This is the first version of an article that was later published in the Sydney Morning Herald. While I did pitch this version, I was forced to concede (as my wife gently suggested) that starting a serious article on education policy by retelling a favourite scene from the Simpsons probably isn’t the best idea – no matter how fitting the analogy. But given this is my blog, here’s the original, hyperlinks and all!

There is a famous scene from a 1999 Simpsons episode where Homer attempts to build a D-I-Y BBQ. Within seconds, he has dropped the materials into fast-drying cement and begins frenziedly improvising. After a brief montage, the screen reveals a perfectly assembled BBQ. A satisfied Simpson exclaims, “that’s one fine-looking BBQ”. The scene holds for a beat, then pans out to reveal Homer has been admiring the box art. His BBQ is a mangled, unusable mess of cemented junk.

As an English teacher there are many teaching points I could draw from this scene. It could be a discussion prompt about the difference between expectations and reality, or the consequences of poor preparation. It could also be used to study comic timing or how camera angles can restrict then enlarge the audience’s field of view. But there is one lesson, borrowed from venture capital, I hope the NSW Government takes away, namely, “ideas are easy, execution is everything”.

The NSW Government policy I refer to is the announcement on the 1st of August, which trumpeted, “number one tax on teachers’ time solved”. Under this policy, “NSW teachers will have access to a full suite of high-quality, sequenced curriculum resources to assist with lesson planning” by the start of October.

Firstly, I want to applaud the NSW Government for attempting to address one of the root causes of teacher burnout. I’ve always found lesson planning the single biggest burden on my time as a teacher. While I enjoy the challenge of planning, attempting to plan across multiple year and vastly disparate ability levels simultaneously is simply unsustainable. Furthermore, with all jurisdictions using a national or state-wide curriculum, it makes sense to equitably equip teachers with the tools they need to be effective at scale, rather than expecting them to invent these on the fly.

However, as with Homer’s BBQ, the devil is in the details. Close reading of the NSW Government’s proposal reveals that the proposed resources will be rolled out in under eight weeks, by “qualified external organisations” identified through an opaque tender process. Critically, there is no mention of classroom teachers being able to see, let alone road-test, the resources before they are scaled through the system. The combination of an exceptionally hasty timeline and an absence of actual teachers involved in the process makes me fear the worst.

There is typically a significant ‘reality gap’ between materials provided by Governments or Education Departments and what actually works in the classroom. When resources are created by people who have never taught or are far removed from classroom experience, teachers need to spend hours modifying and adapting the allegedly ‘time saving’ resources. The ‘solution’ ends up adding to the problem.

In 2022, we simply can’t afford for this to be the case. Federal Government modelling reveals that the demand for secondary school teachers is projected to exceed supply by over 4,000 between 2022 and 2025. This compounds the decline in competitiveness of Australian students over the past two decades. Not having enough teachers to run classes has real impact on our future prosperity.

The NSW Government does have the kernel of a solution. Teachers do need equitable access to high quality resources. Access to such resources would ease teaching workloads and help bridge educational divides between schools while keeping teachers in the job. But this process will take time, and it will take real teacher input. As Homer learns, rushing the process can kill any idea – whether a BBQ or an education initiative.

Read both? Which article did you prefer?

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