adzera language of the Markham valley written as /waba ani/" pronounced phonemically as spelt. Literally it is coined from "waba" [w-]meaning 'you' [-aba] meaning 'come' + [ani] meaning 'here', so it's literary "you come here" or simply 'come". It's almost like two separate words combining to give one separately new word like the Topisin combinations for 'bring'. That's 'get' + 'come' to mean 'bring' ([kisim] + [kam] = 'bring').

There's also another word /waba-ani/ pronounced the same. But its meaning can not be found in English, or even Tokpisin because it represents a unique concept to a most significant way of life for Adzera speakers. New generation speakers refer to it as 'wisdom', others 'an art' while others an 'ideology' or a 'system' etc. In fact it is a mix of all of these - summarised as 'an institutional ideology backed by a system of social norms, values and their resulting practices of loving, caring, and sharing.

One day if the Adzera language is being killed off - the new generations then might still say 'waba ani' but there is doubt whether they will know or practise the system in the most uniqueness of that concept. In fact the whole body of knowledge and practice behind that concept will have all died too with Adzera.

The implication is that instead of the new generation population having broader and enriched knowledge from two languages - they become reduced to that from only the one new source. What a blow that will be to the substance of original identity.

And it is common sense that not every concept and system is good, everywhere, so we can separate and let die the bad, but have the good ones such the 'waba-ani' example cultured and replicate through the education system together with the introduced ones.

The decision is right here in our hands: the NDoE is making it for us for 2014.

Good on you Steve, for what you are trying to do i.e. teach children their native languages as well as English. There are many schools in Australia for Australian Aboriginal children where their traditional tribal languages are used to start them off in school.

Later most lessons will be taught in English but they are still able to use their tribal languages, especially in their homes where they interact with the older people of their tribe.

But the ones I met in Sydney don't seem to use Pidgin English as much as you do in PNG. I tried talking to them in Pidgin but I could see they preferred to speak in English to me but in their tribal languages at home.

I can see that educated PNG people from different parts of PNG speak to each other in some missmash of Pidgin and English. I feel it would be better if they made a bit more effort to speak in English more often.

But hopefully many of the hundreds of languages of PNG will be preserved and used within the family and tribal groups.

Sori Keith, we got off the topic but I'm sure you can see that this is another important topic that needs to be discussed. I still enjoy using a bit of Scottish when with people from Scotland - "Lang may yer lum reek."

I want my kids to know and master English well. We all want that for our children, and of course we are talking about the best of modern education here for PNG. So I am also mindful with what you are saying about the minefields of philosophies out there, Barbara.

But what is the key to master English, or French, or Chinese or any second language? I had given my answer to that already - the key is the first languages.

Well, the NDoE was onto it but it didn't know how to do it and failed the country miserably. While there may be other standard ways for learning English, or Japanese etc, I am advocating a much better way to begin with. And I mean much better.

Imagine on the first day of class for a tokples elementary grade 2 class, with students who had never been exposed to English before, and that on that first day of class, the whole hundred percent of students were being able to speak, read, write and understand English on the spot. Is this possible?

Give that class a whole year of similar education and not only can they speak, read and understand grade 5 and 6 reading books but can also competently perform basic mathematics, sciences and the social sciences before going to primary grade 3 in the following year.

Imagine this school also to be remotely isolated somewhere in the mountains of New Guinea? Wouldn't such learning outcomes be great?

Well yes that would be awesome - but do you think such achievement is possible for first language elementary schools remotely located, and for that matter for schools anywhere else?

If your answer is no, then it's because you did not know there is already such a way implemented in almost a hundred government schools in three districts in PNG through voluntary partnership work. The first lot are now doing grade 6. There's also this minefield that's untapped.

Firstly, as a realist, I totally agree with Barbara on 'just getting on with teaching.' I had always found that useful for the last 8 years as a volunteer community worker.

But we need to harness all these practices systematically in order to keep tract on consistency for both quality and quantity of our products as a country. Few people do consistent free work for a living.

But whatever the approach, I believe the key for outright success for PNG's education both nationally & internationally can only be developed within this country rather than outside of it.

On the matter of consistency a way is now being carved out behind closed doors at Waigani by NDoE.

