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| Photo:Brand SA News (blog) |
No longer will our children hit the classrooms armed with just textbooks, pencils and papers.
Instead its about 21st Century learning involving online examinations, contemporary subjects and self-directed assignments.
As the SACE Board’s incoming chief executive, Prof Westwell will oversee a $10.6m program set to transform SA classrooms and prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow.
Changes include a move away from handwritten exams to electronic tests – a move that reflects how students are already learning and working.
English Literacy Studies will be the first to undergo the transition in 2018, with more subjects to follow by 2020.
“We are meeting the 21st Century needs of our students … the idea of writing essays long hand is outdated,” Prof Westwell says.
“But we don’t want to do electronic exams for the sake of it, we want to make sure it works well for us.”
More than 60 subjects have been reviewed to ensure they are relevant and meet the needs of a changing society, meaning Digital Studies will be taught for the first time in 2018...
While the Research Project was partly designed to allow students to gain skills needed at university, Prof Westwell says the SACE structure is for students pursing all pathways.
“Students might choose to do a trade or go straight to work and then go to uni, the pathway into university is not as restrictive as it used to be,” he says.
Prof Westwell is originally from the UK and in 1999, British newspaper The Times named him the ‘Scientist of the New Century’.
The father-of-two moved to SA 10 years ago after visiting in his role at Oxford University’s Institute for the Future of the Mind.
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Source: Brand SA News (blog)
