AUSTRALIA - EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMOVERVIEW

Education is compulsory in all states of Australia from K-10 (between the ages
5 to 15). Effectively, almost all Australian citizens have access to elementary
and junior educational provision, under state legislation in the six states (New
South, Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, and
Tasmania) and in the Australian Capital Territory, while citizens in the Northern
Territory obtain education under Federal funding provisions channelled through
the Northern Territory administration.
Education is in English, though most primary schools now have access to
community language programs. Italian, Japanese, and Spanish are among the
most common in state schools, French and German in several of the
international language schools in the capital cities, and indigenous languages in
Aboriginal schools, particularly in Western Australia, northern Queensland, and
the Northern Territory. Most states, along the lines of a resurgent return to basic
policies operate basic skills tests in elementary schools (called primary or public
schools in most states). In New South Wales, basic skills tests are run for year 3
and year 5 students. Access to state selective schools is possible in some states
through special examination, and there are regular examinations for entry on
scholarship to the larger private schools. Internal assessment governs progress
through years 7 through 9, and in year 10, there is the equivalent of New South
Wale's school certificate offered in most states as a entry point into technical
education, apprenticeships, and other vocational training alternatives. Year 12
ends with a higher leaving certificate examinationin New South Wales called
the Higher School Certificate, in Victoria the VCE, and in Queensland the Core
Skills Test.
The Academic Year runs from the end of January (mid-summer in Australia)
across 4 terms, ending towards the middle or latter end of December, allowing
for a 5 to 6 week holiday in what are the hot months in most Australian states.
Curriculum in most states is set by the State departments of Education, against
which (through the system of public examinations at the end of year 10 and year
12) inspectors also assess registration requirements in privately run schools.
The shaping influences on Australian education have been distance and time.
Distance, because it was distance that has dictated the economics and sociocultural development of the country. Time, as both the newness of the country
and the time to travel for ideas, has been critical in the formation of education
policy and thought. Distance and time, significantly, are also the key axes
underlying the processes of globalization which are driving educational agendas
in Australia.

In the first instance, distance from the expanding centres of world civilizations
meant that, until 1788, Aboriginal peoples in Australia could follow traditional
mechanisms of customary education unhindered for thousands of years.
Aboriginal learning patterns tend to be directed towards community survival,
de-emphasizing the individual in favour of customary law, through knowledge
of the intricate Aboriginal social system, and ensuring the passing on of
communal history and culture in an often difficult natural environment. Their
culture emphasized group work, daily vocational skills, and in-depth knowledge
of the natural environment. From white settlement in 1788, these values brought
Aboriginal children into a direct conflict with individualistic-, time-, and
achievement-oriented white education systems.
Despite missionary practice that emphasized bible translation and
grammar/vocabulary construction, which has since become a major source for
the revival of Aboriginal languages and cultures, and high level
recommendations towards bilingual education in the early 1960s, English
remained the primary language of instruction for Aboriginal students until 1973.
Effectively, this was part of a program of assimilation that was extended by the
Australian government to all minority groups in Australia until the promulgation
of official multiculturalism in November 1972. The extension of linguistic
revivals, teaching in the primary language of students, support for the training
of Aboriginal people as teachers, and national organization of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders has greatly assisted in shifting education away from the
sort of identity stripping, residential institutions that were the norm for
Aboriginal education from the foundation of the Native Institution under
Lachlan Macquarie in 1815. (Fletcher 1989)
With debate over "the stolen generations" and reconciliation dominating the
minds of Australians at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is important
to note the processes by which Australian education became a major tool for
social engineering up until the 1970s, and then how it entered into a crisis
period of self-redefinition until the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Primary education in South Australia extends from pre-year 1 to year 7, while
the southeastern states (New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania), run from
pre-year 1 to year 6. Secondary education in all states runs to year 12, with
differing mechanisms for matriculation to university. Different examinations are
used in Victoria and New South Wales. The development of national standards
is increasingly putting pressure on these regional variations and increasing
cooperation between states at all levels.
In August 1998, there were 9,587 schools enrolling 3,198,655 (61 percent K-6)
students, 6,998 (73 percent) of which were government schools. In the face of a
slight decline in the number of government schools (1995-1998), the non-

