Getting the Schools Back to Basics

My message today is a simple one—the Howard government has got to go! Public education cannot afford another three years of this government. John Howard’s attempts to unpick every skerrick of the Whitlam achievements and to reframe Australian culture into something of his own choosing continued unabated during 2006 and have reached a point which most of us would not have imagined possible ten years ago. —Pat Byrne, Federal President, Australian Education Union, 2007

IF, AS THE APHORISM suggests, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then it is obvious that school education is a key policy area where the Howard government succeeded; why else would Kevin Rudd, when Opposition leader, spend much of the twelve months preceding the 2007 federal election copying the government’s education agenda?

Unlike Mark Latham’s politics of envy, with the hitlist of non-government schools he took to the 2004 election, Rudd and his education spokesman, Stephen Smith, spent much of 2007 staking the same territory as the conservatives. The ALP promised to maintain the Howard government’s Socio-Economic Status formula to fund non-government schools, argued that schools and teachers needed to be held accountable for results and for a back-to-basics approach to curriculum, especially in relation to a more traditional approach to teaching history and literature. While the ALP promised to adopt a collaborative approach to working with the states and territories, unlike the Howard government that often enforced policy initiatives by tying them to Commonwealth funding, the ALP’s education stance mirrored many of the Coalition government’s initiatives.

That the Howard government set the agenda on issues like parents’ right to choose between government and non-government schools, the need for a more academically focused approach to curriculum and the need to hold schools accountable and to monitor and raise standards, especially with literacy and numeracy, is beyond dispute. Unfortunately, it is also the case that in the final year or two of the Howard government, the then Opposition was allowed to take control of the education debate and to nullify education as an electoral disadvantage. For much of 2007, the Coalition government, except for the Prime Minister’s occasional involvement, appeared to be missing in action when it came to education and those policies that were released failed to gain widespread support or community traction.

BENCHMARKS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

THE CONSTITUTION gives the states control over education and, as a result, the Commonwealth government does not employ any teachers or manage any schools. The various state education departments and boards of studies have a history of acting autonomously and, while initiatives like the “Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling for the Twenty-First Century” and national projects like the “Discovering Democracy Civics and Citizenship” program and “Statements of Learning”, where states have to ensure that local curriculum documents embed nationally agreed curriculum outcome statements, seek to bring about national consistency, it is difficult for the Commonwealth government to determine what happens in the nation’s classrooms. Attempts to challenge the status quo are made more difficult by the cultural Left’s dominance in education, evidenced by its control over faculties of teacher education, professional associations and teacher unions like the Australian Education Union.

One notable exception is the Howard government’s role in shifting the focus in the education debate from measuring success in terms of money invested (inputs) to how effective schools are at teaching children to be literate and numerate (outcomes). Under David Kemp’s tenure as education minister, the government persuaded the states and territories to introduce national benchmark testing, initially in literacy and numeracy at Years 3, 5 and 7, to monitor and evaluate learning outcomes. While the testing can be criticised for setting the benchmark so low that most students were guaranteed success (the benchmark was set at what was termed “minimum standards of performance below which students will have difficulty progressing satisfactorily at school”, unlike the US National Assessment of Educational Progress tests that measure three levels of performance) the testing heralded an important change in Australian education.

For the first time, schools and education systems were held publicly accountable for performance. David Kemp successfully argued that the best way to assist those educationally most at risk, such as children from non-English-speaking backgrounds and working-class and Indigenous children was to make sure they mastered the basics represented by the three R’s—reading, writing and arithmetic. Beginning in 1999, national benchmarking tests have been held every year, and such is their value that they have been extended, beginning in 2008, to include Year 9 and to replace existing state and territory tests. National testing has also been extended to other areas such as civics and science.

While teacher unions and state governments have refused to allow league tables ranking school performance, similar to what the Blair government introduced in the UK where schools are compared according to results, nevertheless the veil of secrecy surrounding how well schools teach has been removed. Such is the success of the Howard government in this area that there is a growing consensus amongst ALP governments that performance needs to be made public; either measured in terms of comparing “like” schools—those with a similar socio-economic profile—or in terms of “valueadded”, where the performance of a group of students is monitored over time and judgments made as to whether the school has improved performance above what might be normally expected.

