The ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies has released a suite of proposed Technologies courses for comment. These are designed to fit with the Australian Curriculum Information Communication Technology k-10. I had a quick look at "Digital Technologies". What surprised me was that this is essentially the VET program slightly reworked. The VET and school systems use different approaches to education, for example VET students are not awarded grades, they are just "Competent" or "not yet competent". Students can provide evidence of prior learning and then skip some, or all, of the courses completely: is this being implemented in schools? Also it is not clear how the teaching of the topic is undertaken.
There is no "program of learning" provided. That is, what is "competent" is defined, but not how the students get those skills, or how they are assessed. There is a feedback form provided, which appears to suggest that each teacher is expected to plan their own program of learning. If so, it seems very wasteful for every teacher in the ACT to be creating their own bespoke course materials, for a standardized curriculum.
In the VET system, students use standardized, mostly online learning materials. There is no good reason for not doing this in schools, for essentially the same curriculum.
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