Autumn 2006

The big picture - in education

Progress towards a national certificate: the credit matrix

Diversity within upper secondary education places great demands on senior secondary certificates. These certificates, already different from each other, are constantly changing. Jack Keating reports on the credit matrix as developed by the Victorian Qualifications Authority and suggests how this could be used to provide national recognition and to enable articulation between the certificates.

Over the past 20 years, retention rates to Year 12 and have senior secondary introduced a number of innovations certificates in Australia to achieve them. All certificates have have been subject to new and been broadened to include different increasing demands. Over this time, areas and forms of learning, all state and territory governments including vocational education have adopted policies of increased and training (VET), and the certificates have been restructured to accommodate students with different levels and styles of learning.

Tensions exist between the certificates and the complex demands placed upon them. They are those between:

• specific and minimal standards of learning and the need to recognise the learning of the wider range of students who now stay on to Year 12
• the need to differentiate between students for selection purposes and the objective of encouraging more students to complete Year 12 by recognising all learning achievements
• the centrality of key areas and forms of learning (academic and conceptual knowledge) and the value of different forms and locations of learning (applied and contextualised learning)
• differences in the pace and styles of student learning.

The pressures upon the certificates have led to two notable features. Firstly, the certificates are constantly changing. All states and territories have conducted major reviews of their senior secondary certificates over the past decade. Secondly, the certificates remain remarkably different. Apart from the fact that they all cover Years 11 and 12, they are different in their structures, rules for completion, their means of incorporating and recognising VET curriculum, and their assessment and grading methods. Furthermore, they have become more different over the past 20 years as they have broadened from the traditional academic and examinations based Year 12 certificates. Even in VET in schools (VETIS), where a national currency of competency standards and qualifications has been established, programs across the eight systems are quite different.

These features of dynamism and difference raise the problem of articulation between, and even within, certificates across the country. The issue of comparing the results from certificates with differences in content and assessment systems is long standing and ongoing. There is also the question of how to compare results within certificates that now accommodate broad levels and types of learning. For example, the WACE innovations are an attempt to achieve such comparability within a certificate that allows wide levels and types of learning.

The problem with the extraordinary array of frameworks and agreements created in order to address the problems of articulation is that none of them does the job. None of them (apart from the NSF) deals in the basic currency of qualifications—learning (or knowledge and skills). Typically, learning has three elements: the areas or domains of learning, the level of complexity of learning, and the volume of learning.

Given the dynamism of and differences between certificates, it is not surprising that the Australian Government has proposed the establishment of an Australian Certificate of Education (ACE). It has argued that student mobility across Australia and the growing internationalisation of qualifications and labour require greater consistency in areas of learning, standards and quality assurance within senior secondary certification.

However, the diverse features of the certificates are expressions of the diverse demands upon the certificates. These demands are at least partially irreconcilable. It must be assumed that states and territories will continue to search for innovative ways to best meet and balance these demands, given that they have statutory responsibility for education and training within Australia’s federal system. The certificates are essentially compromises that invite ongoing adjustments and innovations.

An ACE would also have to reflect such compromises, but it has the added danger that it may stifle innovations. It could lead towards a certificate that limits the range, style and context of learning. Most likely, it would favour the traditional, academic and abstract at the expense of the applied or work related.

There is an alternative approach to national recognition and portability for senior secondary education; this would require agreement between states and territories on a broad enabling framework. The framework would need to address the learning—its domains, levels and quantity—in order to achieve comparability. More rules, guidelines and procedures would only add to the existing array. What is needed is an organising framework that provides a template for comparability and recognition within which innovation and responsiveness can flourish. Such an organising framework needs to be based on the concept of a single currency for qualifications.

Arguments about mobility of students and of labour go beyond the senior secondary certificates. They raise the need to recognise wider forms of learning (as the new Queensland certificate does) and to allow for progression routes within education and training by linking qualifications. The existing frameworks and agreements, including the AQF, don’t do this because none of them deals with the currency of learning.

Credit frameworks have been developed in other countries as a means of achieving wider articulation between qualifications, formal and informal. They function by comparing learning within qualifications at the unit level. The Victorian Qualifications Authority (VQA) has used some of these overseas initiatives to inform the development of a ‘credit matrix’. The matrix is based upon the currency of learning. It has three domains of knowledge and skills, eight levels, and proposes means of estimating the volume of learning.

The credit matrix development is currently confined to Victoria where it is available as a tool for course developers. Its full utilisation would require some reconciliation or alignment between it and the AQF. However, there is an opportunity, and arguably a need, to use it—or a revised version of it—at the national level across all senior secondary certificates.

The matrix can be used as a tool to identify learning across the domains and levels, and thus, together with estimates of volume, would provide a much sounder and more reliable means of achieving equivalence. Some authorities might use the credit matrix as a means of reconciling the demands for minimum standards, the recognition of different levels of learning, and the identification and alignment of key areas of learning.

The approach would be to extend the AQF definition of a senior secondary certificate to include a credit profile as the organising framework. This could also then include specific requirements, for example, for literacy and numeracy as mandatory credits required.

If all systems agreed to use a credit matrix as a tool to achieve— or advance towards—the key sets of objectives that have been identified for the ACE, it would then be possible to make real advances towards a national certificate while at the same time preserving the capacity for diversity and innovation.

For more information, visit www.vqa.vic.gov.au

Jack Keating is professorial fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au