EdWeek: Australia Grapples With National Content Standards

Interesting that this topic is a hot issue in other countries too...

Australia Grapples With National Content Standards
Political parties offer separate approaches to achieving uniformity.
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

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 academic standards and assessments.

“The debate over national standards symbolizes the federal-and-state-relations issue, which is august because the constitution gave the control of education to states and territories,” said Susan Mann, the executive director of the Curriculum Corp., a Melbourne-based independent education support organization owned by the state and federal education ministers. “But in the 21st century, when education is so important to the economic development of the country, it is regarded as such a major national issue, yet it can’t be controlled on a national level.”

More here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/14/27australia.h26.html