Australia Grapples With National Content Standards
Political parties offer separate approaches to achieving uniformity.
As the federal election season heats up in Australia, politicians are peddling dueling plans for improving the country’s education system. But both the current government, controlled by the conservative Liberal Party, and the opposition Labor Party agree on one thing: the need for a national framework for ensuring consistency in what students are taught.
More than two decades after the first attempt at national standards, Australian educators and officials are again debating the need for more uniform definitions of what students should know and be able to do across the country’s eight states and territories.
Like the push for national standards in the United States, the Australian debate pits the ideals of national consistency and equity against the authority of states over the content and administration of schooling. It has also revived dormant tensions over who is better suited to craft...
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