Earlier this year the Australian Council for Educational Research provided a report to the Australian Government on options for the introduction of an Australian Certificate of Education (ACE) for the final years of secondary school.  Our report and an opportunity to comment on it are available at the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations website.

The report proposes the introduction of an ACE based on national standards for what is taught in Years 11 and 12 and for how well students should be expected to learn what is taught.  These standards are captured in three key recommendations.

Our first recommendation calls for national agreement on what should be taught.  We argue that, regardless of where they live in Australia, students should be able to engage with school subjects in similar depth and with similar academic rigour.  In individual subjects (such as Economics, Biology and Advanced Mathematics) we recommend the identification of a core of essential knowledge, skills, ideas and principles.  These are the ‘big ideas’ that all students taking that subject should have an opportunity to learn regardless of the state or territory in which they live.  Except in some vocational subjects, no systematic attempt has been made to do this.

In making this recommendation, we were not proposing that the entire curriculum for a subject should be the same across the country.  Schools must be able to respond to local needs and circumstances and there is value in a degree of diversity in what and how students are taught and in opportunities for experimentation and innovation.  But we believe that in most senior school subjects, students should have guaranteed access to an agreed core of essential content.  And we suggested a number of subjects for which this work should be commenced.

It is difficult currently to establish what is common across Australia because states and territories provide different levels of specificity in their syllabuses and curriculum frameworks.  In smaller systems, which have limited resources for curriculum development and student assessment, teachers often are given only broad guides to what they should teach.

Our second recommendation calls for students throughout Australia to be assessed against the same standards.  Currently it is not possible to compare achievements in a subject such as Accounting from one jurisdiction to another.  There is no way of knowing whether a ‘Band 6’ performance in NSW represents a lower or higher level of achievement than a ‘Very High Achievement’ in Queensland, or a study score of 40/50 in Victoria.  The different schemes used to report student results and the current lack of comparability were described to us as confusing and unnecessary.

We proposed the development of a set of national ‘achievement standards’ for senior school subjects.  For any given subject, there might be five such standards (perhaps labelled E to A) with each standard describing and illustrating the kinds of knowledge and skills that students would have to demonstrate to achieve that standard.  Some states already report in terms of subject standards.  Our proposal is that national standards be developed to provide a common format for reporting results and a level of comparability that does not currently exist.

We stopped short of recommending the introduction of national Year 12 examinations.  If results in a subject are reported in terms of the same set of achievement standards, then a level of comparability across jurisdictions will follow.  Of course, to the extent that states and territories share examination and other assessment materials in a subject, this level of comparability will be improved.

Our third recommendation is that, to be awarded the ACE, students should be required to demonstrate acceptable levels of a few key capabilities: the ability to write in English; to read with understanding; to apply mathematical concepts to everyday problems; and to use computer technology.  We made this recommendation because of claims that some students being awarded senior certificates have only limited mastery of these skills and because of research evidence that failure to master these basics (especially reading and writing) is correlated with poorer employment, health and social outcomes.

The focus of existing senior certificates is on how well students have learnt subject matter.  Except in Queensland, there is no direct assessment of basic skills that underpin school subjects and that are essential to learning, work and life beyond school.  The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia have identified other ‘employability skills’ such as the ability to work as a member of a team and to plan and organise activities.  Our report recommended further work to explore how these skills also might be assessed in a nationally consistent way as part of the ACE.  

In the course of our work we found ourselves asking many questions about current senior secondary arrangements.  For example, does Australia, with a smaller population than some American states, really require nine different senior certificates?  Do we need seven distinct syllabuses/curriculum frameworks in a subject such as Physics, especially when these syllabuses are designed for essentially the same group of tertiary-bound students?  At a time when the states of the European Union are working to make their qualifications more compatible and more comparable to increase the international competitiveness of European education, to encourage mutual recognition and to facilitate student mobility, can Australia afford to have senior secondary arrangements which are becoming increasingly disparate?

Our recommendations to the Australian Government envisage each state and territory in the future awarding the Australian Certificate of Education in place of its current senior certificate.  But before this could happen, each certificate would have to guarantee access to essential curriculum content, assess students against common achievement standards, and require all students to demonstrate at least minimum levels of competence in literacy, numeracy and the use of technology.  We believe an Australian Certificate of Education based on nationally established standards will provide students throughout Australia with a single internationally recognised senior secondary qualification.

Professor Geoff Masters is CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Research.

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