Required – the deconstruction of the Boards of Study

At a meeting to discuss the new certificate I asked one of the QSA representatives why the words “well defined” had been removed. The reply was that it had been decided that they were unnecessary, superfluous.

At the same meeting it was pointed out that, for example, the physics syllabus was so vague that two neighbouring schools could follow totally different courses, with the result students learnt and understood utterly different things. The QSA response to this comment was to the effect that it was no cause for concern at all. So the very basics of quality control are absent - deliberately.

The various state and territory Boards of Study, all of them, are the vehicles by which the education establishment has been, and is able, to impose its ideas and will upon the students in all schools.

In the interests of those students it is imperative the various parliaments follow the lead give by Minister Anna Bligh - after all the boards were set up by the parliaments and are answerable to them. But it is crucial that this does not become just another party political matter. The Coalition parties are the opposition in all relevant jurisdictions. It is hence necessary for that side of politics to raise its eyes above the simplistic “public” versus “private” ideas to which they seem wedded. The necessary deconstruction-reconstruction of the boards requires all parties to act together within the democratic parliamentary process.