Development of a set of principles to guide a P-12 syllabus framework

Abstract

This paper sets out in brief an approach to improving student outcomes from secondary school, in particular higher graduation rates. Five areas requiring simultaneous attention are outlined that underlie such improvement and some of the main implementation challenges are discussed. Introduction: le problematique: In a 2005 the World Bank reported the central dilemmas that face secondary education around the globe. Secondary schools, the World Bank claimed, are trying at one and the same time to be “terminal and preparatory, compulsory and post-compulsory, uniform and diverse, meritocratic and compensatory, ...serving both individual needs... and societal and labor market needs, ... offsetting disadvantages but also, within the same institution, selecting and screening students..., [and]... offering a common curriculum for all students and a specialized curriculum for some” (p. 14). The report includes an apt and powerful quote from Aristotle’s Politics (p. 76) showing that this diversity is longstanding in roles and expectations, but as completion of secondary education has become the minimum expectation for virtually all students, the contradictions have become more prominent and more difficult to manage. The World Bank report also stressed the extraordinary homogeneity in secondary schooling around the globe, and the equally extraordinary stability in basic areas such as curriculum and school organization. Secondary schools everywhere tend to be organized in similar ways and to have similar curricula. There is a view among education change experts that hard as it is to create lasting change in elementary schools, and that it is much more difficult to do so in secondary schools (Fullan, 2006; Hargreaves and Goodson, 2006). Some of the reasons for this are discussed towards the end of this paper. Public confidence in secondary schools, the sine qua non for the