Those familiar with Australia’s adoption of an outcomes- based education (OBE) model of curriculum, in opposition to the more academically rigorous syllabus approach, will know that the politically-correct OBE approach abhors the type of competition associated with passing and failing students. Instead of students being graded and ranked against each other numerically, where 4 out of 10 or 49 per cent means fail, all students are guaranteed success as teachers are made to report on performance in terms of vague and innocuous descriptors like “not yet established”, “shows evidence” and “consolidating”. In addition to testing, a second area where the Howard government successfully influenced the education debate relates to forcing states and territories to introduce assessment where students are graded A to E and to prepare student reports free of educational jargon.

Leading into the 2004 election, the then Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, released a campaign policy that promised to force states and territories to implement an assessment system where students were graded A to E. Notwithstanding the complaints of the Australian Education Union, which argued that failing students was bad for their self-esteem, all state and territories eventually implemented the policy. Such was the policy’s success that the federal ALP, in its policy document “Federal Labor’s Commitment to Lift School Standards”, released the weekend before the 2007 election, embraced A to E reporting on the basis that, “For parents and the public, assessments reported A, B, C, D and E are clear and unambiguous.”

SCHOOL CHOICE

IN HIS 2008 IRVING KRISTOL LECTURE, at the American Institute Dinner in Washington, John Howard outlined those policy areas in which he felt his government had succeeded. In relation to school choice, the ex-Prime Minister stated, “Our funding policies have, in practice, produced the same outcome as education vouchers by significantly expanding the choices available to parents of relatively modest means.”

During the course of the Howard government, in part based on the government’s commitment to properly fund non-government schools and to make it easier to establish such schools by abolishing the ALP’s New Schools Policy (a policy designed to make it more difficult to establish non-government schools), enrolments in the non-government school sector grew at a significant rate. According to ABS figures released in late February 2008, between 1997 and 2007 the number of full-time students attending non-government schools grew by 21.9 per cent, while the figure for government schools was 1.7 per cent. Another way to measure enrolments relates to the fact that in 1995, 71 per cent of full-time students attended government schools, whereas by 2005 the figure had declined to 67 per cent and by 2007 66.4 per cent, with some commentators suggesting that unless governments take action to make state schools more attractive or make it more difficult for non-government schools to operate, the trend away from government schools will only increase. Indeed, such has been the Howard government’s success pressing the case for school choice that Professor Max Angus from Edith Cowan University concludes, in a paper prepared for the New South Wales Public Education Alliance, “Belief in the value of school choice is so deeply entrenched that no government for the foreseeable future is likely to oppose it.”

Not unexpectedly, the Australian Education Union and professional groups like the Australian Curriculum Studies Association are opposed to governments funding non-government schools. Such cultural-Left groups regularly attacked the Howard government’s support for parental choice as elitist and discriminatory, leading to a situation where government schools were becoming “residualised”—while so-called wealthy, privileged parents can afford non-government schools, the marginalised and disadvantaged are left with under-resourced and increasingly less popular state schools as a secondrate choice to educate their children. Mirroring the politics of envy associated with Mark Latham’s hit-list of non-government schools, the AEU and its fellow travellers also argue that the increased market share gained by the non-government system is because of what they describe as overly generous Commonwealth funding leading to superior physical resources and smaller classes.

Ignored are various reports evaluating the reasons parents choose non-government schools that suggest that funding has little to do with such choice. Chief amongst the reasons influencing parents are that non-government schools, when compared to government schools, are more academically successful, able to inculcate values more in tune with those of the home, have a rich cocurricular range of activities, better discipline and, in most cases, a religious affiliation. Also ignored in arguing that government schools have suffered as a result of the Commonwealth’s support for non-government schools is the fact that state governments are primarily responsible for funding state schools (based on the 2003-04 figures state and territory governments provide 91.1 per cent of funding to state schools). If the teacher unions are genuinely concerned about increasing funding to government schools, one wonders why they have not mounted an equally aggressive campaign arguing that state governments (all currently ALP) need to invest more.

Such has been the success of the Howard government’s policy supporting parents’ right to choose between government and non-government schools that the federal ALP, leading up to the 2007 election, announced it would support such choice by endorsing the government’s Socio-Economic Status formula used to fund non-government schools (at least until 2012). To quote the ALP election policy document “Federal Labor’s Commitment to Lift School Standards”: “Federal Labor is committed to the current funding formula and will ensure that no school loses one dollar under the next four-year funding agreement.” Such has been the growth of the non-government school sector, especially low-fee-paying, non-denominational schools in many marginal electorates, that it is obvious that the ALP, under the control of Kevin Rudd, and much to the chagrin of the true believers, considers political pragmatism more important than political ideals.

