Achievement of Learning Goals in the VPC 2022 -2023

This page assists teachers of Foundation VCAL in 2022 who will be transitioning students into the Victorian Pathways Certificate (VPC) in 2023.

Foundation VCAL has been adapted in each educational setting to cater for local contexts, so highly specific examples of mapping cannot be generalised to be useful to all providers. Additionally, the VPC is an entirely new curriculum, covering similar and extended areas to Foundation VCAL, and with a different approach to assessment.

The VPC has moved to standards-based assessment from the competency-based assessment of Foundation VCAL. Rather than showing competence in a series of specific Learning tasks, students demonstrate their progress toward a larger Learning Goal, which requires them to develop and apply a range of skills and knowledge. The move to standards-based assessment in the VPC allows students and teachers to take a more holistic and flexible approach to the demonstration and assessment of learning.

• The Learning Goal describes the standard or level the student must meet to achieve an S for a Module.
• The teacher is required to collect a range of evidence of a student’s progress towards meeting the standard set out in the Learning Goal.
• The Learning Goal makes the learning, thinking and application required to meet the standard explicit – students must apply the skills and knowledge set out in the Learning Goals to the tasks and assessment activities required by their teachers.

Recognising prior learning

To best support students’ transition from Foundation VCAL in 2022 to the VPC in 2023 teachers should recognise the learning attained in a partially completed Foundation VCAL certificate in 2022, and consider what still needs to be completed in 2023 for the student to attain the units required for a complete VPC.

• Teachers should review the evidence of learning students have demonstrated in their 2022 VCAL program and consider how it contributes to meeting the remaining Learning Goals required in their VPC program in 2023.
• Students who have completed full units from Foundation VCAL will gain credit into the VPC for those units on entry into the VASS System.
• Students who are carrying over partially completed units from Foundation VCAL can have that attainment acknowledged through a process of teachers / providers mapping the evidence of completed elements to the requirements of the new VPC units and focusing on filling the gaps in 2023.
• To ensure students are recognised for their prior learning teachers should consider any evidence of learning collected during previous activities. This evidence may only partially contribute to demonstrating a whole learning goal under the VPC. Teachers may need to collect further evidence of learning during 2023 to ensure that the student can fully meet the requirements of the VPC learning goals.

Completing Units in the VPC

The VPC is a standards based certificate where the standards of the VPC modules described in the learning goals and applications. Theseguide teachers and students as to what students are expected to know, understand and do as a result of the learning.
To ensure students meet the learning goals, evidence of achievement must be ascertained through a range of assessment activities and tasks that demonstrate achievement of the modules. A key indicator of the level of achievement for the standard are the active verbs at the start of each Learning Goal statement. (Emphasized in italics in the example below.)

Example – Unit 1 Module 1 – Literacy

In this example, to achieve an S for Unit 1 Module 1 Literacy, students must meet the standard set by Learning Goal 1.1.

To meet this standard, students should be given an opportunity to practice and demonstrate a range of the broad applications for Learning Goal 1.1 through the tasks, activities and assessments set by the teacher. Assessment tasks should be designed to assess the attainment of knowledge and skills through practical application. Assessment will require the collection of evidence from a range of activities and tasks. Learning goal 1.1

On completion of this module the student should be able to:

• identify and describe the structures and features of a range of different text types such as short narratives, informative and instructional texts, letters, emails, media and social media posts and film
• develop and demonstrate an understanding that texts are created for different purposes and audiences
• create a range of material for specific audiences and purposes.

Application

Demonstration of the learning goals requires students to apply a variety of skills. The following applications assist students to demonstrate they have met the learning goal.

• explain how a variety of written, spoken, visual and multimedia texts have been designed for different audiences and purposes
• apply de-coding and meaning-making strategies such as knowledge of everyday word families and phonic and visual letter patterns to make sense of texts
• skim and scan familiar texts to identify the main ideas and key information in the text
• create written, digital and multimedia texts demonstrating simple planning, drafting and editing processes
• begin to understand plagiarism and demonstrate methods used to avoid it
• listen and participate effectively in small group and whole class discussions and attempt to use appropriate evidence to support personal points of view
• apply the conventions of literacy, including sentence structure, paragraphing, punctuation and spelling.

It should be noted that students do not have to achieve all of the Application points. It is not a checklist to be ticked off through the unit. They are indicators of the type of activities students would undertake to demonstrate their growing knowledge and skills to meet the learning goal above.

To determine if the student has achieved the learning goal, the teacher should ask themselves the following questions:

• Can the student identify and describe …?
  What evidence of this has been demonstrated?
• Did the student develop and demonstrate …?
  What evidence of this did I collect?
• Did the student create …?
  What evidence of this did they provide?

Components of the VPC Curriculum Design