Chadwick About-face On National Curriculum
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday August 6, 1993
The NSW Minister for Education, Mrs Chadwick, wants to resume a national approach to school curriculums one month after a meeting of State education ministers abandoned it.
"I truly believe (national collaboration) will be back on the agenda at the December meeting," she said.
But she said she would not try to persuade Coalition education ministers to support her move.
"I may be the education minister who's been around the longest, but other States' minder or mother I'm not," she said. "Other States will clearly make their own decisions as to what they see important."
At last month's meeting in Perth, the Coalition ministers voted as a bloc and overruled the minority Labor ministers who were against abandoning the national approach to curriculum.
Recent Coalition victories in Victoria and Western Australia gave the Coalition ministers a majority for the first time in more than a decade.
However, Mrs Chadwick said she hoped the other States would favour resuming the national approach, "because it clearly gives a far more national perspective to (the curriculum)".
The Federal and State education ministers will meet again in December, to decide on the form of a new ministerial education council. Mrs Chadwick said she would support the national approach at this meeting.
"In NSW we're currently giving a lot of thought to what sort of shape of ministerial council we think would be sensible, what sort of standing committees we think would be sensible. And, clearly, the imperatives of the national training agenda and the national (curriculum) frameworks are very important," she said.
Work on developing a national curriculum has been in train for five years.
The curriculum consists of two documents covering each of eight subjects. The national statement provides an overview of subject content. The national profile provides a series of benchmarks describing desirable student progress
The national curriculum has been endorsed by meetings of education ministers in the past, because it was considered desirable to bring some consistency to Australia's many education systems, and because of the savings coming from eliminating duplication.
Mrs Chadwick said NSW had already gone a considerable way towards incorporating the national curriculum documents in NSW syllabuses.
"My informal checkings around the States suggest to me that in terms of the national (curriculum) frameworks and in terms of getting down to the nitty-gritty, I think NSW is a long way ahead of any other State in Australia, even those States where ministers are ardently supporting national collaboration and bemoaning the decisions that were taken at the July meeting," she said.
"I would defy them to demonstrate they are anywhere near NSW in terms of implementation. We are, in my assessment, a good six months ahead of any other State in the nation."
A spokesman for the Federal Minister for Schools, Mr Free, said the minister welcomed any opportunity to discuss the results of Perth with State ministers and hoped that a national approach to the co-ordination of national curriculum was not irretrievably off the agenda.
© 1993 Sydney Morning Herald