On 15th April, the National Curriculum Board was formed with a mandated to oversee the development of a rigorous, world-class national curriculum for all the Australian Students from kindergarten to 712, starting with the key learning areas of English, Mathematics, the Sciences and History. Pragmatism, the board was to draw the best performance from each State and territory into a single curriculum to ensure every child has access to the highest quality learning programmes to lift achievement and drive ups school retention rates.
Australian educational leaders like in many other countries have a challenge of coming up with an authentic national curriculum which is best, and borrows from the Australian states and territories. Such a curriculum should inspire learners to have the desire to learn and continue learning and apply the knowledge in work and social environment. To come up with the type of curriculum which should serve Australia best, educators need to address several issues, like what has brought the agenda of having a national curriculum, global and national contexts which the curriculum should respond to, the need and purpose of the curriculum, best hopes for students and how to implement the curriculum success fully.
There had been differences in approached and what is taught in various states as far as the Australian national curriculum is concerned. The states emphasized more on local priorities than on voluntary national agreements. The Adelaide Declaration on national goals for schooling in the twenty first century (MCEE77A, 1999) felt schooling should bring out ideas of ethics, efficacy, self confidence, decision making and citizenship by targeting basic skills, vocational and enterprise skills.
In the past, creating a national curriculum has not been easy, due to some factors that have to be considered, like the easiness of students transferring to another state, the financial costs and need to create a sector base for citizenship, and...
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