Senior School Update

Our TCE and Year 12 IB Diploma students have started Term 3 in the Senior School with a written examination experience. It is often this annual ritual that prompts students, parents - and even occasionally teachers - to reflect on the validity of exams as a useful learning and assessment experience. Students at The Friends' School have been sitting exams since its inception 137 years ago. The reality is that, as shown in the images below, exams do not look too dissimilar from what they did back in 1887.

There is an argument that this approach is anachronistic in the modern era, especially with advances in technology in the information age. No future employer is likely to ask a person to sit in a room for up to three hours and write from memory everything they know about a topic. Instead, perhaps we should be teaching students how to ask better questions and enhanced inquiry techniques in the Google and AI era? This idea has merit but it is also true to say that a large part of student assessment at university will be under exam conditions for which we need to adequately prepare students.

In the Senior School, we believe students learn best in being comfortable in this environment and having confidence that they will be respected for taking risks in learning. It is also worth considering the other skills students practise and learn in preparing for and undertaking exams, which are timeless. These include:

goal setting
time management
working under pressure
discipline and organisation
memory recall
collaboration and teamwork with fellow students when revising
the shared experience and sense of belonging to a larger community
being empowered, as Quakers say, to "face the mysteries of life with trust"
reflecting on performances
and that sense of relief and achievement after the final exam

Teachers would label these skills ‘General Capabilities’, which are transferable to many other aspects of life both now and into the future. Of course, exams are just one type of summative assessment and form part of a variety of strategies used by teachers to evaluate learning. Our assessment philosophy is based on reliability, equity and support and it is exams that allow teachers to have confidence that these can be addressed. Not only this, exams also provide excellent data and feedback for subject teachers to look at what areas might need further attention and to adjust the learning sequence accordingly in the lead-up to the November exam session.

There is no question that evidence shows exams can enhance your learning. This stems from not only the two or three hours students spend writing responses in the exam room itself but also the preparation in the lead-up to it and the reflection on their performance after the exam. Year 10 students will take part in an exam experience in Term 4 to hone their skills prior to their TCE or IB Diploma exam experiences next year.

Year 9 students recently undertook a week of Indigenous immersion activities as part of the revamped Year 9 program. Taking a break from timetabled classes, the opportunity allowed students to learn more about Tasmanian Aboriginal history, knowledge and culture.

We hope that learning about First Nations Peoples will promote reconciliation, social cohesion and a deeper appreciation of the country's diverse cultural heritage. Following a traditional Welcome to Country experience, workshops included bushtucker, weaving, dance, Indigenous storytelling and games, and completing the Gumnuts to Buttons course. Students were invited to reflect on their learnings in the week through Quaker queries:

What might I do differently to build better relationships with the First Nations Peoples of Australia?
What might I do differently to have and show respect for the First Nations Peoples of Australia?
What might I do differently to bear witness to the ongoing conditions of First Nations Peoples’ health, education, land rights and other areas related to self-determination?

Adam Chambers - Head of Senior School (Years 9 to 12)