Although there is no courtesy for effective public awareness - again just as the OBE reform once was, we trust that the new policy will successfully include all relevant aspects necessary for quality and relevant education as we are discussing now once it becomes fully revealed, and/or once implemented.

Secondly for me, I still believe that if Papua New Guineans are smart enough to cooperate and take stock for improvement over the impasse, which I think they are, and as I am hoping will soon be reflected in the coming policy, a balance can be compromised for the best passage between maximum and quality modern education, with maximum relevance for PNG ways without all the problems of mismatches we fear presently.

And thirdly, I don't believe totally on isolated 'experts from the skies' providing straight forward adoption packages from the blues for PNG.

There is no such thing today as one system being more modern than the other. Every system is modern. The task for PNG is to agree on which to use and make it suitable to serve our country best for everybody as per the constitution and the PNG-V2050, apart from the options of private schools.

Finally, if the coming NDoE system will be another blundering experiment,I don't mind continuing doing my own thing too.

I'd been doing it for the last 8 years while the country was going through the impasse, I have something to show for success in the lives of individuals who have beaten the OBE, with the acquisition of literacy, and English at a hundred percent from tokples elementary schools; so I am not talking out of context nor am I describing imaginations.

Now in PNG, with the inclusion of an English-only Standards-based system,or whatever base it might soon change into again, I believe the key to outright national & universal success will always be in the 854 first languages.

If Gail's report is correct, and OBE is to be replaced by "Standards," then we have reason to expect more of the same (chaos) in the prospective future.

Teachers who are hungering for improvement need now to look beyond their PNG borders to see the root from which all the straggly branches of "crazication" are growing.

The "Grand Dame" of Ed reform gives relevance to our suspicions about Standards in the recent critique following.

Common Core Won't Make Kids Smarter
BY PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY, CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
July 16, 2013|11:53 am

The new education standards called Common Core won't make U.S. kids any smarter. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute studied them and concluded that they are inferior to existing standards in 12 states, superior in only 16 states and the standards of 22 states are too close to call. It would be better if states used their own revised and improved version of standards already successfully piloted in 12 states.

The overall Common Core strategy is to raise the scores of average students by a point or two but do nothing to motivate or help the smarter kids or the dumber kids. CC's goal is to achieve a result like Lake Wobegon, the fictional Minnesota town where "all kids are above average."

Professor Sandra Stotsky, a member of the CC validation committee, refused to approve the standards finally published and explained: "Common Core has carefully disguised its road to equally low outcomes for all demographic groups, and many state boards of education may quickly follow up their unexamined adoption of Common Core's K-12 standards ... by lowering their high school graduation requirements in the name of alignment."

CC advocates continue to say that CC standards are not a curriculum but are merely standards. But it's clear that the curriculum must be aligned with the CC tests so teachers will be compelled to teach to the test.

A report by the UCLA-based National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing concluded that "educators will align curriculum and teaching to what is tested, and what is not assessed largely will be ignored."

Bill Gates, the largest individual financial contributor to Common Core, told the National Conference of State Legislators, "We'll know we've succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards."

The CC English standards replace about half of the readings in literature classics with "informational" materials, which CC advocates say are supposed to promote analytical thinking by students. In a report released by the Pioneer Institute, Stotsky gave an example of her grandson's experience.

The students were assigned to read selections on the fate of the Taino Indians and from a diary supposedly written by Christopher Columbus' cabin boy, and then were told to write to a state official opining on whether Columbus should be honored by a state holiday. Every student's letter said Columbus should not be so honored.

That's how "informational" reading morphs into liberal propaganda.

Common Core gives leftist educators a backdoor for bringing leftwing activism into the classroom. NPR reported that one veteran teacher, Melinda Bundy, replaced her popular unit about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with one about President John F. Kennedy and the 1960s because, she said, she "adored JFK."

Comic books and graphic novels were formerly considered useful primarily for underachieving students and poor readers as a means to get them interested in books. But now Common Core is bringing picture books into the mainstream of education.
At a National Council of Teachers of English conference, the teachers of a senior Advanced Placement honors course presented an argument against having students read "Beowulf" and substituting a comic book based on "Beowulf." No doubt parents will be told that CC includes classic literature such as "Beowulf."

