I listened to your video.

A few points of feedback. You have not mentioned that the Chemistry and Physics syllabi are now context-based. The most recent version only requires one context per year, but originally, it was fully context based. I have been involved in teaching Senior Chemistry for many years, and have been teaching the fully context based course since 2005. I have found a remarkable increase in the overall recall of students from the beginning to the end of the course. Under the previous unitised system, students would study for one test, forget it, and study for the next test. It became very difficult to teach year 12 as they had forgotten everything they ever knew about bonding or stoichiometry and any other important concept.

With this syllabus, concepts can be introduced in a context, developed in a later context and finally and very fully developed even later in the course. Because students now see Chemistry as an important real-world thing, and because you can remind them – remember we learnt about why molecules can be polar when we studied water, they can quickly relate the concept in a huge number of other situations, have a better memory of everything, and a greater understanding and appreciation of the subject.

I was surprised to see you video describing EEIs and ERTs as 5000 to 6000 word documents. While students generally keep a daily journal/notebook of handwritten notes/reflections and possibly results (many record results straight into spread sheets these days for quick manipulations), the analysis discussion and conclusion of an EEI has a required word limit set by the QSA. For Year 11 it must be 800 to 1000 words. For Year 12, this increases to 1000 to 1500 words. This does not include any introduction, background theory, hypothesis. However, most students would complete this part fairly early in the piece. Data should be analysed as they go along, and any teacher following acceptable practice would be monitoring and encouraging this to happen. Even with initial planning, students should plan it out well enough first, so that the teacher can direct them to have another think before they start (not tell them the answer, but just say – go back and plan more carefully) If this is done by the teacher, I do not think you would see students doing weeks of experimenting and ending up with no good data and a failure. So, if students are doing weighty tomes, they are outside the QSA guidelines. I have seen schools who have students type up everything that would have originally been in a journal, but this sort of time-wasting exercise is an unnecessary demand made by those schools. It is not the fault of the QSA.

I did talk to a non-Science teacher from a large private school in another city. He was telling me of the stress put on students who were submitting reports for EEIs that were a minimum of 30 pages in length. He was astounded, and asked me the requirements. I was astounded too, but told him that the demands being made on those students was far far in excess of the requirements of the syllabus. He did intend to look in the syllabus document and work with the teachers back at school. Part of this also means that the teacher has to explicitly teach a concise scientific writing style. Often, when I have worked with science students who are having trouble with word limits, they are either waffling on with flowery or non-economical language that they can be taught how to edit, and learn to more naturally write in such a concise style in the first place. Or, in the case of ERTs, they can end up saying the same thing over and over in different ways, or write about aspects that are not terribly relevant.

While particular schools and teachers may expect or allow their students to be greatly exceeding the quite reasonable word limits which are in line with other senior subjects, then yes there is a problem. The problem is certain schools, not the syllabus, nor the QSA.

I also note your comments about students having to submit up to five assignment type items a couple of days before exams as well. Again, this is something that does not have to happen. It is not the fault of the QSA or the syllabi in various subjects if certain schools do not look at assessment calendars to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen. It can be worked out satisfactorily. eg, a school can ensure that the EEIs for different subjeccts are at different times of the year, so that no student is complting two EEIs around the same time. I would be thinking that if a subject has a major assignment due around exam block time, then that should be it for then. Any other assessment should have been scheduled at other times for that subject. This is a workable model.

No assessment model works for all students though. Despite the time given well in advance of due dates for assignments, ERTs EEIs, there will always be a few students who do leave it until the very end. I have seen super-organised students who have it all under control, and I have seen a few who don’t have this sort of approach. However, these would be the same students who if assessment was mostly exam based would be not doing much all term and cramming the night before.