
By Gavin Grift and Colin Sloper
As teachers, we all want to help our students reach or exceed the educational milestones or standards that will allow them to successfully navigate their school years and prepare for life beyond the school gates.
But in our experience, there’s often very little common interpretation on what the standards detailed in curriculum documents actually represent for specific year levels or age groups. This doesn’t bode well for those whose primary goal is to bring about deep sustainable and meaningful learning for all.
Without a common understanding, standards often come down to the individual interpretation of teachers, who develop and implement the learning program based on their own interpretation of what’s required to be ‘at standard’.
In our daily work in schools and educators, we repeatedly see this lack of clarity. Often, it results in the level of proficiency required to demonstrate a specific standard being unintentionally lowered.