Q. Your Year 12 son tells you he received a final mark of 19 for English. How should you respond?

A. It all depends on where you live. In New South Wales, marks are reported out of 100, making 19 a very low score. In Victoria, the maximum possible score is 50, making 19 a slightly better result. But in South Australia, where marks are reported out of 20, a score of 19 is definitely worth celebrating. Most other states do not report marks at all. Some (ACT and WA) use A-to-E grades. Others report results as achievement levels such as ‘sound’ (Qld) and ‘commendable’ (Tas).

Confused? Many employers say they are. It’s like changing currency every time you cross a border. Except it’s worse: it’s easy to convert Euros to Pounds or Dollars to Yen, but there is no obvious way of comparing Year 12 results across state boundaries. It is not clear whether a score of 80/100 in Accounting in NSW represents a higher or lower level of accounting knowledge and skill than a score of 40/50 in Victoria or how either of these compares to an ‘exceptional’ result in Tasmania or ‘very high’ achievement in Queensland.

And the situation is becoming worse. With proposed changes in a number of states, including Queensland, SA and WA, senior secondary arrangements in this country are about to diverge further. With a population less than some American states, Australia now has nine different senior secondary certificates (ten if the International Baccalaureate Diploma is included). Across the country there are bewildering variations in terminology, requirements that make it harder to achieve a certificate in some states than in others, and as many different schemes for reporting Year 12 results as there are agencies responsible for doing this (see table).

Contrast this with what is happening in Europe where the states of the European Union are collaborating to enhance the consistency and comparability of their educational qualifications. The aim is to increase the international competitiveness of European education, to promote mutual recognition of qualifications across nation states and to facilitate student mobility. Under the so-called Bologna Process, considerable progress has been made towards the development of more consistent higher education arrangements and qualifications.

There was a glimmer of hope at the meeting of Commonwealth, State and Territory ministers of education in Brisbane last month where it was decided to establish a working party to examine the feasibility of developing a common scale for reporting all senior secondary subject results. This proposal, led by Victoria, is a welcome development if it leads to a common language for reporting Year 12 results.

But a common language (such as A to E grades) is only a first step. The bigger challenge – and one that the ministers appear to have taken up – is to ensure that it is just as difficult to achieve an ‘A’ in, say, advanced mathematics in NSW as it is to achieve an ‘A’ in WA. This level of consistency requires agreement on how much knowledge, understanding and skill students need to have, and the quality or depth of understanding they need to demonstrate, to receive an ‘A’ in each state and territory.

And this highlights the next difficulty. Money is money, whether measured in Dollars, Euros or Yen. But can Chemistry results be compared meaningfully from one state to another? The answer to this question depends on how similar Chemistry curricula are across Australia. To the extent that Year 12 curricula vary from one state to another, any attempt to introduce a common reporting language and to compare grades or marks across the country is likely to be of limited value.

Surprisingly, very few attempts have been made to investigate what students are taught in the final years of school in Australia. To what extent are students in different states and territories taught the same facts, principles and skills in a subject such as Economics? Is there a body of fundamental knowledge and big ideas to which all students taking Economics should be exposed, regardless of where they live in Australia? Questions such as these have not been addressed in any systematic way.

Earlier this year, the Australian Government initiated an investigation into what is being taught in senior school English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Australian History courses. This investigation will tell us whether curricula in these subjects are sufficiently similar to permit the kind of consistency in reporting that the ministers are seeking. It also will provide a basis for thinking about what should be taught, and especially what core content all students taking a subject should have an opportunity to learn. On this question there's bound to be vigorous debate, as there should be in relation to curriculum matters.

As other countries work to break down unnecessary barriers to communication and to teacher and student mobility, it is time for Australia to adopt a more consistent language and common currency for reporting Year 12 results. It’s also time for a national debate on what Australian students should be learning in the final years of secondary school, regardless of where they live.

Professor Geoff Masters is chief executive of ACER and author of the report, An Australian Certificate of Education: Exploring A Way Forward

How Year 12 subject results are reported:

Source: ACER (An Australian Certificate of Education: Exploring A Way Forward).

This opinion article was published by the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 August ( 'Oh, for scores without borders,' by Geoff Masters, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 August 2006)

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