government sector continues to grow rapidly (1 to 3 percent per triennium),

particularly in the low-fee paying Christian school sector, as much as 8 percent
per year (Long 1996). These trends reflect the general drift in Australian society
towards private delivery and downsizing; a retreat by sub-cultures from the
public sphere in the face of growing social diversity. The impact of parental
fears about social trends such as violence, drugs in schools, and retention of
traditional values, can be seen by the fact that such schools are strongest in
years 8-10, but follow patterns of retention in government schools in K-6. The
nearly 100,000 indigenous students enrolled in K-12 are, due to issues of
isolation and the inability to mobilize private funding, much more reliant on
government funded schools.
Most private school growth for K-12 has occurred in rapid growth, lower-tomiddle-class outer suburban areas of Australia's major cities. Their ability to
draw on constituency support in addition to government per capita funding of
student institutions has meant that nongovernment schools have better staffstudent ratios than government schools, particularly in the wealthier Anglican
schools sector. Building growth has not increased at the same rate as population
growth, leaving many low-fee paying private schools to struggle with
accommodation issues.
Clear distinctions continue between the greater public schools, which are mostly
church-based but are in fact private corporations, Catholic systemic schools,
low-fee paying Christian schools, and local government schools.
With the improvement of the economy after the economic recession in the late
1980s, retention rates years in grades 10-12 have dropped, from 77 percent to
71 percent (65 percent government and 84 percent nongovernment). This trend
reinforced the lack of a universal tertiary college culture in Australia (ABS,
Education and Training 1999).
Higher Education was attempted a number of times through the early history of
the various colonies. The Australian College in New South Wales, for instance,
was meant to combine K-12 activities with the seeds of future clergy training
for the Presbyterian Church. All such institutions failed, however, until the
foundation of the University of Sydney in 1852on deliberately non-sectarian
lines. The University of Melbourne followed in 1853, Tasmania (in Hobart) in
1893, Adelaide (established by Act of Parliament in 1874), and Queensland in
1909 (Barcan 1980).
Enrollment figures tended to follow population growth and decline and the
policy function of the universities in their home colonies/states. Prior to World
War II, universities in Australia tended to be for the children of the professional
classes. This status changed radically after World War II with the need to retrain
hundreds of thousands of Australian soldiers for civilian life. Postwar migration
added additional pressure, leading to an efflorescence of new institutions
(Monash, Macquarie, La Trobe, Murdoch, and Flinders), mostly in the suburbs.

By the 1970s, universities had become a major tool for the Australian
government that was attempting to redirect national effort away from
commodities production and trading towards value added industries and (from
the 1980s) the information industries revolutionizing large parts of Asia.
Encouraging Australian students into those institutions was a more difficult task,
given the lack of a generalized learning culture and the lack of obvious career
paths for many of the courses offered.
By March 1998, there were 671,853 students in higher education courses in
Australia (about 3.7 percent of the population), of which 72,183 (or 10.0 percent
of the total) were classed as overseas students (up from 21,000 in 1989, 5
percent of the total). Some 359,225 of these students were aged 16 to 24,
representing 14 percent of the population group. The vast number of the new
growth among these students went into business, economics, computer sciences,
media, and health. There was a relative decline in numbers going into straight
humanities and education subjects. The growth in both the business disciplines
and in the proportion of non-resident students, as well as the consolidation of
higher education institutions through the 1980s, marked the shift of education
from its position as a core community service to a position as a growing export
industry that was competing in the global market.
Since 1995, all registered Australian tertiary institutions have been required to
tailor their curricula according to the Australian Qualifications Framework
(AQF), a normative system dictating standard outcomes rather than content. The
AQF replaced the Register of Australian Tertiary Education (operative since
1990). This has meant that the vocational education and training (VET) system
(offering diplomas from Certificate 1 to Advanced Diploma) articulates from
upper school education and to the university system, which offer knowledge
based baccalaureate and higher degrees, but overlap with VET in offering
diplomas and Advanced Diplomas in a unified system. It is possible to transfer
credit and recognition of prior learning throughout the tertiary system.
The integration of previously separate spheres of education within relatively
new and artificial standards-based structures raises two major challenges to
education: "The first of these is 'What counts as worthwhile learning?' The
second question is 'What may be accepted to confirm that such learning has
occurred?' Both of these questions, and the issues they raise . . . must reignite a
serious consideration by teacher education faculties of what actually constitutes
knowledge." (Taylor and Clemans 2000)
Through the 1980s, most states introduced legislation restricting use of the
terms like university or degree to those recognized by the state and falling
within the AQF. With state universities, this has not been an issue, since those
institutions are largely self-accrediting. Considerable tension developed over the
recognition of private providers under the various state Acts. There is not an

education equivalent to an Australian university criteria because there is so

much variation in quality and approach between institutions. A provider does
not have substantial credit if endorsed in one state and refused standing in
another because of Acts that vary. Considerable work has gone into smoothing
out irregularities in the system, and making the AQF genuinely national in
scope. Other quality controls are imposed through the Commonwealth's Trade
Practices Act 1974. State/Territory fair trading legislation helps protect the
quality of higher education.