We’re currently seeing two significant developments in education at the national level – one in the curriculum, with the creation of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and the other in teaching standards, with the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Partnership on Quality Teaching (NPTQ). 

The success of each will depend in large part on the success of the other.  It’s time to give attention to ensuring that these developments will be connected and mutually reinforcing.

A Communiqué emerging from the recent COAG meeting (29th of November 2008) indicated that the National Partnership for Teacher Quality will seek to facilitate reforms that will create a rigorous national certification system to recognise the contribution and expertise of advanced or accomplished teachers.  These reforms are consistent with proposals recently put forward by the Business Council and both the AEU and the AIEU. 

This reform has great potential to enhance the quality of the curriculum that students experience.  Curriculum standards and standards for teaching go hand-in-hand (although a full set of teaching standards will include other aspects of teachers’ work as well). National curriculum statements have important implications for what teachers should know and be able to do; that is, for writers of teaching standards.  However, successful implementation of a national curriculum will depend fundamentally on the capacity of teachers to meet those standards.

Widespread and effective implementation of national curricula will require a radical overhaul of the professional learning system for teachers.  A certification system linked to teacher remuneration and career progression could provide strong incentives for all teachers to show how they implement the national curriculum goals in their school context.   

National curriculum standards will reinforce the need for subject- and level-specific standards for beginning teachers and for accomplished teaching.  The recently national curriculum statements for English, history, mathematics and science, for example, have important implications for what teachers in these fields should know and be able to do; that is, for writers of teaching standards.

Each of the NCB Framing Papers presents a strong case to justify inclusion of their subject area in the school curriculum.  Each articulates what is unique about the contribution their subject makes to students’ experience and understanding of the world. 

It seems appropriate, therefore, to ensure that teaching standards also reflect what is unique, as well as what is common, about what, for example, accomplished English, history, mathematics and science teachers know and do. It makes little sense to have distinct curricula for English, history, mathematics and science, but generic standards for those who teach these subjects.  

Agencies responsible for national curriculum and professional teaching standards have distinct but complementary roles.  It will be important to clearly differentiate the functions of a national body responsible for teaching standards and professional certification from those of the NCB.   Describing what students should have the opportunity to learn as part of their schooling and what counts as quality learning is properly the role of an agency such as the National Curriculum Board. 

However, describing what teachers need to know and be able to do to promote that learning in the various specialist fields that comprise the teaching profession is a role that is best delegated to accomplished teachers, their professional associations and researchers who work in those fields.   While the role of a National Curriculum Board is to describe what should be taught, the role of the profession is to draw out the implications of curriculum statements for what teachers should know and be able to do for purposes such as registration and advanced professional certification.

Recent statements from the National Curriculum Board will require a clear strategy whereby they will link to, and have an impact on, practice in schools. What strategies have we used in the past?

In the heyday of grand curriculum reform in the 1960s and 70s, little was understood about the problems of implementation.  It was assumed that good ideas were sufficient in themselves to make their own way into classrooms.  They rarely did. The 1990s were the era of “systemic reform”, based on an assumption that aligning curriculum with national testing and school accountability would work.  But mostly it did not.  Evidence suggests that this strategy often led instead to teaching practices that were distortions or travesties of good curriculum intentions. 

To be successful, the National Curriculum Board will need a parallel national body with responsibility for providing professional recognition to teachers who provide high quality opportunities for students to learn the curriculum embodied in the NCB documents.   A professional certification system would provide incentives for all teachers to show how they are implementing the national curriculum in their school context. 

In other words, the success of a national curriculum will depend on building a strong partnership with teachers’ professional associations as they develop and refine their standards and as they build a system for providing professional certification. 

How should such a body be created and what form should it take? 

One way forward might be to reconstitute Teaching Australia so that it embraces all stakeholders and focuses on providing a rigorous certification system.    This would need to be conducted in close collaboration with unions, governments and other employers as they seek to build rewards for professional certification into their EB agreements and conditions for career progression.

Another way forward would be to look again at the way in which the Australian Medical Council was created in 1985 by state and federal Ministers of Health and state medical practitioner boards responsible for registration.  Although Ministers created it, and ultimately are responsible for it, they delegated its accreditation and, more latterly, its certification operations to the experts, the medical practitioners, medical educators and medical researchers.

This is starting to happen in the accreditation of teacher education.  It now needs to happen in the certification area so that accomplished teachers and teacher leaders across Australia can have access to a nationally recognised endorsement of their expertise.  Since we are moving to a national curriculum, it makes sense to move to a national system for the certification of teachers who are able to teach the various components of that curriculum. 

Dr Lawrence Ingvarson is a Principal Research Fellow with ACER.

This is an abridged version of a paper to be published by the Centre for Strategic Education early in 2009.

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