THE CULTUREWARS AND THE CURRICULUM

AT THE START OF 2004, Prime Minister Howard suggested that one reason for the popularity of non-government schools was because government schools had become too politically correct: “People are looking increasingly to send their kids to independent schools for a combination of reasons. For some of them, it’s to do with the values-driven thing; they feel that government schools have become too politically correct and too values-neutral.” While all approaches to education involve values and therefore the comment about education being values-neutral can be criticised, the point about the school curriculum becoming a victim of the culture wars is correct. It should also be noted that many non-government schools have long since adopted some of the more fashionable excesses of the PC movement, including “sorry days”, affirmative action for women and programs related to environmental awareness and the supposed dangers of global warming.

Readers of past issues of Quadrant dealing with the politically correct nature of the school curriculum (including “The Culture Wars in the Schools”, April 2005, “Sociology One Meets Othello”, July-August 2006, and “Why History Needs an Overhaul”, December 2006) will understand how successful the cultural Left has been in subverting the more traditional liberalhumanist view of education. Indeed, so successful has the Left’s long march been that Pat Byrne, immediate past President of the Australian Education Union, was able to boast at a 2005 AEU conference in Queensland, “Right-wing commentators like Kevin Donnelly rail against us with such vitriol because we have succeeded in influencing curriculum development … The conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum.”

Such is the control the cultural Left has over the curriculum, and the education system more broadly represented by boards of studies, teacher training institutes and professional associations, that the Howard government and the Prime Minister, notwithstanding four consecutive election victories, became a regular target of abuse and vitriol. The Australian Education Union, acting as a sub-branch of the ALP, regularly mounted marginal-seat campaigns against the Coalition government, and the union’s curriculum policy attacked a competitive, academic approach to learning as elitist, bourgeois and instrumental in reinforcing capitalist hegemony over the disadvantaged and dispossessed. During her reign as AEU Federal President, Pat Byrne often attacked Howard and his government’s education agenda with comments such as: “There is no reason to believe that Howard understands the tension between rampant individualism and democracy” (2007); “When I was asked to talk to you today, the brief I was given was ‘Talk about public education and give John Howard a couple of whacks’” (2005); and “As a result of the public vitriol meted out by Nelson and his minuscule band of supporters, very few people are presently speaking in defence of Australian curriculum” (2006).

In one notorious incident, Wayne Sawyer, the then editor of English in Australia, the journal of the national English teachers’ association, argued that classroom teachers had failed in their duty to teach young people how to think clearly and logically, as many of them, apparently, had voted for a return of the Howard government in 2004:

What does it mean for us and our ability to create a questioning, critical generation that those who brought us balaclava’d security guards, Alsatians and Patrick’s Stevedoring could declare themselves the representatives of the workers and be supported by the electorate?
Three years before, Howard had headlined the non-existent children overboard, he had put race firmly on the agenda as an election issue and cynically manipulated the desperation and poverty of our Pacific neighbours. What does it mean for us and our ability to create a questioning, critical, ethical citizenry that that kind of deception is rewarded?

Professional organisations like the Australian Curriculum Studies Association consistently argued against the Howard government’s polices on literacy and numeracy testing and supporting parental choice. Publications like Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia (1998), containing papers by a who’s who of cultural Left sympathisers including Eva Cox, Jean Blackburn, Sharan Burrow, Ann Morrow, Alan Reid, Allan Luke and Simon Marginson, and described in its preface as “an unashamedly partisan book”, argue that concerns about falling standards are a manufactured crisis and that supporting non-government schools is a thinly disguised attempt to destroy the state system.

WHILE STATE AND TERRITORY governments, through their respective boards of studies, control the curriculum, both in terms of what is taught and how it is assessed, Prime Minister Howard played a major role in the public debate against the ideological excesses of the culture wars. In relation to literature being subverted, a situation where everything from graffiti and SMS messages to Shakespeare’s plays are labelled as “texts” and deconstructed in terms of power relations and the trinity of gender, ethnicity and class, the then Prime Minister championed the more traditional approach associated with the classics.

