National Curriculum: A Political-Educational Tangle (Report‪)‬

The politics of national curriculum in a federated system This is not a good time for a country to be entering into national curriculum. Not only is the global policy context inimical to the necessary debates about curriculum but the use of the already politicised field of education as a vehicle to reform commonwealth--state relations in a federated system is likely to lose the substance of the issues in the glare of politics. Globalising economic processes have been accompanied by cultural, technological, media, people and other movements (for example, Appadurai, 1990) such that most nation states are inextricably tied to developments and changes elsewhere, as can be seen in recent global economic 'crises'. This frames educational policy in particular ways, with government attention in Australia, as elsewhere, focused on education sectors mainly for their contribution to national economic productivity: that is, to human capital concerns (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Governments in OECD countries undertake new kinds of steering through competitive league tables across and inside countries, a focus on measurable outcomes through high-stakes tests and formal accountability requirements via the application of standards. National curriculum, I suggest, is both a symptom of such governance developments and a means by which new forms of governance of the education can be put in place.