The outgoing president of the Missouri branch of the NEA said CC will "prepare our kids for a global community, a global society. These are going to exactly take us there."

The new science standards, called "Next Generation Science Standards," were examined by nine scientists and mathematicians for content, rigor and clarity, after which the Fordham Institute gave them a grade of "C." They criticized the "ceiling on the content and skills that will be measured at each grade," the excluding of content that more advanced students can learn, the failure "to include essential math content that is critical to science learning" in physics and chemistry, and the "confusing" wording of the standards.

Proponents of evolution and manmade climate change are ecstatic about the new Common Core science standards. Education Week reports: "The standards make clear that evolution is fundamental to understanding the life sciences."

Common Core does not prepare students to major in the STEM subjects at a university. CC prepares students only to enroll in courses at two-year community colleges.

Thanks Barbara, I read something about you teaching in PNG. I am teaching in the school in which you taught in 1971 or so, it is a secondary school l now.

The problem with OBE is the students cannot read and write in English. Oh, they can, but it cannot get them to discover, discuss, analyse, create or critically think of logical approach to any task given, 1/10 maybe.

The rest need to be taught. This is happening in grade 12 so just imagine.

Oh, by the way, someone mentioned that the scrapped OBE will be replaced by a curriculum called Standards, not sure what it is.

She went for the grade 12 exam marking and came back with this information. Getting weirder.

Thank you Barbra and Robin. Do understand, we can not be against what is deemed progressive for man-kind as a whole, as in the points you both are alluding to. I believe you are reading me incorrectly.

I do not wish to think that I am advocating against global sustainability and standardization of methods etc for the good of this world. I am all for cooperation for the universal good of mankind. Here is what you misunderstood:- what I was, and am still suggesting now is that I think I can see there are better ways to advance universal goals through contributions of specific actions, resources and innovations as we are already doing of international goals such as the UN MDG's etc in PNG - not only specific to the country's constitution at large, but specific all the way down to the district and languages and different cultures in practice. Practically processing abstract universal goals in a sustainable and relevant way locally.

For instance - what if the key to better acquire a new universal language is the known first language: - the enabling of perfection in the acquisition of new second languages, as well as the knowledge & skills that come with them so effectively and efficiently in such a way as never been before or now for English, example? Wouldn't such a way be an asset for multiculturalism, sustainability, standardization universalisation etc etc in the world we are jointly advocating here, or is it that small countries like PNG will no longer contribute but just follow the "experts"? What is the PNG V2050 for? - isn't that how universal goals are achieved locally, or are you suggesting we skip that?

Well said, Steve. But I feel you are getting onto a different topic. You need to write something on this topic as a separate article for Keith.

I was talking recently with some people with an Australian Aboriginal family history amd they were telling me how important it was for them to try to keep their own language alive and use it in the homes. But, living in the present Australian society they were also very fluent in English.

I remember years ago, when I visited Norway, I heard that a number of local languanges were spoken but English was also very important and many could speak it.

Sydney is now being Asianised and many Chinese and other Asians are buying up the houses. My old primary school at Eastwood is full of Koreans and their web site shows them performing Korean dances.

In some primary schools they have started teaching every subject in an Asian language one day and in English the next. OK if the teachers and students are bi-lingual.

The world is becoming a smaller place and our cultures are becoming blended. Fortunately for English speakers the English language is spoken my many people throughout the world.

I know it’s hard to predict what might be the thinking of the education department in PNG in relation to ditching OBE the old for OBE the new.

As the article shows, the post for that new initiative appeared in January and yet competent teachers like Gail are still uninformed as to the game plan for next year.

What is being planned?

I think one clue to that may be found in the recent report on the visit by Kerevat staff to schools in Indonesia.

There, among other things, it was discussed concerning the need to implement changes to bring curricula up-to-speed with International standards.

As we have observed in the old failed OBE system, it too was all about notions of facilitating learning process toward achieving results.

As one looked closely at the results in PNG let alone other nations, it could be seen that chaos reigned. And for all the reasons so comprehensively put during the initial debate fostered by Corney.

The new kid on the block in the USA is Common Core Curriculum. It also bears the hallmarks of mediocrity and foolhardiness as did its predecessor.