In April 2006, interviewed on ABC radio, the Prime Minister argued, “I share the views of many people about the so-called postmodernism … I just wish that independent education authority didn’t succumb on occasions to the political correctness that it appears to succumb to”. The Prime Minister’s stance was endorsed by the Australian playwright David Williamson, somebody not normally considered a supporter of the Coalition government.

History teaching was a second area of the curriculum that the Prime Minister felt strongly about, evidenced by his 2006 Australia Day speech where he argued that history teaching in schools needed a “root and branch renewal”. The Prime Minister especially criticised the lack of a strong and coherent narrative in the way history was being taught, the focus on what had become a “fragmented stew of themes and issues” and the prevalence of a “postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated”. John Howard’s commitment to students being taught in an objective and balanced way about the nation’s history led to the Canberra History Summit in 2007 and the subsequent establishment of an eminent Australians group to detail an exemplary history curriculum for Years 9 and 10 that would be mandated for all Australian schools.

The Prime Minister was also critical of Australia’s adoption of outcomes-based education, especially as it was being implemented in Western Australia, describing it as “gobbledegook”. Speaking at the Centre for Independent Studies in May 2007, Howard made no bones about where he stood when he said, “I’m an avowed education traditionalist. I believe in high academic standards, competitive examinations, teacherdirected lessons based on traditional disciplines, clear and readable curriculum material and strong but fair policies on school discipline.”

Whereas the cultural Left embraced a politically correct and dumbed-down approach to curriculum, so prevalent in Australia since the development of the Keating government’s national curriculum in the early to mid-1990s, such was John Howard’s impact on the debate (in addition to a campaign run by the Australian in defence of standards and the need for an academically rigorous curriculum) that the ALP, at state and national level, copied his approach.

At the state level, in particular Tasmania and Western Australia, such was the political damage caused by the adoption of an outcomes-based education model of curriculum, otherwise know as Essential Learnings, that the respective education ministers, Paula Wriedt and Ljiljanna Ravlich, lost their portfolios and the two governments promised to adopt a more rigorous and balanced approach to curriculum. The then New South Wales Education Minister, Mary Tebbutt, argued in 2006 against adopting a national curriculum as she considered New South Wales’ more traditional syllabus approach superior to OBE; in 2007 the Queensland education minister promised a back-to-basics approach to English, one where the place of literature was respected and the role of “deconstructing texts” in terms of “theory” would be reduced.

Such was the success of the Prime Minister’s campaign for increased accountability and a more conservative approach to education, one where the subject disciplines have centre place as opposed to vague and generic competencies— such as being “futures-oriented” and “socially just”—that the ALP state governments in September 2007 released Federalist Paper 2: The Future of Schooling in Australia, a paper that copies much of the Howard government’s agenda. The paper offers a blueprint for what is termed a “collaborative approach to promote high quality schooling across Australia”.

While not going as far as some of the Howard government proposals, such as mandating Australian history by tying states’ acceptance to funding and calling for a merit-based pay system where teachers are financially rewarded for improving learning outcomes, the ALP document adopts a conservative approach to education. The paper argues that education has to deal with “the spiritual, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life” and, while nodding in the direction of a progressive, child-centred view of education, captured by the term “personalised learning”, the paper argues that students need to acquire the type of “deep understanding” associated with “a particular subject discipline that shapes the way in which experts represent problems in the discipline as well as how they solve them”.

Similar to arguments put by conservative commentators for some years about the need for transparency and accountability in school performance, the ALP paper agrees that student and school reports need to be clear, meaningful and in plain English. The paper also agrees that how well individual schools perform should be made public—either by measuring the “value-added” impact of schools or by comparing the performance of “like schools”. Mirroring the Howard government’s call for a national curriculum, the paper also endorses the idea of what are termed “core content and achievement standards” at key stages of schooling, beginning with English, mathematics and science.

Additional evidence of the ALP’s desire to mimic John Howard’s views on education can be seen in a number of public comments by both Kevin Rudd, when Opposition Leader, and Julia Gillard, after assuming the position of Deputy Leader and Minister for Education. Kevin Rudd argued that: teacher unions would not be involved in developing a national curriculum; increased education funding would be tied to the states’ raising standards; improving Australia’s education ranking in international tests was a priority; no nongovernment school would suffer reduced funding; and that it was, “trendoid, politically correct social engineering to believe that in any way testing is inappropriate in school circumstances”.

