Australasian Curriculum Assessment & Certification Authorities
Annual Conference - 2006
It is my very great pleasure to see you all again this morning ready
for the start of the 2006 Australasian Curriculum Assessment and
Certification Authorities Annual Conference.
May I extend a welcome to all the delegates who have not only
come from all parts of Australia, but also from New Zealand,
Nauru, Tonga, Samoa, and Kiribati. Those of you who are from
the Pacific Islands are particularly welcome for I am a firm believer
in Australia building strong ties with all the Pacific nations. In this
context I should tell you that one of the judges of my Court is
presently serving on the Supreme Court of Samoa to resolve some
electoral petitions that have been lodged there. It appears that all
the judges of Samoa are related, or in some way connected with
the petitioners or their witnesses, so the Chief Justice of Samoa
approached Ausaid with the request that it find funds to enable
serving judges from Australia to go over to Samoa and provide the
impartiality necessary for the proper resolution of these important
constitutional disputes. Ausaid agreed to do this, and so a
Supreme Court judge from Tasmania and a Supreme Court judge
from Queensland have been working there for the last two months
or so. A strong independent judiciary will make for a strong
independent country and that is why I support this project and the
strengthening of ties with Australia generally. Of course, we will
make him work twice as hard when he gets back in order to catch
up!
Education is very much in the news in recent times. In a way it is
like running a restaurant. Everybody thinks that they know how
to do it better than everybody else! In Australia the federal
government believes it can do it better than the state governments
and seems to be making a determined move to take charge of
education by tying the grants to projects it wants to put in place,
like the teaching of Australian history, and by setting up new
colleges run by the federal education department. I am led to
believe that now, a school's receipt of federal grants is even
dependent upon the school erecting a flagpole in its grounds.
These moves are resisted by the State governments who believe
that education is best delivered by catering to local needs, albeit
acknowledging the need to establish and maintain certain national
standards.
Australasian Curriculum Assessment & Certification Authorities Annual
Conference – 2006
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I appreciate of course, that your brief is not the design and the
delivery of school curriculum, but its certification. However, I
understand that the debate between a regionalised approach and a
centralised approach to this seems to be well underway in your
association. I had the privilege of reading a most interesting paper
entitled "When, if ever, should we take a regionalised approach to
curriculum assessment and certification?" The author is a modest
person – so modest that he or she did not append his or her name
to the paper. However, some astute detective work revealed your
Chief Executive Officer, Dr Reg Allen, as the most likely suspect.
In my respectful view, the paper makes a valuable contribution to
this debate. At the outset, the author asks the fundamental
question, "What is the purpose of curriculum certification and
assessment?" Is it "to increase participation and achievement by
students in the most important and central learnings – skills and
knowledges that will help improve their and our future?" Or is it
to provide reports to let people know what has happened and to
enable students to seamlessly slip from one school to another. The
author acknowledges the importance of reports and setting of
standards, but strongly argues for a regionalised approach to
curriculum certification and assessment. The argument is based
upon the proposition that curriculum certification and assessment
should focus on enhancing teacher practices and enacted
standards. Attention should concentrate on what happens rather
than on statements of intention in curriculum documents and
management of objectives measured through standardised tests.
Well, this is your field, not mine and obviously, I am no expert, but
it seems to me that any curriculum certification and assessment
that concentrates only on centralised testing of curriculum and
measurement of objectives through standardised testing will not
achieve its purpose for the successful delivery of education is
entirely dependent upon the teacher and his or her practices.
I understand this to be a central aim of your association namely;
facilitating the development of the knowledge and the skills of
young learners. Indeed, the theme of this conference proceeds
upon the principle that your work should be driven by the value
that is placed upon contributing to more learning, more
knowledge and more skills for young people. Central to this work
Australasian Curriculum Assessment & Certification Authorities Annual
Conference – 2006
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must be the teacher. Linked to this area is the recent idea floated
by the Federal Minister for Education to reward good teachers by
making them Leading Teachers just as leading barristers are
appointed Senior Counsel with resultant increase in income. I
understand that this idea has the support of Andrew Leigh, an
economist at the ANU, who argues that teacher performance
should be measured by students' results after taking into account
the demographic and socio-economic standing of each school. Not
unexpectedly the idea has already received a cool reception from
the Australian teachers Union. I expect that the members of your
Association have views on this idea.
Another topic that interests me greatly is the South Australian
project to recognise and report on community, or informal
learning programmes. I have to confess that until I read Dr
Keightley's paper, the importance of doing that had never
occurred to me. I see that Victoria has also done some work in this
area and Dr Gunning and Ms Waitzer will speak about that
tomorrow afternoon. Of great importance to all Australians is the
work being done in New South Wales to improve the participation
of Aboriginal communities in the education of their children. So,
you will debate many interesting facets of your work during today
and tomorrow. In fact, I have never seen such a busy conference
for so few people. There are only sixty or so delegates yet over
two days there are no less than 22 sessions, not counting the
concluding summary at the end. You will be busy but I am sure
you will also be enriched and rewarded by the exchange of new
ideas and different views.
It all looks most interesting and I would like to be able to stay and
listen to some of the papers that are to be presented, but alas, my
obligation this morning is to attend to a criminal trial that awaits
me just over the road from here. So, to our visitors I say again, a
warm welcome to Tasmania. To all of you I wish you well in your
work at this conference and now it gives me great pleasure to
declare this 2006 Australian Curriculum Assessment Certification
Authorities Annual Conference open.