National Curriculum: Another Labor mess

The national curriculum appears to be the latest Gillard/Garrett failure as state education ministers today refused to begin implementation in January 2011 as was promised, said Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education.

"The finished curriculum was due to be adopted today by state education ministers, but now final consideration has been moved to October 2011, meaning the curriculum itself won't even begin implementation until January 2012 at the earliest," Mr Pyne said.

"Peter Garrett's claim today that the curriculum has been emphatically and 'historically' endorsed, suggests he doesn't understand the difference between success and failure," he said.

Far from endorsing the finished curriculum, ministers appear to have humiliated Mr Garrett and the Prime Minister by accepting the patently obvious - that a lot more work needs to be done. In fact, they endorsed a proposal from NSW to develop a blueprint to iron out deficiencies such as, the draft curriculum covering too much content, being overly prescriptive and lacking clear achievement standards.

Julia Gillard has long claimed the curriculum would take three years to develop and be ready to implement by January 2011.

In April 2008 Ms Gillard promised 'A national curriculum publicly available and which can start to be delivered in all jurisdictions from January 2011'.

This failure is particularly bad for the Prime Minister who seems under the impression that the national curriculum is finished, claiming before the federal election that 'This nation's talked about national curriculum for 30 years. I delivered it.'

"The truth is that Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett have failed to deliver any of their so-called reforms in education, on time and as promised. The national curriculum has now become yet another Labor mess," Mr Pyne said.

December 8, 2010

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