After assuming the role as Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, once again reflecting the Howard government’s success in setting the education agenda, agreed that literacy and numeracy skills are the foundation stones of education and that “We need to make sure that all kids end up with all of the basic skills … You’ve got to be able to read, you’ve got to be able to write, you’ve got to be able to do maths.” Ms Gillard describes herself as an “educational traditionalist” and in relation to the history wars, suggests that Australia had been “settled”, not “invaded”.

During 2006, such was the public and political tide against Australia’s ideologically driven, politically correct approach to the curriculum, that the Australian Curriculum Studies Association organised two seminars involving the usual coterie of educrats in an attempt to re-capture the debate and to exert control over any future educational agenda. At the first seminar, held in February 2006, once again the media and critics of the Left’s view of education were attacked for what Geoff Masters, the head of the Australian Council for Educational Research, described as imposing a manufactured “feeling of crisis in education”.

At a second conference in the same year, Alan Reid, an executive member of ASCA, showed a similar inability to address the real issues by arguing that concerns about standards were as a result of “a conservative backlash in the media which is really pushing us back to fixed syllabuses and a didactic curriculum which conservative government forces are helping to promote”.

EVALUATION

IF THE SUCCESS AND DURABILITY of Prime Minister Howard’s impact on Australian education is measured by the way federal and state ALP governments, especially under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, have copied his agenda, then it is clear that Howard has left future generations an outstanding legacy. While it will take a good deal more to reduce the cultural Left’s stranglehold over our education system, especially in teacher education and the way curriculum is developed, at the level of public discussion and political policy making there has been a sea-change.

Granted, while much has been achieved in areas like school choice, defining success in terms of outcomes and revealing the excesses of the political-correctness movement, especially in subjects like history and literature, there are also a number of mistakes and flaws that need to be noted. At the political level, during 2007 and during Julie Bishop’s reign as Minister for Education, the Coalition government allowed the ALP to steal its clothes, as it were, and to capture and lead the public debate. Displaying a good deal of chutzpah, Kevin Rudd was able to paint himself as an educational conservative, mimicking established Howard polices like A to E reporting, reducing the influence of the teacher unions, guaranteeing parents’ right to choose non-government schools, and holding schools accountable for performance, without any effective counter-attack.

Ms Bishop also failed to display the tenacity, insight and conviction of the then Prime Minister, when it came to engaging the cultural Left in battles over education. Early in her role as Minister for Education, Ms Bishop was reported as saying that the much-criticised outcomes- based education model of curriculum represented “a wonderful philosophy” as it embodied “student-centred learning and [was] very popular overseas and interstate”. Some months later, Ms Bishop appeared confused over whether the curriculum had been subverted by those committed to an ideologically driven, politically correct approach when she first included, then left out, a reference in a speech delivered to a history teachers’ conference in Perth stating that much of the curriculum, “came straight from Chairman Mao”. In arguing the case for a national curriculum, in particular how history should be taught, Ms Bishop argued that the work should be undertaken by what she termed the “sensible centre”—ignoring the degree to which the education establishment in Australia had been captured by the cultural Left and the ALP’s record of taking no prisoners when it comes to developing policy.

The Canberra History Summit also illustrates the way in which, in the last years of the Howard government, those in charge appeared to lose sight of the agenda and send mixed messages about the curriculum. The impetus for the summit arose from the Prime Minister’s call for a “root and branch renewal” of the subject and fears expressed in the daily media that students were no longer receiving a coherent, balanced understanding of our history. In taking responsibility for the summit, not only did Julie Bishop fail to ensure a credible outcome but, as argued by two of the summit’s participants, Mark Lopez and Greg Melleuish, the structure and management of the summit ensured that many of those educators sympathetic to the New History were in control. Some time after the summit, Prime Minister Howard established an eminent group of Australians to take charge of designing an Australian History curriculum for Years 9 and 10.

