Opinion & Commentary
Let the schools choose which accredited curriculum to teach
The idea of a national curriculum has been on the federal government agenda for several years. The 2004-05 federal budget contained a reference to investigating the feasibility of an Australian Certificate of Education and the problems with state curriculums were given a public working over by then education minister Brendan Nelson. Now current federal education minister Julie Bishop has staked her claim on the issue and is gunning for reform.
According to Ms Bishop and her supporters state-developed curricula are rabidly anti-government, radically left-wing and outrageously politically correct. Numerous examples from syllabus and curriculum documents demonstrate how schools are being used as vehicles for social engineering, with a decline in academic rigour.
Professional teacher organizations and state governments are united in their opposition to Bishop’s plan to overhaul curriculum, but for different reasons. English and history teachers associations and teachers unions do not dispute that curriculum has become ideologically-charged and even defend its right to be so. State governments, however, deny that their curricula are biased and intellectually impoverished and reject any need for reform.
In the court of public opinion, however, the federal minister has the upper hand. A recent poll revealed that 69 per cent of Australians are in favour of a national curriculum. University academics have also been confirming what parents and employers have long suspected – that there has been a significant decline in standards and therefore the abilities of high school graduates. It is not just English and history that have been hijacked by agenda-driven curriculum development. Serious problems have been identified with maths, the sciences and even geography.
The federal government needs to decide what it is going to do soon. Bishop initially came on strong with media reports of a “Commonwealth takeover” of curriculum but that has since been watered down to “ensuring a greater level of national consistency”.
What are the options?
One is to mandate a national curriculum and assessment to be used in every school, leading to a single national certificate. This would guarantee consistency but whether it would increase standards is debatable. A national curriculum development board would be just as vulnerable to bias and educational fads as the state boards. The recent national history summit demonstrated this risk. A change of federal government would create upheaval and any flaws in the curriculum would cause skill deficiencies across the whole country, not just variation in standards between the states.
Another option is for the federal government to develop a ‘gold standard’ curriculum and to offer it as an alternative to the state curricula. Schools could choose the curriculum they think is best and most appropriate for their students. State curricula would have to improve, or lose the faith of parents and eventually be phased out. This ‘competitive curriculum’ option allows some consistency but with less risk of pegging standards at the lowest common denominator.
In fact, the federal government need not reinvent the wheel at all but instead establish an accreditation authority which could evaluate and benchmark various curricula and syllabi, including those developed by the states as well as curricula from other countries and from the private sector. Schools could choose any accredited curriculum. Assessment could be done by a non-content specific national assessment, or the various examinations could be equivalised (ranked on a common scale). The latter is more complicated but it possible -- it is already done to calculate a national university entrance score from the different state assessments.
Developing curriculum is a long slow and expensive process. When it is finally complete, implementing it would be very difficult. Even if state governments relent, it is inevitable that teachers unions will fight it tooth and nail, causing enormous disruption for students and parents. It would be a decade before any progress was made.
A national curriculum is a possibility for the future but a better and more immediate strategy is for the federal government to use its funding muscle to force the state governments to allow curriculum choice. State schools and non-government schools should be able to offer any quality, accredited curriculum. For example, there is no good reason why a school in Western Australia should not be able to offer the New South Wales Higher School Certificate if it is perceived to be superior by teachers and parents.
The curriculum choice option is the best we have. It does not preclude consistency and has the most potential for excellence. It is the least expensive and, importantly, the most expedient. There is no reason to wait.
Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies
