ACARA

Change doesn’t happen by doing more of the same

ACARA, AITSL, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), ESA, Teaching and Learning Commission, , , , , , ,

Jason Clare’s announced plans to dissolve ACARA, AITSL, ESA, and AERO, into the Teaching and Learning Commission raises questions regarding the need and function, and also what the focal issues are and how they may be addressed.

The Teaching and Learning Commission will seek to address issues of inequity and student attrition from public schools through increased standardisation of teaching with greater emphasis on explicit instruction, literacy teaching narrowed to phonics instruction, and classroom management.

The Mpartwe Declaration set out the Australian goals for schooling as: 

Goal 1: The Australian education system promotes excellence and equity 

Goal 2: All young Australians become:

  • confident and creative individuals
  • successful lifelong learners
  • active and informed members of the community.

As one of the most inequitable schooling systems in the world, Australia has a long way to go in achieving these goals. Australia’s response has been to double down on standardisation, though is standardisation a solution or simply creating and exacerbating the issue?

Will increased standardisation raise student academic achievement?

Sally Larsen has repeatedly shown the claims for falling achievement are inaccurate, yet these claims continue as the basis for changes in policy, practice, and oversight. The tenacious hold to these claims raises questions as to motives well beyond student achievement.  

The issue that needs exploration and discussion is what achievement can and should be. Central to standardisation is the focus on narrowed areas for learning, primarily literacy and numeracy. With narrowed focus comes narrowed approaches designed with the intention of high achievement for all. Lost is recognition for learning beyond the narrowed focus, for example Australian students’ achievement in creativity. Also lost is the value for human growth and the purpose of schooling reaching well beyond learning. 

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission open discussion as to the purpose of schooling and education more broadly and in turn open a way for a diverse array of success?

Will increased standardisation reduce student exodus from public schools?

Jason Clare’s creation of the Teaching and Learning Commission seeks to address rising rates of school dropout and attrition from public sector schools. Before doubling down on standardisation which has been growing for over a decade (the same time in which concerns for achievement, equity, and behaviour have risen), it would be helpful to look more closely at why children and young people are turning away from public schools and what they are turning to. 

Home education and special assistance schools are the antithesis of standardisation, yet are the fastest growing sectors in education.

When I explored the experiences of families who home educate, the random selection of families showed standardisation to be the central factor that ‘pushed’ them into home education. Home education had not been an active choice, rather a last option the families felt pushed into taking as the standardised approaches at school were not meeting the needs of their children. Home education is the fastest growing sector of education and anecdotal evidence so far suggests the recent (post pandemic) upswing is in response to the increasingly standardised schooling not meeting the diversity of student needs.

Within independent schools, the fastest growing area is special assistance schools. When considering the attrition of public school students, it is important to recognise that not all independent schools are the same. Independent schools are more often thought about in the debate over funding and assertions of ‘double dipping’ into school funding and high parent fees. The vast majority of independent schools however, are low fee schools, and some (a growing number) are free providing the flexibility and responsiveness public schools were unable to provide.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission explore the qualitative research that provides nuanced understanding as to why students are leaving public schools, and in turn support public schools to flexibly respond to the diverse needs of students?

Will standardisation address Teacher Workload?

The announcement of the Teaching and Learning Commission comes hot on the heels of the recent interim report from the Productivity Commission which proposed a national database of lesson plans. A strong argument behind the provision of lesson plans for teachers is workload. A recent UK report into the impact of standardisation showed there was no difference on teacher workload between standardised and non-standardised approaches given the need for modification to meet student needs. 

In my work with pre-service teachers I have found the necessity for them to modify externally developed lesson plans to be responsive to the range of learning, motivation, engagement, and developmental needs in a classroom takes longer than when they create their own lesson plans to meet the needs of the children they are working with.

The Productivity Commission seemingly ignored their own consultations where a key theme was the need for:

“Empowering teachers. Teachers should be supported with professional development to enhance their lesson planning skills (NCEC, qr. 29; Teach for Australia, qr. 31). Government policy should encourage innovation and flexibility in lesson design and delivery (AITSL, qr. 55; ESA, qr. 67).”

Standardisation is not about improved teaching nor teacher workload, rather it is a quest to ‘teacher-proof’ teaching. Here we might ask what are we ‘teacher-proofing’ from? Standardisation reduces the capacity for teachers to develop the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. For example, how might a teacher develop to the level of Highly Accomplished Teacher when the standards require: “Exhibit innovative practice in the selection and organisation of content and delivery of learning and teaching programs”. Standardisation does not allow for innovation, and without innovation we will continue to replicate the status quo of inequity.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission listen to teachers as to what is weighing them down in their workload to find ways to build time for the core work of teaching beyond the classroom?

Will increased standardisation of Initial Teacher Education Address Inequity?

A role for the Teaching and Learning Commission will be to double down on Initial Teacher Education to ensure compliance to the TEEP Report with focus on development of practical strategies for teaching and classroom management. The direction for increased standardisation in ITE has been widely critiqued not least for the lack of evidence on which claims have been based.

Initial Teacher Education is frequently landed with claims of teaching too much theory not enough practice. Such suggestions highlight a view of teaching as performance and not the complex relational interplay that teachers know all too well.

Standard 1 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers is ‘Know students and how they learn’. There is very good reason for this being the first standard – teaching is relational. The impact of teaching is dependent on the relationship built between teacher and students and across the learning environment. Underpinning how teachers form relationships is knowledge of learning theory, theories of development, and more. Value for theory to inform teaching practice is integral to pre-service teachers meeting the graduate standards.

Standardisation is the very thing we need to avoid in Initial Teacher Education and instead support teachers as intelligent, capable professionals to ‘know the students and how they learn’ to design teaching for diverse learning needs across varied contexts.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission value the complex interplay of theory and practice in developing new teachers able to design for the diverse array of student needs into the future?

Will increased ‘Evidence-Based Practice’ Address Inequity?

The announcement on the creation of the Teaching and Learning Commission comes before the report on the inquiry into AERO. Though perhaps not before we know the findings. 

AERO has been commended on the provision of “data-driven research and swift distribution of user-friendly advice for teachers”. This is an interesting and tautological claim given all research is data-driven, though highlights the value for specific data as promoted by AERO.

The pre-digestion of research disempowers teachers, seeking to simplify the complexity of teaching. Pre-digested research from AERO and other organisations such as The Grattan Institute have been critiqued heavily for the narrow selection of research (reliant on randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses), misrepresentation of research, reliance on self-referencing and oversimplification leading to errors. The reductionist view of research to directions for teachers to follow as per the emphasis on explicit instruction (or direct instruction as intended), removes teachers from a pedagogic role, reducing teaching to performance.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission explore ways to support teachers to engage with research and be researchers to make decisions relevant to their students, and in turn re-position teaching as a desirable profession for people to join (and stay in)?

Not ‘what works’ but ‘what works here today’

Colleagues and I have been working with teachers, school leaders, and representatives of education organisations across the public, Catholic, and independent sectors, along with academics. Our aim has been to draw together researchers and educators to understand to how we may work together to raise awareness to the problems associated with reliance on a narrow view of evidence-based practice, and how we may open conversation for support and grow the enriched evidence-based practice of teaching. 

We have found agreement across sectors as to the detrimental impact of evidence-based practice resulting in standardisation seen to exacerbate inequities in the constraints placed on schools to make decisions relevant to their contexts. While the dominant narrow view of evidence-based practice seeks ‘what works’ one school-based researcher told us the focus in schools is ‘what works here today’. Research can only ever provide insight to what has worked in the past whether that be years ago or yesterday. It is the role of those in schools to interpret research with the evidence from existing practice and evidence from students to determine what will work in their context at any given time. 

The UK report into the impact of standardisation showed reduced self-efficacy and autonomy amongst teachers using standardised approaches. Self-efficacy and autonomy are essential to teacher ongoing professional learning that may enable equitable outcomes for all students. Autonomy has been raised throughout our work with teachers and school leaders where their emphasis has been on autonomy to engage with evidence for themselves, to be the decision makers and designers of teaching.

Will the Teaching and Learning Commission work to rebuild teacher professionalism through empowering them with autonomy to engage with the full scope of evidence in context to create teaching for learning?

Finally, will the Teaching and Learning Commission support schools to achieve the Australian goals for schooling? Not through further standardisation, no.


Nicole Brunker is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney. She was a teacher and principal before moving into Initial Teacher Education where she has led foundational units of study in pedagogy, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Her research interests include school experience, alternative paths of learning, Initial Teacher Education pedagogy, and innovative qualitative methodologies. She’s on LInkedIn and on X:

New Super Bureaucracy for Schools: Visionary Reform or Risky Gamble?

ACARA, AITSL, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, ESA, Jason Clare, , , , , ,

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has unveiled the biggest shake-up in schooling policy in decades, announcing plans to merge four national education agencies—ACARA, AITSL, AERO, and ESA—into a single Teaching and Learning Commission (TLC). The idea is to bring core areas of curriculum, assessment, reporting, teaching standards, research, technology and data under one roof, rather than leaving them fragmented across multiple bodies.

Clare’s agenda is ambitious. At a speech delivered this week, he presented the TLC as a bold and targeted solution to Australian education’s most troubling challenges, including declining Year 12 completion rates, underperformance in disadvantaged communities and deeply entrenched inequities.

He shone a bright light on public schools, highlighting that the proportion of students completing Year 12 has fallen “from about 83 percent to as low as 73 percent” over the past decade. By contrast, completion rates in Catholic and Independent schools have remained high and stable. Public schools, Clare argued, “play an outsized role in educating some of the most disadvantaged children” and must be at the centre of efforts to lift outcomes and close equity gaps.

The proposed TLC is designed to align with the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA), the new 10-year national funding deal (2025–2034) signed between the federal government and all states and territories. Clare described the BFSA as “a $16 billion investment” that commits all governments to lift outcomes and tackle inequity.

The BFSA includes a suite of reforms and targets designed to lift student performance, address student wellbeing and mental health, attract and retain teachers, tackle inequalities and improve access to evidence-based professional learning and curriculum resources.

Not exactly a surprise

As bold as this looks, the TLC idea is not entirely new. As David de Carvalho, former ACARA Chief Executive Officer, pointed out this week, the writing has been on the wall for years.

Debate about the suitability of the “national architecture” of Australian schooling has been long-standing. The potential for agency mergers was raised explicitly in the 2019 Review of the National Architecture for Schooling in Australia, led by Simone Webbe. While that review stopped short of recommending one single body, it did explore merging ACARA and AITSL. Ministers showed little appetite for such structural change at the time, but the idea lived on in policy backrooms.

When I conducted research for my book The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy, I interviewed more than 80 senior policymakers. Many were deeply dissatisfied with the existing national machinery, describing it as fragmented, duplicative and incoherent. They spoke of blurred responsibilities, overlapping mandates, and uneven power relations when federal, national and state agencies jostle for influence.

I am now conducting another round of interviews with senior policymakers as part of a new project funded by the Australian Research Council, and the same themes keep repeating. Australia has developed a patchwork of multiple national agencies tasked with different aspects of schooling, but it lacks a coherent forum capable of strategically steering the system as a whole. This absence of a national compass for long-term policy design and coordination is precisely what Clare’s proposal seeks to address.

The landslide victory of the Albanese government has created a rare window for bold reform. The TLC proposal comes at a moment where dissatisfaction with existing arrangements, the promise of new policy solutions and favourable political conditions have converged to make once-unlikely changes possible.

But is it a good idea?

For decades it has become increasingly difficult to see “who is steering the ship” of Australian schooling policy. While federal influence has rapidly expanded, so have national organisations that have varying relationships to Australian jurisdictions and schooling sectors. 

Greater national coherence through a TLC could help provide some clarity. But there is also a dangerous flipside.

Diversity across our federation has long acted as a safeguard against over-centralisation and the domination of short-term political agendas. The fact that states and territories retain the constitutional authority to govern schools is at the very core of what it means to be a federation. It ensures that no single level of government can fully dominate and that local contexts and sectoral priorities have legitimate roles in shaping education.

In his classic text Seeing Like a State, anthropologist James Scott provides a compelling set of historical evidence to show the issues that emerge when humans seek to homogenise systems. Scott shows that while the logic of standardisation seems to make sense—because in theory it allows for greater control over inputs and outputs—reality always bites back.

This is the double-edged nature of the TLC proposal. If it delivers, then equity and performance across our schools may finally improve. But if its policies fail, the whole system will feel the impact. In a federated model, policy missteps can often be contained within jurisdictions. In a more national model, the whole nation is at risk. 

A real danger lies in assuming neat designs from above can steer the realities on the ground. Perhaps, in this moment, the government would do well to remember the advice of another TLC (the 1990s R&B pop group): “don’t go chasing waterfalls” and “stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to”—unless, of course, they’re absolutely sure the system is ready for the plunge.

Oh, and then there’s politics

On paper, the political logic behind the TLC is easy to grasp. Clare will have a compelling argument to make to state and territory ministers when they next meet at the Education Ministers Meeting (EMM). A streamlined agency promises national leadership, coherence, less duplication and greater accountability. It also allows Clare to show his government is prepared to be bold on education reform.

Even if ministers agree to progress the TLC, the politics of implementation will be fraught. While Canberra funds schools generously, it does not run them. Schooling is constitutionally the responsibility of the states and territories, and any reform that muddies this division of roles is bound to be politically difficult. Moreover, states and territories rarely speak with one voice, and even when they do, they approach these debates with different histories and vested interests.

The influence states can exert over national agencies is also a major point of debate. The governance of ACARA and AITSL provides an important precedent. When ACARA was established in 2008, it was set up as a co-owned body, with state and territory ministers given the right to nominate board members. Catholic and Independent schooling sectors were also granted representation. 

AITSL, by contrast, is a Commonwealth-owned company with an independent board of experts rather than jurisdictional nominees. 

These contrasting models highlight the delicate politics of shared authority and the constant negotiation required between federal, state, territory and sectoral interests.

A key question is what the governance structure of the TLC will be. Will states retain nomination rights, as with ACARA, or will expertise be privileged over representation, as with AITSL? And what role will Catholic and Independent representatives have at the decision-making table? 

These are delicate politics to navigate, and if ministers or sector representatives feel their role in steering national education is weakened, resistance will be fierce.

The stakes are high

The Albanese government has the mandate, the means, the resources, and the political capital to drive major change in Australian schooling. And the problems to tackle are real. 

Falling Year 12 completion rates, entrenched disadvantage in public schools, teacher shortages, flat results, and declining student engagement are all urgent and pressing. As Minister, why wouldn’t Clare seek to tackle them head on?

Yet more money, new targets and a super agency will not be enough to turn the tide. Reform must also build cultures of collaboration, trust and professional engagement within schools. History shows that reforms which sideline the professional wisdom of teachers rarely produce lasting improvement. If the TLC is to succeed, the teaching profession cannot be an afterthought: it must be in the driver’s seat.

For decades, the default formula of Australian governments has been to set tighter targets and impose more top-down directives. There is little evidence this approach delivers sustained gains.

Regardless of whether the TLC succeeds or fails, it represents another step in a decades-long shift towards federally driven national reform. Any federalism scholar will tell you this runs counter to the principles of federalism and the benefits of subsidiarity.

The creation of a TLC is being sold as a solution. It may well become the foundation of meaningful reform. But it could just as easily centralise risk in ways that make the system more fragile rather than more resilient.

Jason Clare’s gamble is clear. If the TLC works, it could be the engine of a new era in schooling reform. If it sinks, the whole ship goes down with it.


Glenn Savage is a policy sociologist and professor of education futures in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. His research works at the intersection of education policy, strategic design and system change.

Images of Jason Clare from his Facebook page.

Is the NAPLAN results delay about politics or precision?

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The decision announced yesterday by ACARA to delay the release of preliminary NAPLAN data is perplexing. The justification is that the combination of concerns around the impact of COVID-19 on children, and the significant flooding that occurred across parts of Australia in early 2022 contributed to many parents deciding to opt their children out of participating in NAPLAN. The official account explains:

“The NAPLAN 2022 results detailing the long-term national and jurisdictional trends will be released towards the end of the year as usual, but there will be no preliminary results release in August this year as closer analysis is required due to lower than usual student participation rates as a result of the pandemic, flu and floods.”

The media release goes on to say that this decision will not affect the release of results to schools and to parents, which have historically occurred at similar times of the year. The question that this poses, of course, is why the preliminary reporting of results is affected, but student and school reports will not be. The answer is likely to do with the nature of the non-participation. 

The most perplexing part of this decision is that NAPLAN has regularly had participation rates below 90% at various times among various cohorts. That has never prevented preliminary results being released before.

What are the preliminary results?

Since 2008, NAPLAN has been a controversial feature of the Australian school calendar for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. The ‘pencil-and-paper’ version of NAPLAN was criticised for how statistical error impacts its precision at the student and school level (Wu, 2016), the impact that NAPLAN has had on teaching and learning (Hardy, 2014), and the time it takes for the results to come back (Thompson, 2013). Since 2018, NAPLAN has gradually shifted to an online, adaptive design which ACARA claims “are better targeted to students’ achievement levels and response styles meaning that the tests “provide more efficient and precise estimates of students’ achievements than do fixed form paper based tests. 2022 was the first year that the tests were fully online. 

NAPLAN essentially comprises four levels of reporting. These are student reports, school level reports, preliminary national reports and national reports. The preliminary reports are usually released around the same time as the student and school results. They report on broad national and sub-national trends, including average results for each year level in each domain across each state and territory and nationally. Closer to the end of the year, a National Report is released which contains deeper analysis on how characteristics such as gender, Indigenous status, language background other than English status, parental occupation, parental education, and geolocation impact achievement at each year level in each test domain.

Participation rates

The justification given in the media release concerns participation rates. To understand this better, we need to understand how participation impacts the reliability of test data and the validity of inferences that can be made as a result (Thompson, Adie & Klenowski, 2018). NAPLAN is a census test. This means that in a perfect world, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 & 9 would sit their respective tests. Of course, 100% participation is highly unlikely, so ACARA sets a benchmark of 90% for participation. Their argument is that if 90% of any given cohort sits a test we can be confident that the results of those sitting the tests are representative of the patterns of achievement of the entire population, even sub-groups within that population. ACARA calculates the participation rate as “all students assessed, non-attempt and exempt students as a percentage of the total number of students in the year level”. Non-attempt students are those who were present but either refused to sit the test or did not provide sufficient information to estimate an achievement score. Exempt students are those exempt from  one or more of the tests on the grounds of English language proficiency or disability.

The challenge, of course, is that non-participation introduces error into the calculation of student achievement. Error is a feature of standardised testing, it doesn’t mean mistakes in the test itself, it rather is an estimation of the various ways that uncertainty emerges in predicting how proficient a student is in an entire domain based on a relatively small sample of questions that make up a test. The greater the error, the less precise (ie less reliable) the tests are. With regards to participation, the greater the non-participation, the more uncertainty is introduced into that prediction. 

The confusing thing in this decision is that NAPLAN has regularly had participation rates below 90% at various times among various cohorts. This participation data can be accessed here.  For example, in 2021 the average participation rates for Year 9 students were slightly below the 90% threshold in every domain yet this did not impact the release of the Preliminary Report. 

Table 1: Year 9 Participation in NAPLAN 2021 (generated from ACARA data)

These 2021 results are not an anomaly, they are a trend that has emerged over time. For example, in pre-pandemic 2018 the jurisdictions of Queensland, South Australia, ACT and Northern Territory did not reach the 90% threshold in any of the Year 9 domains. 

Table 2: Year 9 Participation in NAPLAN 2018 (generated from ACARA data)

Given these results above, the question remains why has participation affected the reporting of the 2022 results, but Year 9 results in 2018, or 2021, were not similarly affected?

At the outset, I am going to say that there is a degree of speculation in answering this question. Primarily, this is because even if participation declines to 85%, this is still a very large sample with which to predict the achievement of the population in a given domain, so it must be that something has not worked when they have tried to model the data. I am going to suggest three possible reasons:

  1. The first is likely, given that it is hinted at in the ACARA press release. If we return to the relationship between participation, error and the validity of inferences, the most likely way that an 85% participation rate could be a problem is if non-participation is not randomly spread across the population. If non-participation was shown to be systematic, that is it is heavily biassed to particular subgroups, then depending upon the size of that bias, the ability to make valid inferences about achievement in different jurisdictions or amongst different sub-groups could be severely impacted. One effect of this is that it might become difficult to reliably equate 2022 results with previous years. This could explain why lower than 90% Year 9 participation in 2021 was not a problem – the non-participation was relatively randomly spread across the sub-groups.
  2. Second, and related to the above, is that the non-participation has something to do with the material and infrastructural requirements for an online test that is administered to all students across Australia. There have long been concerns about the infrastructure requirements of NAPLAN online such as access to computers, reliable internet connections and so on particularly in regional and remote areas of Australia. If these were to influence results, such as through an increased number of students unable to attempt the test, this could also influence the reliability of inferences amongst particular sub-groups. 
  3. The final possibility is political. It has been obvious for some time that various Education Ministers have become frustrated with aspects of the NAPLAN program. The most prominent example of this was the concern expressed by the Victorian Education Minister in 2018 about the reliability of the equation of the online and paper tests. (Education chiefs have botched Naplan online test, says Victoria minister | Australian education | The Guardian) During 2018, ACARA were criticised for showing a lack of responsible leadership in releasing results that seemed to show a mode effect, that is, a difference between students that sat the online vs the pen and paper test not related to their capacity in literacy and numeracy. It may be that ACARA has grown cautious as a result of the 2018 ministerial backlash and feel that any potential problems with the data need to be thoroughly investigated before jurisdictions are named and shamed based on their average scores. 

Ultimately, this leads us to perhaps one of the more frustrating things, we may never know. Where problems emerge around NAPLAN, the tendency is for ACARA and/or the Federal Education Minister to whom ACARA reports, to try to limit criticism by denying access to the data. In 2018, at the height of the controversy of the differences between the online and pencil and paper modes, I formed a team with two internationally eminent psychometricians to research whether there was a mode effect between the online and pencil and paper versions of NAPLAN. The request to ACARA to access the dataset was denied with the words that ACARA could not release item level data for the 2018 online items, presumably because they were provided by commercial entities. In the end, we just have to trust ACARA that there was not one. If we have learnt anything from recent political scandals, perfect opaqueness remains a problematic governance strategy.

Greg Thompson is a professor in the Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice at the Queensland University of Technology. His research focuses on the philosophy of education and educational theory. He is also interested in education policy, and the philosophy/sociology of education assessment and measurement with a focus on large-scale testing and learning analytics/big data.

The insidious way the new curriculum undermines democracy

ACARA, civics and citizenship education, Curriculum review, , , ,

The public’s mind is focused upon politics in the final week of a bruising election campaign. The language of politics is drilled into for nuance and gaffes. But there are some keywords and concepts that are not mentioned in the main body of the Civics and Citizenship curriculum issued by ACARA this week and signed off by Federal and State education ministers. 

This formal document conveys the official view of how young people are to be prepared by schools and teachers for participation as Australian citizens and the following words are all missing:  social justice, human rights, care, empathy, truth, political literacy, discrimination, racism, mutual understanding, social change, climate change and advocacy. 

The words ‘compassion’ and ‘civility’ are in the current curriculum but are now excised.  

Year 9 students will no longer explore ‘How citizens’ political choices are shaped at election time, including the influence of the media (ACHCK076)’. 

This will surely limit young people’s understanding of democratic debate? When reviewing a curriculum we  need to look not only for sins of omission but also for sins of commission. But here there are plenty of examples of sins of commission too.

Citizenship education globally has been criticised for being more likely to focus unhealthily upon national contexts, but Australia as a nation has a proud history of demonstrating outward-looking and generous global involvement. Now, the Civics and Citizenship curriculum rationale states that ‘the curriculum strongly focuses on the Australian context’. It follows through on this statement by effectively omitting global education from primary schools. The Year 6 statement that students explore “The obligations citizens may consider they have beyond their own national borders as active and informed global citizens (ACHASSK148)”, which was also an important element of that age group’s achievement standard, is excised. Also removed from the Year 6 curriculum is the invitation to find out more about ‘The world’s cultural diversity, including that of its indigenous peoples (ACHASSK140)’. 

Also missing? The Year 9 content descriptor ‘How ideas about and experiences of Australian identity are influenced by global connectedness and mobility (ACHCK081)’. True citizenship education can contribute to building bridges between different groups of people around the world and create educational spaces to develop young people’s capacity to contribute to positive global social change . 

The revisions to the Australian Curriculum signal that this is no longer a priority.

The new curriculum valorises knowledge over skills, values and dispositions. For example, the curriculum rationale states that ‘a deep understanding of Australia’s federal system of government and the liberal democratic values that underpin it is essential’; ‘Emphasis is placed on the federal system of government, derived from the Westminster and Washington systems’. The curriculum aims to foster ‘responsible participation in Australia’s democracy’. The curriculum language leans towards viewing young people as passive recipients of knowledge more than active learners. In a self-congratulatory spirit, students are to imbibe how ‘the system safeguards democracy’ and ‘how laws and the legal system protect people’s rights’. Student responsibilities are referenced three times in the curriculum rationale.  Ten year olds are potentially stuffed with knowledge that they will not be putting into practice for another eight years including within elaborations which reference the secret ballot, compulsory voting, preferential voting and the role of the Australian Electoral Commission as key features of Australia’s democracy.

 Some fundamental skills and concepts fall by the wayside. 

  • From year 3: 

‘The importance of making decisions democratically (ACHASSK070)’.  Why? – seven and eight year olds can start to understand why fairness matters. 

  • From year 4:  the descriptor ‘Interact with others with respect to share points of view (ACHASSI059) – a fundamental attribute to value and nurture in nine year olds in developing their empathy and broader emotional literacy
  • From years Year 9 and 10:  Students are no longer required to ‘Recognise and consider multiple perspectives and ambiguities and use strategies to negotiate and resolve contentious issues (ACHCS086) (ACHCS099)’ or to ‘Reflect on their role as a citizen in Australian, regional and global contexts (ACHCS089) (ACHCS102)’.
  • The curriculum language supporting active citizenship – already cautious (Hoepper, 2014) – is further diluted. 
  • Year 6 students will no longer  “Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASS130)”. 
  • The requirement that both Year 7 and Year 8 students ‘Use democratic processes to reach consensus on a course of action relating to a civics or citizenship issue and plan for that action (ACHCS058) (ACHCS072)’ is removed. 
  • The Year 8 statement that students appreciate ‘How citizens can participate in Australia’s democracy, including use of the electoral system, contact with their elected representatives, use of lobby groups, and direct action (ACHCK062)’ has become vaguer and more passive ‘how Australians are informed about and participate in democracy (AC9HC8K01)’. 
  • A curriculum aim for the early years of secondary education that currently enjoins students to explore “The freedoms that enable active participation in Australia’s democracy within the bounds of law, including freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion and movement (ACHCK061) is altered to the more anodyne ‘the characteristics of Australia’s democracy, including freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion and movement (AC9HC7K02). 

The political influence in this area is stark. 

Scott Morrison observed in parliament of students attending Strike4ClimateChange rallies in Australia that, ‘We do not support our schools being turned into parliaments…..What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools’ (AAP, 2018). 

And  acting federal Education Minister Stuart Robert insisted on the omission of a brief reference in an optional curriculum elaboration to the youth environmentalist Greta Thunberg (Baker & Carey, 2022). 

The progressive notion of educating young people for active and informed citizenship is qualified – rather schools and teachers are ‘building their capacity to be active and informed citizens’. The message to young people is clear – you are citizens in waiting not citizens yet. We expect you to be compliant and to keep your opinions to yourself,

It may be possible for committed and confident teachers to re-form policy through active interpretation as opposed to narrowly conforming to the letter of curriculum content descriptors (Jerome, 2018; Sim, 2008). The rationale for the Year 7-10 Civics and Citizenship curriculum still includes the claim that through:

 ‘The study of Civics and Citizenship, students develop inquiry skills, values and dispositions that enable them to be active and informed citizens who question, understand and contribute to the world they live in. The curriculum offers opportunities for students to develop a wide range of skills by investigating contemporary civics and citizenship issues and fostering civic participation and engagement.’

Unfortunately, revised content descriptors (which will be what most teachers look to first in their curriculum design) do not generally align with this vision. Values, skills and dispositions tend to go missing. Moreover, previously highlighted links (via the use of icons) to General Capabilities such as ‘Personal and Social competence’, ‘Intercultural understanding’ and ‘Ethical understanding’ also no longer exist. 

ACARA’s interpretation of what was represented as a decluttering administrative exercise might be seen as another person’s neutering and application of an ideological lens. It just became a whole lot harder for teachers to nurture a fuller achievement of democratic citizenship and human rights nationally and globally and more difficult not to promote a conservative political interpretation of civics and citizenship education in what is already a ‘Cinderella’ learning area lacking presence and status in many schools.

Peter Brett is an experienced History and Civics and Citizenship teacher educator and was involved in a variety of ways with the launch of citizenship education in England from 2002. He is a recent President of the Social and Citizenship Education Association of Australia [SCEAA] and a co-editor of Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences (Cengage, 2020). He is a senior lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania.

Image of Greta Thunberg in header: CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2020 – Source: EP

The truth: what our students really learn about Anzac Day

ACARA, Acting Minister for Education, Curriculum review, teaching history, , , , , ,

Students taught “hatred” of the nation (even the PM thinks so). Teachers are duds. That’s the backdrop for the recent announcement of the final version of the Australian Curriculum and it shows exactly how contested is  the teaching of our nation’s history.

But let’s look at what actually happens in our history classrooms. As we approach this ANZAC Day, what will students be learning in history classrooms? 

1.      The April 1 Ministerial press release, claimed that in Years 9 and 10 Australian history content had previously been optional

In the version of the Australian Curriculum (8.4) currently taught in Australian history classrooms, Australian involvement in World War I and World War II and the First Nations Civil Rights Movement are ‘compulsory’, in that there are no alternative topics for teachers to choose from.   The minister’s comments do suggest that the 1750-1918 Australia will become a requirement as well. This is reiterated in ACARA’s press release, which stated Version 9 would focus on “the impact on First Nations Australians on the arrival of British settlers as well as their contribution to the building of modern Australia [and] strengthening and making explicit teaching about the origins and heritage of Australia’s democracy and the diversity of Australian communities”. However, these changes have not been widely welcomed, with Victoria and NSW insisting on an exemption citing the provision that  states and territories to “adopt and adapt” the curriculum, “casting doubt on how compulsory the changes are”. Perhaps this presents an opportunity to teach the Frontier Wars to all students, as the Wars are currently only covered in the Year 11 and 12 Modern History curriculum in some states.

2.      It is already compulsory for Australian students to learn “the places where Australians fought and the nature of warfare during World War I, including the Gallipoli campaign”

 Version 8.4 suggests students should learn the events of conflicts Australian soldiers were involved in during World War I. They should also study why ANZAC Day is commemorated in the primary years, with the secondary years considering the “nature and significance of the Anzac legend”. This idea that seemed to so distress Minister Tudge and his colleagues, is core to teaching all national days of significance. When building a nation, deliberation over the term “significance” is a key part of being a citizen in a democracy.  ANZAC Day is the perfect example for teaching this skill because it is well documented as a fact that its popularity has waxed and waned over the last century. Students can engage with a century of historical records to investigate why ANZAC Day has come to signify much more than a failed assault on a Turkish beach. The contested nature of commemoration and its role in schools has been present since the first ANZAC Day in 1916. The debate over ANZAC Day’s significance can open up Australian history for students to learn about other significant chapters in the building of Australia before and after World War 1.

3.      ANZAC Day commemorations are well-entrenched in schools.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lock-downs and limitations on large gatherings, schools ‘pivoted’ to ensure that ANZAC Day commemorations were still able to go ahead. ANZAC day is a significant day in the school calendar where students and teachers gather with members of their school community and returned service people to commemorate the ongoing sacrifice Australian soldiers have made since 1915.  But appreciation is not un-critical – we can both appreciate the sacrifice of ANZAC service people, recognise how the ANZAC spirit has contributed to  national identity, and still critique how First Nations soldiers were treated or discuss the bid to include the Frontier Wars in the National War Memorial. Such debates are a part of Australian history just as much as the landing at dawn on April 25th. Australian students, by the end of Year 10, are taught to: “refer to key events, the actions of individuals and groups, and beliefs and values to explain patterns of change and continuity over time”. They also  “analyse the causes and effects of events and developments and explain their relative importance” Version 8.4 Year 10 History Achievement Standard .It is important here to be clear that the ‘interpretations’ that students both engage with and develop are historical – that is, based on the analysis and evaluation of sources of evidence, including the works of historians. They are not encouraged to engage in emotive, uncritical responses such as characterising history teachers as promoting hatred. This is the real benefit of learning a national, rather than nationalist, history.

4.  Learning to be critical in times of war is preparing students to defend their nation.

Not many people recognise the value history education has for present day issues of conflict. The skills of deep investigation, critical analysis of sources including placing the sources in their historical context, are the perfect skills for developing a radar for mis and disinformation. The ability to look at a social media post and determine whether it is a Russian deep fake or a legitimate image of war, is a skill taught in secondary history, just using past examples of propaganda. The current federal Government has dedicated $9 billion to cyber security in the recent budget. The skills taught in history that investigate how events are globally linked, are preparing students to have dispositions useful for cybersecurity, including tracking and analysing big data. Our first author uses the skills she developed as a student of history, a history teacher for 13 years, and a history and English teacher educator for 10 years, to investigate patterns in big data. Many of her faculty colleagues also use their humanities and social science skills as well as STEM skills to address information disorder.

So this ANZAC Day, as our young people lay wreaths and recite the ode, parents and governments can rest assured that “we will remember them”. Those same students will then return to (understaffed) classrooms where they will “ask relevant questions; critically analyse and interpret sources; consider context; respect and explain different perspectives; develop and substantiate interpretations, and communicate effectively” (History Rationale), the skills needed of any good citizen of our nation, so they can be an informed participant in our democracy. 

Dr Alison Bedford is a lecturer (curriculum and pedagogy) in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland and a secondary school history teacher.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a network analyst and theorist interested in how ideas influence education policy. She is a senior lecturer in literacy teaching and has worked for Education Queensland as a senior writer and has worked as a secondary English, hstory and geography teacher in government, Catholic and independent schools.

Why a good consent curriculum is about much more than yes please. Here’s what we need to do now

ACARA, consent, respectful relationships, Sexuality, , , , , , ,

If, like me, you weren’t glued to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee proceedings recently, you might have missed the announcement that Ministers of Education around the country are supporting the latest version of the national curriculum.  In any other year this may have been unremarkable – but this year, one particular inclusion was of significant public and political interest.  Consent.

The new curriculum includes improved content about ‘consent’ in Health and Physical Education from foundation grades to year 10, and support for this inclusion was specifically mentioned in the Senate Committee.  The issue of ‘consent education’ has become increasingly politically relevant over the past year or so in Australia.  While young people and advocates have been clamouring for better comprehensive relationships and sexuality education (RSE) for decades, sounding the alarm that it is a key protective factor in safeguarding sexual wellbeing and preventing sexual violence, over the last year the wider community has become newly alive to the issue.

In early 2021, Chanel Contos (pictured in header) conducted a poll on her Instagram which asked whether her friends had experienced sexual violence.  The volume of replies in the affirmative was overwhelming, and it transformed into a petition for better ‘consent education’ – in recognition of the connection between the deficiency in their education and their experiences of sexual violence.  The media interest in the story meant the Australian public began discussing this issue at a national level, and the political pressure this generated did not dissipate.

Inclusion of consent in the curriculum was one of the express goals of Chanel Contos and her Teach Us Consent initiative, and for good reason.  Recognition that the stuff of RSE is a non-negotiable part of every Australian’s schooling life is a huge milestone, and the curriculum gives educators around the country an imprimatur to teach their students more about consent from an early age.  So can we, as a community, rest easy now?

Now more than ever, we must not lose momentum.  It will be a fatal blow to ensuring every young person is fully equipped with the information and education they need to safeguard their sexual wellbeing, if we were to sit back now and say: ‘job done’.  Quite the contrary: the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has done its job – now it’s time for all of us to do ours. 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say what I have said many times before: a good curriculum is like a life-saving vaccine.  It could be a brilliant product, but without the means to store it, transport it and get it into people’s arms, it will spoil on the shelf.  This is where we have always stalled on sex-ed in Australia: implementation.  Australia has produced some of the best RSE researchers and providers in the world, and yet it has never crossed over into classrooms, into changed attitudes, into changed statistics about the rates of unwanted sex for young Australians.

This is what prompted me to go overseas on a Churchill Fellowship in 2019 in search of answers to the question of sex-ed implementation: traipsing across Europe and North America, I wanted to understand the secrets to success in sex-ed.  I learned that comprehensive RSE is a complex issue of implementation, expertise and oversight, and I identified six success factors: advocacy, institutional/government support, expertise, equipped educators, engaged parents, and evaluation.  Putting consent in the curriculum is only one small piece of the puzzle. 

First of all, framing this education through the lens of consent is dangerous: we must be teaching young people to expect sexual experiences that are not just free from violence, but far from violent.  It needs to be much more holistic, which is why advocates in the sector tend to use the language of relationships and sexuality education rather than zeroing in on the issue of consent.

Secondly, a new curriculum does not magically endow teachers with the expertise and confidence they need to deliver RSE effectively.  This really matters, because the nature of RSE is such that getting it wrong can be ineffective at best, and counter-productive at worst.  Subliminal messages that come through a teacher’s phrasing, their demeanour, their answers to the curly questions these lessons inevitably prompt, can actually serve to reinforce some of the attitudes that drive sexual violence and harassment.  For example, as someone in Canada said to me, even well-meaning teachers will find themselves resorting to abstinence only messaging because of the taboo around talking about sex.  I have spoken to many educators who worry they are not confident or expert enough to deliver what is a very nuanced subject, and they are right to identify this need for professional development.  We need to invest in ensuring teachers are equipped to deliver RSE effectively, and are truly supported by school leadership to do so.

So too, we know that these lessons can’t begin and end at the school gate.  This is a whole of community effort, and parents and caregivers are a key part of that.  In the Netherlands, it was described to me as a triangle: education of children, of teachers, of parents/caregivers.  Many parents want to understand what their young people will be learning in RSE and why, and more still wish for greater literacy and confidence in continuing the sex-ed conversation at home around the dinner table.  This new curriculum does not do that, either.

The new curriculum is something to celebrate.  It recognises that young people have a right to learn about this important issue from a young age – and it has not been easy to get here, for sex-ed has long been plagued by community and political apathy, ignorance and opposition (which will not have disappeared with this new announcement).  But if we want comprehensive RSE to reach its full potential, so that our young people can reach theirs, we cannot afford to stall again.

Katrina Marson practises as a criminal lawyer in the area of sexual offences.  She is the lead researcher for primary prevention at Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy, and the president of the Relationships and Sexuality Education Alliance ACT. She is a PhD candidate at Swinburne University, exploring whether there is a right to sex education through a human rights framework.

Will the curriculum really embrace the true spirit of Anzac?

ACARA, Acting Minister for Education, Curriculum review, Minister for Education, teaching history, , , , , , ,

Q and A with Anna Clark, author of Making Australian History

The “wokeness” of Australia’s National Curriculum has again made headlines and again it is more electioneering.

On Friday a Nine newspapers headline claimed the revised version of National Curriculum will elevate Western and Christian heritage. Crikey picked up on the Sydney Morning Herald headline to claim the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has “backed down” and “returned to Western Civilisation”.

Neither of these headlines is true. In fact, as the reporters wrote, the revisions needed to be discussed with the State education ministers at a meeting which occurred on Friday.

Furthermore, according to Stuart Robert, the revisions did not pass the States, with Western Australia holding out: “We have asked ACARA to go away and revise the curriculum, noting the concerns the Commonwealth and Western Australia have, and to come back to education ministers in April”. 

So there is a long way to go yet, the curriculum is not “revised”, and ACARA has not backed down.

Robert claimed the problem with the Humanities and Social Sciences Curriculum was that it was too busy. Most HASS teachers agree.  He also said there was no mention of Gough Whitlam, of course, or Robert Menzies but that “students were encouraged to research Greta Thunberg”. On the easy resolution of this issue, Robert claimed a win by saying: “Western civilisation is something we should be proud of, and what it means to be Australian to be proud of is well and truly back in the curriculum.”

From left, Gough Whitlam, Greta Thunberg and Robert Menzies

On the same day, Kevin Donnelly, who oversaw a previous review of the National Curriculum, published an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph (not available online). Most of the article pointed to funding, testing and sentiment data, but there was one unsubstantiated statement: “Too many students leave schools morally adrift, lacking resilience and unaware of what makes Australia and Western civilisation so beneficial and worthwhile defending.”

The Christian (a word not featured in any of the press briefings available to the public) and Western civilisation have been linked to the Cross Curriculum Priorities in the National Curriculum. This is the section of the document that suggests all disciplines should work to include Indigenous perspectives, Australia’s connections with Asia, and sustainability. 

A moral panic,  linked to these “woke” ideas, was sparked by a NewsCorp survey. The questionnaire asked Australians over the age of 18 the following leading question:

Which of the following is closer to your own view about the curriculum in Australian schools?

1.     The curriculum should continue to include topics such as Australia’s engagement with Asia, Indigenous Australians and the environment

2.     The curriculum has become too woke and we should have less emphasis on Australia’s engagement with Asia, Indigenous Australians and the environment than we have currently

3.     Don’t know

The results of the survey were reported by Channel 7’s Sunrise program as “A new poll has revealed that a majority of baby boomers want Aussie values nurtured in classrooms and think the current school curriculum is ‘too woke’.” The program proceeded to debate the claim with commentators removed from expertise in curriculum development and interpretation (just like those surveys) . The program concluded the curriculum was not too “woke” – but the headline remained.

If truth be told, all these statements are easily refuted through a cursory search of the Internet or a quick discussion with your friendly neighbourhood educator. For example, the proposed revisions also reported that the “contestability” of the Anzac legend had been removed, but Robert reported  that the contestability of Anzac day has been revised. Additionally, as Jonathan Dallimore, from the History Teachers Association of NSW explained in September (when Tehan announced the revision), “contestability” was framed  in the negative. 

Essentially, “contestability” in history scholarship refers to rigour in historical thinking and according to  Dallimore, is only linked to “very legitimate (even safe) historical debates” in the National Curriculum.

So why all this emphasis on wokeness?

As I wrote in October 2021, it’s because there is an election coming and this storm in a teacup is campaigning. This is clear in two ways.

Firstly, emphasis on wokeness appeals to some of the crossbench, like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the newly badged United Australia Party. The large number of high profile independents positioning themselves to contest the coming election are a great a danger to the Coalition. Many of the independents are economically conservative, but progressive in other policies like climate futures and human rights. If they were to win balance of power, the Coalition has a much less predictable chance of government. It is therefore, in the Coalition’s best interest to win seats where PHON and UAP might be competitive.

Secondly, the other big-ticket items in the review, phonics and maths, appeal to nostalgia, which I have also written about previously. The removal of “balanced literacy” from the document, increased emphasis on phonics, and reform of initial teacher education to include the explicit teaching of phonics are politically smart moves for the Coalition going into an election. The Coalition can now say they delivered on their 2019 promises:

“…we will invest $10.8 million to provide a voluntary phonics health check for every Year 1 student so parents and teachers can be confident their children are not falling behind. We will also ensure that trainee teachers learn how to teach phonics as part of their university degree to ensure they can teach phonics in the classroom.”

Deliverology® is an approach to public administration that is a key service of think tanks the Institute for Public Administration Australia and the Centre for Public Impact, who both advise the public sector. This top-down approach to public service governance, is the belief that a good government is an efficient one that delivers on its promises, particularly those that deliver long-lasting results for its citizens. Every time literacy and numeracy are revised, the political reason for doing so is linked to falling test scores in PISA and NAPLAN. To successfully implement a literacy reform, regardless of its contestation, is to be able to claim a party can deliver. And that’s powerful.

Michael Barber, who developed the “science of deliverology”, insists that politicians use good data, set targets and trajectories, is consistent, and have regular reporting and reassessment of the delivery chain. So while the Coalition might claim they have delivered, they have:

1.   Not  used good data because mass testing data is contested and non-representative;

2.    Not outlined a clear trajectory from announcement to implementation, but rather muddied the waters with false narratives;

3.   Not been consistent, but moved between politically popular ideas; or

4.   Not ensured the media reports progress in a clear and informative way.

So what can be done?

My answer is the same as it was in October. Politicians need to stop using education as a political pawn. Media outlets must be more responsible. Education policy research that is usually responsive to policy announcements, needs deeper analysis of the political trends that lead to policy development. This latter is where my own work sits.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a network analyst and theorist interested in how ideas influence education policy. She is a senior lecturer in literacy teaching and has worked for Education Queensland as a senior writer and has worked as a secondary English, hstory and geography teacher in government, Catholic and independent schools.

Q and A with Anna Clark, author of Making Australian History

Q. Why has history become so contested in Australia?

Anna Clark: It’s always been contested. There were debates the letters pages of newspapers in the 19th century newspapers about what was going on on the frontier and debates over the legacy of Australia’s convict origins. In the last 30 or 40 years, it’s become increasingly contested because history has wrestled with questions about how to include the perspectives of people who had largely been excluded from the national story.

Q. Why has history now become so politicised when it comes to the national curriculum?

Anna Clark: That’s a very, very interesting question: it’s not simply a question of political debates along lines of ‘left’ and ‘right’. It’s also a dispute about the role and function of history in our education system today. For example, China is a very left wing government, which has very strong views that the role of history is to provide a proud narrative of national progress. Likewise, there are politically conservative historians who would argue that the role of history is to promote a kind of critical citizenship. So it’s not just a simple left/right divide. Much of the heat of the school history wars comes down to that disagreement over what the role of history should be.

Q: What do you think the role of history should be in a liberal democracy?

Anna Clark: It should be to help people understand their place in time, that we are all historical subjects and that we all have a past and a future. Understanding that people who were living and thinking and making decisions in 1901 or 1847, or 1945, were just as much a product of their own historical context as we are today. Teaching students to understand those historical contexts, as well as some of the skills of a historical education (such as research, communication, and interrogating historical sources) helps us to be better citizens and more capable, critical thinkers.

Q: Thinking about place and time, Anzac Day seems to be the most extraordinarily contested part of modern Australian history. Why is it like that?

Anna Clark: The idea of the Anzac legacy and even Anzac Day itself has always been up for grabs. To pretend that it’s not contested is just a total total misinterpretation of the history of Anzac Day. In the 1920s, that day was contested by many veterans who weren’t sure how to commemorate Australia’s involvement in war. In the 1960s (around the Vietnam War), Anzac Day was nearly moribund. Meanwhile, there has been a great national revival of this commemoration in recent years. ‘Contested’ doesn’t mean it has to be totally politicised, or that it’s ‘unAustralian’, but an understanding that people bring different ideas and understandings about what that day means.

Q: You’ve got children yourself, what do you hope for their history education in school?

Anna Clark: I hope they learn enough of the facts to understand the nation and the world in which they live. You know, understanding the World Wars, the Holocaust, civil rights, colonisation and imperialism But just as important as the facts are the skills of doing history, being able to get their hands dirty in proper historical research and be able to come up with historical questions themselves to ask of the past. So I hope they also develop research skills of inquiry, learn to use a library, distinguish different historical opinions, and also develop skills of empathy and imagination.

Anna Clark is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Public History at UTS and the author of Making Australian History, published this month by Penguin. Teaching the Nation, was published by Melbourne University Press in 2006 followed by History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom (New South, 2008).

Why Alan Tudge is now on the history warpath

Alan Tudge, Minister for Education, teaching history, , , , ,

Australian children will never defend the country if the draft history curriculum is adopted. That’s the takeaway from the Federal Education Minister Allan Tudge’s speech to the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) on Friday. 

The minister called for yet another curriculum reform to ensure “a positive, optimistic view of Australian history”. 

His reasoning? “Individual students learn to understand the origins of our liberal democracy so that they can defend it, they can protect it, they can understand it, and they can celebrate it”.  

The impact of such talk on the education system is cause for concern. Curriculum reform is expensive for the economy and disruptive for the sector. Tudge’s comments are unusual given the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (ACARA) just completed a public deliberation over the History curriculum earlier this year.

This begs the question:

What the hell is the Minister doing? 

It’s about the election but there is something more. The use of two political spaces, Sky News and the libertarian think tank Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), rather than the more bipartisan National Press Club, supports the campaigning thesis.  My previous research has shown CIS and the Institute for Public Affairs have a specific focus on causing education issues to go viral. When an issue goes viral, it becomes something talked about in more households and more online accounts, whether challenged or accepted. As the lobbyist theory goes, more viral = more likely to have popular influence. Add to this Tudge’s online blocking of multiple historians and teachers of history over the past weeks, as they question his weird focus on optimism, a clearer picture emerges. This commentary is not about policy. It is about the election and getting that little word “optimism” associated with the Coalition. 

It’s probably electioneering

There is a federal election on the horizon, and even if the Government is re-elected, there will be a cabinet reshuffle. So why is Tudge making so much noise about History education when he only has five months left in the job? I believe the imminent election is the key to unlocking Friday’s weird flex.

It is tempting to look at the transcripts from Tudge’s comments and dismiss them as far-fetched. But it is more important to draw back the lens to view a government with an election in five months, after a pandemic year filled with bad press. 

When taking a broad view of the Federal government, it is interesting to note that the word “optimism” is popping up in many Federal press releases and media interviews. Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, has been using the word consistently since COVID19 vaccines were developed, but the word has also crept into other portfolios. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is the “man for optimistic narratives”, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is optimistic of an economic recovery, Trade and Tourism Minister Dan Tehan is optimistic about resolving the French submarine diplomatic disaster, “government sources” from Attorney General Michaelia Cash’s office say they are cautiously optimistic about resolving the industrial relations bill, and Foreign Minister Marise Payne even has “optimism” in her Twitter profile, even if it is about breeding racehorses. 

Optimism has popped up enough times to warrant attention. The word taps into a public desire for something good to happen after the heartbreak and restrictions of the COVID 19 pandemic. We also know that the current federal government is very keen to ensure popular optics. “Optimism” is a useful word for dismissing the Opposition’s criticism of the Government at the same time giving hope to the population. It’s a powerful word that escapes a lot of generalised attention, and does a lot of political heavy lifting.

How “optimism” works in History education

The tactics of this current government’s History education rhetoric is different to the Howard government. The History Wars have a few skirmishes every time there are announcements about education’s role in the development of the nation. While Ministers and their lobbyists clutch pearls over declining scores in literacy and numeracy, and students are squeezed into STEM for the economy, History has always been about what type of nation Australia’s children should be actively informed about. In the past, this battle for the soul of the nation has at least had some semblance of debate, with academics, historians and politicians getting into the nitty gritty of what it means to raise active and informed citizens. They have engaged with alternative readings of events, even if only to dismiss them. 

Tudge’s History War is different. 

Tudge’s reasoning is riddled with misinformation and weird predictions but he keeps coming back to this word “optimism”. While he drags out the History Wars’ bread and butter about balancing the positive things Australia has done alongside the violence of the colonial past, his desire to squeeze in the use of “optimism” in other ways looks more forced.  

For example, as mentioned previously, the review of the Australian Curriculum was just completed in July. It was not until after the Australian public were invited to make submissions on the proposed changes to school offerings that Tudge began to get quite vocal about changing it. Which leads me to wonder, if he really wanted to make the curriculum more optimistic, why didn’t he begin this campaign before the review ended. A closer look at his reasoning shows that some of the items in the History curriculum he thought were pessimistic have already been removed in the latest draft. So why did he think they were worth talking about? 

He uses old news to argue that if the draft curriculum goes forward, students “won’t necessarily defend our democracy as previous generations have done” using data from the Lowry Institute to support his claim. Apart from being completely impossible to make that prediction, what Tudge doesn’t say is that the Lowry Institute poll on democracy shows young people’s faith in democracy is on the rise, trending up from 31% of the population believing in democracy in 2012, to 60% in 2021. So using Tudge’s logic, the current History curriculum is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. 

But by flipping a 60% win to a 40% deficit, Tudge can politik about the need for optimism. 

These are tactics, not ANOTHER education reform strategy

This points to education tactically being used to further the Federal Government’s re-election campaign, rather than a strategic move to save the soul of the nation. Tactics are localised responses to circumstances, whereas strategies are more stabilised and long term. So in other words, the federal cabinet ministers are finding issues to associate with the word “optimism” and putting it in front of as many voters as possible. For education, the History Wars have a history of going viral, even before the internet. And if you look at Tudge’s comments on Friday, the History curriculum is nestled in with the other two big viral topics – literacy and numeracy test scores. 

Ultimately, education cannot continue to be used by politicians this way. Education researchers and journalists need to work hard on holding these tactics up to the Australian public and pushing back on the use of words like “optimism”. While researching for this article, it became increasingly noticeable that the media has begun to use the word to describe the Government. And it’s not just the Murdoch press. Every time a journalist associates that word with the Federal Government, they are giving them free political advertising. 

This is just another electioneering policy announcement where Federal politicians have called for a review of the Australian Curriculum: History declaring the hearts and minds of Australia’s youth as under threat. This same rhetoric was used in the 1990s when Henry Reynolds and Keith Windschuttle faced off over the “black armband view of Australian history” in the proposed national curriculum. We need to start asking why this government sees the need to renew the History Wars while still pointing out the misinformation in their rhetoric. 

Education researchers need to look hard at their expert subjects and then pan out to see if they are simply being used as a pawn in a wider federal agenda. Education has been in a state of flux for many years now and this requires research that pre-empts, just as much as it reacts. That involves looking wider than the education portfolio. If we look outside of our silos, there’s some clues about where we are going.

Naomi Barnes is a lecturer in Literacy, Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology

Alan Tudge’s understanding of our history deserves a fail

ACARA, Alan Tudge, Curriculum review, teaching history, , , , , ,

The Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge says the draft History and Civics and Citizenship curriculum is not up to scratch. According to a letter seen by The Australian newspaper, Minister Tudge has suggested that the draft curriculum ‘diminishes Australia’s western, liberal and democratic values’. According  to Tudge, the curriculum provides a negative view about western civilisation placing emphasis on ‘slavery, imperialism and colonisation’.

He’s not happy with any of Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) draft curriculum but history came in for a belting.

Tudge also suggested that there has been an effort to remove or reframe historical events, emphasising ‘invasion theory’ over Australia Day. In addition, he is also concerned that Anzac Day is presented as ‘a contested idea, rather than the most sacred of all days’.

His comments are of particular concern to the Social and Citizenship Education Association of Australia (SCEAA).

SCEAA represents a diverse and experienced group of teachers, researchers and teacher educators from across Australia. The Australian Curriculum, and how it might best be taught is central to our work and advocacy. In this respect, we have provided detailed submissions regarding the  Australian Curriculum.. We are critical friends and do not hesitate to offer suggestions for improvements where we feel they are warranted. It is in this role,, and with a great deal of respect, that we respond to the Minister’s comments. In the case of History and Civics and Citizenship, we would argue that the Minister has mis-characterised aspects of the proposed History and Civics and Citizenship curricula. 

If we are to consider the Minister’s comments regarding Anzac Day, as one example, the evidence does not support his claims that it has been removed or reframed. For example, in Year 3, students are taught ‘How significant commemorations [such as Anzac Day] contribute to [Australian] identity and the content descriptor explicitly references ‘the importance’ of Anzac Day. 

This does not sound as if Anzac Day is being marginalised in the curriculum.

 There is an elaboration that allows teachers to explore the idea ‘that people have different points of view on some commemorations’. Whilst this is optional, its inclusion is consistent with the principles of critical thinking and engaging with multiple perspectives that are foundations of democratic societies. It does not demand the study of Anzac Day as a contested idea. In Year 9, students explore ‘The commemoration of World War I’. Part of this includes ‘different historical interpretations and contested debates about the nature and significance of the Anzac legend and the war’. The documents that comprise the curriculum are carefully articulated to be as close to neutral as possible; they don’t advance an ideological argument against Anzac Day.

Regarding the Minister’s concerns about ‘slavery, imperialism and colonisation within the curriculum, it is important to reiterate that within History and Civics and Citizenship there is a great deal of emphasis placed on critical thinking, and considering different points of view and perspectives. In History, especially, students must engage with concepts like ‘Continuity and change’, ‘Perspectives’ and ‘Contestability’. They must do so by applying historical inquiry and skills, which includes the analysis and use of sources, and the examination of perspective and interpretations. Again, these arguments about meaning and value are central to what it means to be an active and informed citizen and member of the community, and a student of History.    

Perhaps there is some confusion about what history is, and how it is meant to be taught? In the comments above, it appears that the Minister is suggesting that young people undertake no critical thinking about the centrality of Anzac Day (or anything else) in our culture, but solely experience it as an annual patriotic rite. This positions the study of history as something that is only celebratory and patriotic. While History can promote  feelings, it should also encourage reflection, thought and reasoned debate – such as, in this case, about the continued importance of Anzac commemoration in Australia today. This understanding better reflects the experiences of our members, who after all, are those entrusted to make the curriculum a reality and who lead ANZAC day celebrations in schools. There is highly respectful dialogue and interaction between schools, RSLs and others around Anzac Day, with many opportunities for educational conversations. Furthermore, the effective study of History is one that presents multiple sides which are supported by evidence, and invites critical analysis of those multiple views on the balance of evidence, in a way that neutralises biases as much as possible rather than amplifying bias one way or another. 

As Australian educational settings are super-diverse we need to embrace a curriculum that is not monocultural and embraces and critically explores and presents our history so that all learners can relate to it and be valued. History, at its most effective form of contribution to society, is a doorway into our past in ways that help us to make sense of our present and then enable us to make better informed decisions for our future. It is not about advocating any one view, itself. The  Australian Curriculum reflects this best practice approach.

This misunderstanding also applies to the Minister’s comments regarding Australia’s western democratic values. Again, an examination of the Australian Curriculum documents might correct this. Students in Year 3 through to Year 8  learn about government, politics and democracy in Australia. For example, in Year 3, ‘students explain how citizens contribute in their community’, the role of rules and the importance of making decisions democratically’. In Year 5 students explore ‘What is democracy in Australia, how does our democracy work, and why is voting in a democracy important’. A content descriptor outlines ‘the key values, and features of Australia’s democracy, including the election process and the responsibilities of electors’. In Year 6 ‘Students study the key institutions of Australia’s democratic government. They learn how State, Territory and Federal laws are made in a parliamentary system and the role of law and law enforcement’. There is an entire sub-strand in the Year 7 and 8 called ‘Government and Democracy’ which focuses on the key features of Australian democracy and government, and also the role of political parties and independent representatives. Students are also called upon to evaluate political and legal institutions (including in positive ways!) as they ‘Explain how democratic, political and legal systems uphold and enact values and processes, and how Australian citizens use these to contribute to their local, State/Territory or national community’.

Again, there is no evidence that this represents any particular ideology. It is hard to see how the curriculum exemplifies a ‘left-wing’ bias as represented in the media coverage. Instead, what it does do is strive to meet the twin goals of ‘active and informed’ citizens and membership of the community that are present in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration; nationally agreed goals for schooling agreed to by all state and territory Ministers of Education.. Students have the opportunity to recognise what is good about our current institutions and their past, but, perhaps more importantly, how they might strive to improve and participate as informed citizens in the democratic life of all Australians. This constant evaluation of systems and processes is essential to a healthy democratic system.

Whenever a new draft of a curriculum is opened for consultation, stakeholders from all backgrounds are invited to respond and raise their concerns and questions. Such action is to be encouraged, since contributions from diverse stakeholders,  (including teachers and their representatives) strengthen education in Australia as a whole. However, these contributions must be weighed against the content of the curriculum and the practice of teachers in their classrooms.  

Australians need informed, engaged citizens to contribute to a healthy and responsible democracy. We are committed to educating young people with these kinds of qualities through our teaching in both schools and teacher education institutions.

From left to right: Keith Heggart is an early career researcher with a focus on learning and instructional design, educational technology and civics and citizenship education. He is currently exploring the way that online learning platforms can assist in the formation of active citizenship amongst Australian youth. Keith is a former high school teacher, having worked as a school leader in Australia and overseas, in government and non-government sectors. In addition, he has worked as an Organiser for the Independent Education Union of Australia, and as an independent Learning Designer for a range of organisations. Peter Brett is an experienced History and Civics and Citizenship teacher educator and was involved in a variety of ways with the launch of citizenship education in England from 2002. He is a recent President of the Social and Citizenship Education Association of Australia [SCEAA] and a co-editor of Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences (Cengage, 2020). Sophie Fenton is an award winning founder, learning designer and researcher in education. She has taught History, Global Politics and Civics, as well as developing curriculum with VCAA and SEV. Today, she specialises in school design, curriculum adaptation and pedagogy innovation with a focus on human-centred design for the emerging cyber-physical world. 

Decodable or predictable: why reading curriculum developers must seize one

ACARA, Reading, teaching reading, ,

Despite the promise to ‘improve clarity’, ‘declutter’, and remove ‘ambiguous’ content, the new draft curriculum has left teachers guessing when it comes to when, and how, to use texts in the first two years of school. The requirement for teachers to choose between two types of texts remains in the proposed new curriculum, revealing a lack of understanding by the curriculum developers about the purpose and structure of each text. 

In the first two years of school, children require many opportunities to practise their phonics skills, which is achieved by reading decodable texts. Predictable texts, in comparison, are incompatible with phonics instruction and do not support beginning readers to master the written code for reading. Once the code has been established, children can move on to a broader range of reading material. If ACARA’s objective for the proposed curriculum is to provide ‘a clear and precise developmental pathway’ for reading, then references to predictable texts, and any reading strategies that require children to guess words from pictures and context, need to be removed from the current content descriptions where learning to read is the focus. 

Research we recently conducted revealed that there is confusion among teachers on how to use different types of texts in beginning reading instruction, which the current review of the national curriculum does little to address. While the draft curriculum signals a win for those advocating for more emphasis on systematic phonics instruction, the continued reference to predictable texts, and the associated whole language strategies known as the three-cueing system, is seen as a missed opportunity to align all reading related content to an established body of scientific knowledge. 

The Australian Curriculum National Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) chief, David de Carvalho claims that the draft curriculum English “allows teachers to choose a range of texts” to support the development of critical reading skills while also promoting the broader motivational and literary aspects of reading. However, rather than providing choice, the continued lack of guidance and clarification about when and how to use each text serves only to keep teachers guessing. Ironically, ‘guessing’ is one of the strategies that beginning readers must default to when trying to read words from texts that are not instructionally matched to the classroom phonics program. The features and structure of predictable texts, the earliest readers in many levelled reading systems currently used in Australian classrooms, promote memorisation rather than decoding and encourage beginning readers to guess words from pictures and context. Research has repeatedly shown that these strategies are not sustainable in the long term and that it is poor readers who are most disadvantaged when pictures are removed from the text and the capacity to memorise words reaches its limits.  

Text types

It is not so much choice that teachers require to meet the instructional needs of children, but the knowledge about how to use different texts for different purposes. Research has identified two sets of processes involved in reading proficiency: language comprehension and decoding. While literature facilitates the development of language related skills such as vocabulary and comprehension, and decodable texts scaffold children’s mastery of the alphabetic code, predictable texts contribute very little once children commence formal reading instruction. A clearly articulated curriculum would facilitate teachers’ ability to determine when to use a particular text for a particular purpose. 

Survey on teachers use of texts

The results of our research draw attention to this issue of how teachers use different types of texts to support beginning reading development. We surveyed 138 Western Australian Pre-primary and Year 1 teachers because we were concerned that the guidance on approaches to reading instruction and text types in the current curriculum was ambiguous and confusing. 

Teachers were asked about the approach they used to teach phonics, the type of texts and the strategies they used when teaching reading, and their beliefs about decodable and predictable texts. In Western Australia, teachers are directed by the Department of Education (DoE) to use systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) and, in our study, 93% of the teachers reported that they taught phonics using a SSP approach. 

On the basis of this approach to reading, we expected an equivalent number of teachers to use decodable texts. Surprisingly, a majority of teachers (56%) reported using both predictable and decodable texts to support children’s reading development. Of the teachers who only used decodable texts (25%), all but two used a range of strategies more suited to predictable texts. 

As expected, teachers who only used predictable texts (18%) used prompts associated with these texts, but they also used strategies more suitable for decodable text such as asking children to ‘sound out each letter’. This could be confusing for children when reading a text that doesn’t include words that can be read using current alphabetic knowledge.  Predictable texts feature high frequency (e.g., girl, where, as) and multisyllabic words (e.g., doctor, balloon, helicopter) that reflect common and relatable themes for young children, rather than words that align with a phonics teaching sequence. 

Fluency and texts

Two-thirds of the teachers in our research agreed with the statement that predictable texts promote fluency. This belief possibly accounts for the fact that so many teachers used predictable texts despite using a systematic synthetic phonics approach. While there is some evidence to suggest that predictable texts facilitate the development of fluency, the relationship is not well understood. 

When children first apply their knowledge of phonics to decodable texts, fluency does initially appear to be compromised.  Learning to read is hard work, and it takes at least two years of reading instruction before children reach a level of proficiency where they are able to apply their skills to the broader curriculum, or to what is commonly known as ‘reading to learn’. 

In contrast, the repetition of high frequency words and the predictive nature of words and sentences in predictable texts gives the impression that children are reading fluently as they memorise sentences that can be recited both while reading, and in the absence of the text. While alluring to teachers, the promotion of these strategies compromises the development of the alphabetic knowledge required for reading a complex orthography such as English, and as such should not be prioritised over careful and accurate decoding, despite the temptation to do so! 

A lack of fluency when learning a new skill is evident in many areas of learning, yet it seems to be less well tolerated in beginning reading instruction.  One possible explanation for this is the dominance of whole language reading theories, upon which the idea that learning to read is as natural as learning to speak has been promoted. This has resulted in the proliferation of a range of instructional reading strategies that are no longer supported by research, but as our research showed, continued to be used by classroom teachers.  It is our contention that the continued use of these strategies is a direct result of the ambiguity evident in the curriculum documents. It has simply not kept up with the research and will continue to act as a barrier to effective implementation unless clarity around the use of texts is provided. 

Which books, and when?

Children learn about the correspondence between speech and print by being exposed to books from an early age. At the pre-reading stage, prior to knowing that letters can also represent print, and that there is a predictable relationship between them, children benefit from being read to from a wide range of books, including children’s literature that features predictable text. There are many great examples to choose from, including well known classics such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and We Went Walking. 

When teachers read books with rhythmic patterned language, children begin to understand that each printed word on the page represents a spoken word. This helps children to understand the segmental nature of speech, a valuable first step in their reading journey.  The predictable texts currently used by teachers to meet Foundation and Year one curriculum objectives, while far less engaging than children’s literature, are more appropriate for children who are at this stage of their reading development because they do not require children to actually use their knowledge of the alphabet to read. While teachers can, and should, continue to read children’s literature, including books with predictable text and rhyming patterns to children beyond the preschool years, there is no instructional value in using ‘levelled’ predictable readers to support children’s development once formal reading instruction has commenced. 

When children enter the alphabetic stage of reading, they must transition from being read to, and joining in, to becoming the reader of the text. During this stage, children benefit from text that supports decoding as a primary strategy for reading. Decodable texts have a specific purpose: to scaffold children’s mastery and application of the alphabetic code in reading. Once children have mastered the alphabetic code, the reading of natural language texts, with more diverse vocabulary and complex language structures, should be encouraged. It is crucial from this point that motivation for reading is maintained. 

The disconnect between the use of text and the teaching approach being employed as well as the inconsistent use of strategies to support children when reading evident in our research can be seen as a direct result of the requirement in the curriculum to use both decodable and predictable texts. It is likely that without a change to the current curriculum, this will continue to be the case. 

DISCLOSURE: Simmone Pogorzelski is a product developer for MultiLit Pty Ltd which develops decodable readers, and other reading materials.

References

Cheatham, J. P., & Allor, J. H. (2012). The influence of decodability in early reading text on reading achievement: a  review of the evidence. Reading and Writing, 25(9), 2223-2246. doi:10.1007/s11145-011-9355-2

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, Findings, and Issues. Scientific Studies of Reading,   9(2), 167-188. doi:10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4

Hempenstall, K. (2003). The three-cueing system : trojan horse? Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities, 8(2), 15–23.

Mesmer, H. A. (2005). Text decodability and the first-grade reader. Reading & Writing   Quarterly, 21(1), 61-86. doi:10.1080/10573560590523667

Pogorzelski, S., Main, S. & Hill, S. (2021). A survey of Western Australian teachers’ use of texts in supporting beginning readers. Issues in Educational Research, 31(1), 204-223. http://www.iier.org.au/iier31/pogorzelski.pdf

From left to right:

Simmone Pogorzelski is currently completing a PhD on the role of decodable texts in early reading development at Edith Cowan University (ECU). Simmone is a sessional academic in the School of Education at ECU and works as a product developer for MultiLit. Susan Main, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Her teaching and research interests include preparing pre-service and in-service teachers to teach children with diverse abilities, including evidence-based approaches to literacy instruction, managing challenging behaviour, and using technology to facilitate learning. Janet Hunter, PhD, teaches and researches in the area of literacy education at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.  Currently, she teaches both in-service and pre-service teachers.  Research interests focus on the development of teacher professional knowledge and how teachers can support students who are failing to make adequate progress in literacy development.