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Prior to 1967 students completed five years of high school and sat for the School
Leaving Certificate. Our year was among the first group of students to complete
six years of high school and sit a new examination, the Higher School Certificate.
We were dubbed the Wyndham Guinea Pigs.
The Wyndham Report
When we attended Telopea Park High School administration of schools in the ACT was
the responsibility of the NSW Department of Education. In 1953 a committee of ten
members had been established to investigate the school system that culminated after
five years of high school with the Leaving Certificate examination. Chaired by the
Director-General of Education, Dr Harold Wyndham, the Committee reported to the
Minister in 1957. Eight major recommendations were made:
- Transition from primary to secondary school should occur at about age 12 without any special examination.
- The high school should provide a satisfactory education, covering 4 years, for all adolescents usually through a comprehensive high school.
- A core curriculum should apply to all students.
- The first year should be a common core with electives added in later years.
- The election of subjects should occur with teacher guidance.
- At the end of Fourth Year, an external examination based School Certificate should be awarded. This examination would mark the end of secondary education for most.
- No external examinations should be held before Fourth Year.
- An additional course of study lasting two years should be provided leading to a Higher School Certificate.
The scheme was not radical. It was built upon existing structures and well known
ideas. In 1934, a similar committee had recommended that secondary education should
consist of four years of general education, followed by advanced study of one or two
years. No action was taken to implement the recommendations. In 1946 the Board of
Secondary School Studies recommended a similar pattern.
The recommendations were principally administrative. No analysis of the concept of
a comprehensive school, other than that it was non selective, was attempted. The
report did not attempt to analyse the curriculum of such a system, only that it be
based on a core and electives. While the recommendations, now known as the Wyndham
Scheme, were completely mapped out by 1959 the financial cost of adding a year to
schooling held back the inauguration of the scheme until 1962.
Implementation
Not all teachers, academics and parents supported the Wyndham Scheme. The
comprehensive school concept owed much to the egalitarian principles of society,
and to the growth of the white-collar middle class with aspirations for a full
secondary education for their children. The debate was linked to the perceived
lower standards of the comprehensive schools but Wyndham claimed that standards
would be lifted with an extension of the secondary course to six years.
The introduction of the Wyndham Scheme meant that new syllabuses had to be quickly
drawn up and modifications devised as the introduction continued. One of the first
results was the freer choice of subjects after First Form. The Wyndham Scheme
presented complex problems for those in the school in devising a workable timetable.
Instead of staying in the same group for all subjects, classes formed and disbanded
each lesson. There was less flexibility in allocating experienced teachers to the
new Fifth and Sixth Forms.
Reports suggest that it took a lot of effort by teachers to actually launch the
Wyndham Scheme. The initial main difficulty appeared to be that while all teachers
knew the overall plan they had little details of the new courses. Guidance notes and
suggestions had been printed but many only received these the day before classes
commenced. It was particularly difficult for the Science teachers as the new course
was radically different from the previous courses. I recall taking a new subject,
Industrial Arts, and teachers Geoff Sutherland and Don Gamble reading directly from
their subject notes. It was clear that they were learning at the same time we were!
Reaction
There was some degree of dissatisfaction amongst students and parents who found much
of the senior study irrelevant. Courses were oriented towards preparation for
tertiary education and university entrance. Many students who completed the HSC
gained little that was to aid them in their future careers. Better counselling may
have advised such students to leave school after the School Certificate examination
in Fourth Form. Some tertiary education courses were unhappy with the ability of
students in subjects such as English and Mathematics and required that they take
units in these subjects to bring them up to standard.
Progress
The Higher School Certificate of 1967 offered 28 subjects organised into 67
different courses. By 1997 there were 79 subjects organised into 151 courses.
In 1967, 12 languages were examined, compared with the 37 languages on offer in
1996. In 1967 courses were differentiated into categories of difficulty and termed
First Level, Second Level and Third Level. It was the HSC of 1975 that introduced
the differentiation of courses by 'units'. It was also in 1975 that the introduction
of school-designed courses took place. This was the final year of the HSC at Telopea
Park High School as responsibility for education was moving from the NSW Education
Department to the ACT Schools Authority. From the beginning of 1976 the school became
a Year 7-10 high school.
In the years of its existence there have been many changes to the HSC. They have
been implemented to meet the needs of a rapidly growing and diverse candidature.
Among the changes has been the introduction of new subjects; for example, Legal
Studies and Computer Studies were introduced in 1990. Also in 1990 provisions were
made for vocational and technological courses of a high standard and in 1991 Personal
Development, Health and Physical Education was introduced as a Key Learning Area.
Success
A major aim of the Wyndham Scheme was to improve the poor retention rate of students
going on to senior school. In 1967 the retention rate for students staying on for the
further two years of school was approximately 20% with 18,336 students taking the
inaugural examination. By the mid-1990s the rate of retention to Year 12 had risen
to 70% with an estimated 63,000 students undertaking the HSC examinations per year.
From this alone it is clear that the HSC experiment in which the Wyndham Guinea Pigs
took part had been a success.
Jim Gillespie
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