BOSTES UPdate Howard Jacobs Inspector, Languages AIS Conference Friday 18 July 2014
BOSTES Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards Merged with Institute of Teachers in January this year What is the Board?
Review of Languages Education The Minister has signed off the Review and its findings/proposals which were endorsed earlier in the year by the Board Consultation report is on the BOSTES website Final report will be posted early August First step will be the formation of the Languages Advisory Panel
Review of Languages Education Growth Valuing languages education Incentives and barriers Coordination and collaboration Promotion Implementation
Review of Languages Education A Languages Policy for NSW A Primary KLA A communications strategy Curriculum development with greater flexibility Greater collaboration What will be mandatory
Australian Curriculum Current syllabuses effective – implementation subject to stakeholder consultation – no time frame New syllabuses will be developed and implemented only after stakeholder consultation Challenges identified through NSW consultation and supported by the Board Development of Board outcomes Need for a framework Use of English Continuity/flexibility
Extension and Background Speaker Prescriptions Survey on BOSTES website to determine new Extension and BS texts for open until mid 2015 Mediocre response to date Film festivals are a great source of potential material
Latin Continuers and Extension Prescriptions Survey to determine new Latin Continuers and Extension has officially closed. Use of dictionaries for Continuers a possibility Historiography to replace Philosophy in Extension
The best 10 units Best source of information is the UAC report on Scaling Scaled mean - the average academic achievement of the course candidature is an important measure as is the spread of marks (standard deviation) In terms of unit inclusion, the range is 40% to over 80% French Ext is 86% and French Beginners 78%. Remember that lots of students who do a language do more than 10 units