Additional examples of failing to manage the education debate in the final two years of the Howard government relate to a number of reviews, including an evaluation of Year 12 curriculum content and achievement standards and a review into the feasibility of introducing a national certificate of education. In both reviews, the Australian Council for Educational Research, with Geoff Masters as the lead consultant, was given the task of carrying out the projects. The ACER is very much part of Australia’s education establishment, with a good deal of its work funded by state governments, and Geoff Masters has been a staunch defender of the status quo in education. At the height of the campaign against Western Australia’s extension of outcomes-based education into Years 11 and 12, Masters wrote an article defending OBE that was widely circulated and used as evidence in support of the Carpenter government’s plans. Masters was also involved in the two ACSA seminars held in 2006 in an attempt to recapture the education debate from so-called conservatives and a media accused of promoting a manufactured crisis.

Not surprisingly, the ACER report evaluating Year 12 concluded that there was no ideological bias in how Year 12 subjects were taught, especially in relation to literature, which the Prime Minister had criticised for being unduly influenced by postmodern theory. The report also failed to address concerns over standards by failing to evaluate the relative academic integrity of the various state certificates and how successful they are in preparing students for tertiary study. The ACER report into a proposed Year 12 Australian Certificate of Education also defended the status quo by recommending a gradual, evolutionary approach to any national certificate to be controlled by the usual stakeholders and representative bodies.

CONCLUSION

NOTWITHSTANDING the concerns outlined above, the educational achievements of Prime Minister Howard and his governments deserve to be applauded. In the face of a system suffering from provider-capture and often hostile state and territory governments, the Commonwealth government shaped Australia’s education agenda for the future and achieved a good deal in supporting parents’ right to choose non-government schools, introducing national literacy and numeracy testing, and leading the fight in the culture wars against a politically correct, sub-standard curriculum. Indeed, Howard’s views on education have been so persuasive and influential that the ALP, under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, has copied the conservatives’ agenda. But can the ALP be trusted to deliver?

At the level of rhetoric, Prime Minister Rudd’s call for an education revolution and policy documents like Federalist Paper 2 are attractive and persuasive. Who could disagree with the need to raise standards, to make schools and systems more accountable, to introduce a more academically rigorous curriculum and to reduce the influence of teacher unions like the Australian Education Union? I have been arguing the very same case for years.

Looking ahead, though, there are doubts whether ALP governments will be able to achieve a similar kind of transformation that occurred during the Howard years or to embrace further much-needed reforms such as school vouchers and charter schools. While Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard publicly support non-government schools and the current funding arrangements (at least until 2012), there is evidence that the new Commonwealth government will try to reduce the independence and attractiveness of non-government schools. The ALP’s policy of co-location, where government and non-government schools will be pressured to share curriculum and resources in order to receive funding, has the potential to blur the distinction between the two systems and to impose an additional layer of bureaucratic interference on non-government schools.

At the state level, moves to introduce more stringent and politically-correct methods of accrediting and certifying non-government schools, where, for example, non-government schools are made to implement equity and social justice policies related to enrolment, are also cause for concern. The argument by many on the cultural Left that government funding to non-government schools should be reduced to take into account the private and philanthropic support such schools receive also has the potential to reduce the viability of the non-government school system.

In relation to curriculum, the establishment of the National Curriculum Board, responsible for developing a national curriculum from kindergarten to Year 12, is also cause for concern. While the announcement of the intention to develop a national curriculum was made in January 2008, the timeline set out involves establishing the Board by January 2009, with the new curriculum, initially in English, mathematics, the sciences and history, being finalised by the start of 2011—an impossible timeline, based on previous attempts to develop a national approach to curriculum. The appointment of Barry McGaw and Tony Mackay as Chair and Deputy Chair of the board responsible for developing a national curriculum means that two of the more influential educators responsible for the current condition of education in Australia have been given the task.

Tony Mackay, as President of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association and closely involved with the UK’s New Labour think-tank Demos, has been a strong defender of the status quo in education and initiatives like Australia’s adoption of outcomes-based education. Barry McGaw, when past head of the ACER, was largely missing in action in the debates about falling standards, and his reviews of the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales senior school certificates, both initiated by ALP governments, have been criticised for reducing academic rigour and weakening the place of competitive, external examinations.

Prime Minister Rudd’s statement that the national board will involve twelve members, representative of the states and territories as well as Catholic and independent sectors, suggests that the board will be captured by the usual vested-interest groups with little inclination or ability to introduce anything innovative or radically different in terms of what will be taught in the nation’s classrooms.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is Director of Melbourne-based Education Strategies and writes regularly for the Australian. His book Dumbing Down, published by Hardie Grant Books, was launched by Prime Minister Howard in February 2007.