PLATO's 2008 New Year's Resolutions

We resolve to continue the fight against OBE and especially against Levelling. All reference to levels and other invalid assessment schemes must be removed from every curriculum document in Western Australia.

We resolve to see the WA Curriculum Framework, a document that has both outlived its usefulness and has been used to justify so many of the ills of WA education, removed from legislation.

We urge the Curriculum Council, and especially its replacement organisation, to reduce the clutter and overlap amongst Overviews, Outcome Statements, Elaborated Guides, Progress Maps, Scope and Sequence Statements. These must be replaced by straightforward syllabus documents written in plain English, not in edubabble and gobbledegook.

We support the accreditation of secondary teachers by WACOT to be learning area specific, and will lobby our elected members to put this policy into effect. It is untenable to force teachers, without the necessary training and expertise, to teach outside their areas of experience and competence, especially at TEE level.

We urge the Federal Government to create a National teacher registration body, so that teachers moving interstate do not incur a loss of benefits or service recognition, or an expensive re-registration with another jurisdiction's accreditation procedures.

Our overriding concern will be for our students and their parents; our stance on educational issues will be driven solely by this and never for personal promotion or benefit. We refuse to pander to the political aspirations of those higher in the system, or to endorse flawed and invalid teaching and assessment processes.

We resolve to maintain the PLATO website and its discussion forum as a source of education news, information, research findings, discussion and debate, open to all educators, parents and students. We will continue to post and link education news stories, as well as relevant documents from education bodies at the State and National level, and urge the adoption of a fair and equitable enterprise bargaining agreement for WA's teachers.

We did a pretty good job meeting our 2007 New Year's Resolutions.