As the old dictum stated: All roads lead to Rome, so here have we another statement of rationale designed to foster a Globalist Communitarian paradigm of education.

I think the all too silent gurus in Waigani are contemplating ways of adopting a lookalike system for PNG.

Such a system would undoubtedly meet the aspirations of PNG’s UN inspired Millennium Development Goals.. What do you think?

Here’s a challenging perspective by Yong Zhao, presidential chair and associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon’s College of Education
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/08/five-key-questions-about-the-common-core-standards/
___________

If you are reading this, you know the world didn’t end in 2012. But the world of American education may end in 2014, when the Common Core is scheduled to march into thousands of schools in the United States and end a “chaotic, fragmented, unequal, obsolete, and failing” system that has accompanied the rise of a nation with the largest economy, most scientific discoveries and technological inventions, best universities, and largest collection of Nobel laureates in the world today.

In place will be a new world of education where all American children are exposed to the same content, delivered by highly standardized teachers, watched over by their equally standardized principals, and monitored by governments armed with sophisticated data tools.

This is the last year to ensure that happens: parents and school boards have to be convinced to remove any lasting resistance; teachers have to be fully trained so they can be turned on automatically when 2014 arrives; school leaders have to be readied so they can identify and incentivize good Common Core practices and exterminate bad ones; and data systems have to be developed so they can be deployed anytime.

As American schools pour their resources into products, programs, and services to be Common Core ready in 2013, please keep in mind that the Common Core is a bet on the future of our children.

While I have written about the Common Core many times before (e.g., Common Core vs Common Sense, Common Core National Curriculum Standards).I wanted to ask all of us to ask again if the new world of education ushered in by the Common Core will be better than the old one scheduled to end in a year.

The Bet

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.

The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy. Common Core Mission Statement

Questioning the Bet

The Common Core is placing this bet on behalf of millions of children. But how good is it? I cannot answer the question with as much certainty as the Common Core proponents, but I invite them and you to consider the following questions.

1. What makes one globally competitive?

With only a few exceptions (e.g., North Korea), geographical distance and political boundaries no longer divide the world in terms of economic activities. Virtually all economies are globally interconnected and interdependent. Employment opportunities are thus no longer isolated to specific locations. Jobs can be outsourced to distant places physically or performed by individuals remotely.

In a world where jobs can be and have been moved around globally, anyone could potentially go after any job he or she desires. Whether she can be employed depends largely on two factors: qualifications and price. All things being equal, those who ask for a lower price for the same qualifications will get the job.

With over seven billion people living on Earth today, there is plenty of competition. But due to the vast economic disparities in the world, there exists tremendous differences in labor cost.

The hourly compensation costs in manufacturing in 2010 varied from $1.90 in the Philippines to $57.53 in Norway, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2011 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011).

If a Norwegian were doing exactly the same job as a Filipino, it is very probable that his job would be gone soon. For the Norwegian to keep his job, he’d better be doing something that the Filipino is unable to do.

If all children are asked to master the same knowledge and skills, those whose time costs less will be much more competitive than those with higher costs.

There are many poor and hungry people in the developing world willing to work for a fraction of what workers in developed countries need.

Thus for those in developed countries such as the United States to be globally competitive, they must offer something qualitatively different, that is, something that cannot be obtained at a lower cost in developing countries.

And that something is certainly not great test scores in a few subjects or the so-called basic skills, because those can be achieved in the developing countries.

Yet the Common Core claims to be benchmarked with internationally high-performing countries, i.e., countries with high scores.

2. Can you be ready for careers that do not exist yet?

Old jobs are being replaced by new ones rapidly as old industries disappear due to technological changes and existing jobs move around the globe.

For example, existing firms in the U.S. lost on average over one million jobs annually in the period from 1977 to 2005, according to a report of the Kauffman Foundation, while an average of three million jobs were created annually by new firms (Kane, 2010).

As a result, there is no sure way to predict what jobs our children will have to take in the future. As the head of PISA, Andrea Schleicher, recently said: “Schools have to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, technologies that have not yet been invented and problems that we don’t know will arise” (Schleicher, 2010).

If one does not know what careers are there in the future, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prescribe the knowledge and skills that will make today’s students ready for them.

