Doubling down on a failed response

Dear Member,

As a result of the latest review of Australia’s National Curriculum, the Australian Institute for Progress is calling for the abolition of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Review Authority.

You might wonder why we are writing to you as a state member of parliament when this is a national curriculum. This is because the states and territories form the majority part of the Review Authority, and have the primary responsibility for delivering education.

If the first sign of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, how are we to describe the state of mind that does the same failed policy twice as hard and expects an even better result than last time? Yet that is what the Curriculum Review is proposing.

Education is probably our single biggest policy failure of the last 50 years.

Our results lag our competitors in South-East Asia, to the extent that a Year 9 student in Singapore or China will outperform a Year 12 student in Australia. How is doubling down on our current approach going to bridge this gap?

Similar disparities prevail when comparing today’s students with previous generations. It is not that Singapore or China have developed smarter students, or better ways of teaching, but that we have abandoned what works in favour of fads and academic theories.

This abortive Curriculum Review must lead to a rethink of how we produce school curricula. The national approach is not working, and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is no longer fit for purpose.

It should be abolished and the education minister need to start again with a fresh approach.

We also find ourselves in the least secure international situation for three generations.

Our education system needs to reinforce our successful cultural values, and give our youngest generations the skill and knowledge they need to continue Australia’s success and security.

The current curriculum, and its proposed successor, do not fulfil these requirements.

The AIP submission to The Australian Curriculum Review Consultation (which you can download by clicking here) makes a number of points including the following:

1. Neither of the current nor proposed curricula fulfil the role of preparing good well-rounded citizens with basic academic and cultural knowledge, productive attitudes, and problem-solving skills.
2. Both curricula tend to usurp the role of parents in providing children with moral and ethical direction, and that tendency is increasing.
3. The cross-curricula priorities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture; Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia; and Sustainability are arbitrarily chosen, superfluous to most areas of study, and reinforce ideological, not educational, values.
4. In particular the ATSI Histories and Culture takes up disproportionate space in already crowded curricula, imparts little useful knowledge, and leads to a treatment of, for example, Aboriginal writers, that is racist, characterising them with racial stereotypes.
5. The change in teaching methods, particularly in English, where phonics and direct instruction are not accepted as the basis for teaching reading and writing; and in Mathematics, where problem solving is prioritised over number facts; will do nothing to cure the up to four-year deficits in education of our students against our competitors in South-East Asia.
6. Understanding of European, and in particular British, culture is marginalised in the curriculum, most glaringly in English Literature. Yet this culture permeates our legal, political, social, moral and ethical structures. These curricula are producing cultural orphans.

The submission can be downloaded by clicking here.

For further information please contact Graham Young 0411 104 801 or graham.young@aip.asn.au.