3. Are the Common Core Standards relevant?

Jobs that require routine procedure skills and knowledge are increasingly automated or sent to places where such skills and knowledge are abundant with lower cost.

As a result, as best selling author Daniel Pink observed, traditionally neglected talents, which he refers to as Right-brained directed skills, including design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning, will become more valuable (Pink, 2006).

Economist Richard Florida noticed the increasing importance of creativity in the modern economy ten years ago in his best seller The Rise of the Creative Class (Florida, 2012).

And economist Philip Auerswald convincingly proves the case for the need of entrepreneurs to bring the coming prosperity in his 2012 book (Auerswald, 2012).

These are just antagonistic to the core subjects prescribed by the Common Core and tested by international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, which are mostly left-brained cognitive skills.

4. Does Common Core support global competence?

The world our children will live in is global, not local as before.

Given the interconnectedness and interdependence of economies, the rise of global challenges such as climate change, and the ease of movement across national borders, one’s birthplace no longer determines his or her future living space or whom he or she may be working for or with.

Thus to be ready to live in this global world requires the knowledge and abilities to interact with people who are not born and raised in the same local community.

But the Common Core does not include an element to prepare the future generations to live in this globalized world and interact with people from different cultures.

5. What opportunities may we be missing?

Globalization and technological changes, while presenting tremendous challenges, bring vast opportunities. Globalization, for example, greatly expands the pool of potential customers for products and services.

Niche talents that used to only be of interest to a small fraction of people may not be of much value locally, because the total population of a given community is small.

In the globalized world, the potential customers could number seven billion. Even a small fraction of the seven billion can be significant, and talents that may be of little value in a given location can be very valuable in another country.

Globalization and technology today enable products and services to reach almost any corner of the world.

But the Common Core, by forcing children to master the same curriculum, essentially discriminates against talents that are not consistent with their prescribed knowledge and skills.

Students who are otherwise talented but do not do well in these chosen subjects are often sent to spend more time on the core subjects, retained for another grade, and deprived of the opportunity to develop their talents in other ways.

In summary, the efforts to develop common curricula nationally and internationally are simply working to perfect an outdated paradigm.

The outcomes are precisely the opposite of the talents we need for the new era.

A well organized, tightly controlled, and well-executed education system can transmit the prescribed content much more effectively than one that is less organized, loosely monitored, and less unified.

In the meantime, the latter allows for exceptions with more room for individual exploration and experimentation.

The question is what matters in the future: Do we want individuals who are good at taking tests, or individuals who are creative and entrepreneurial?

I believe the answer is the latter.

*Adapted from my latest book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (Corwin, 2012)

"We have to provide full in-service kits that can provide cost-effective teacher training or in-service packages for all teachers."

Therein lies a large part of the reason for the failure of OBE in PNG. The AusAID-funded geniuses that led the design of the OBE curriculum also prepared an inservice proposal that would have cost approximately 75% of the entire national education budget.

This was never going to happen.

Another large contribution to a guaranteed lack of success was the failure by the national government, with the support of donors, to flood the schools with the necessary teaching and learning materials.

Good teachers have got on with the job of teaching what needs to be taught, using curriculum documents as guides, whatever resource materials they have and the best methodologies they know.

While teacher absenteeism can be a problem, the main surprise to me was the huge number of underpaid (or unpaid*) teachers all over the country who were to be found in their decrepit classrooms, one book per four or five children and a few sticks of chalk, still trying their best to educate the next generation of Papua New Guineans.

The reality of life for most teachers in PNG is that they are posted and forgotten.

*I once came across an elementary teacher who hadn't been paid for three years surviving on the charity of his community. And he was still in the classroom teaching!

The post on Outcome-Based Education was from January, but can someone confirm what exactly on OBE will the government remove?

Is it education reform or just leaving the curriculum and structure as it is?

I keep asking this question and no one can give me the answer. This whole reform thing is a terrible joke.

I am the implementer of the curriculum and this is not fair. The authorities tell teachers to do this /that or else. We are working, my goodness.

They always pick on teachers not teaching but they never try to find out why. I get so angry some time when I see negative news about teachers.

Try to imagine some one preparing their lessons by lantern light or writing this many reports until 4am. Oops! Thanks for letting me pour my guts out.