What will it take to get a national curriculum off the ground this time?

Second, we need to identify "best practice" in terms of what is happening internationally. Academics and teachers in the USA argue, to be successful, that curriculum should:

• Be related to specific year levels instead of covering a range of years,
• Acknowledge the central importance of the academic disciplines,
• Be "benchmarked" against world's best equivalent documents,
• Incorporate "high-stakes" testing and remove students' rights to be automatically promoted form year to year, and
• Be specific, easily understood and measurable.

In the USA, the above approach is called a "standards" approach. In opposition to a "standards" approach, Australian curriculum development is based on what are termed "outcomes".

Such "outcomes" are generally, vague, imprecise and based on the idea that teachers should "facilitate" instead of actually teaching and that learning must be immediately relevant, accessible and entertaining.

In history, for example, instead of stating that all students should learn about the Eureka Stockade or about the reasons for federation, teachers are told that "students should learn about important historical events".

In English, for example, while an "outcomes approach" might state that students should be able to use the "conventions and structures of language", a standards approach would actually state that students should be able to "identify phrases and clauses in a sentence".

In addition to learning from overseas research, curriculum developers in Australia should learn from those countries that perform best in international maths and science tests such as TIMSS and TIMSS-R.

Countries like the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Singapore and South Korea have a curriculum that is based on a "syllabus" approach.

Instead of vague and process-driven "outcomes" teachers are given, at the start of the year, a clear, succinct and easy-to-follow syllabus of what should be taught.

School textbooks and teacher training support such syllabuses and there is regular testing to ensure that all students are at or above the required standard.

Unlike Australia, where students are automatically promoted year after year on the basis that learning is "developmental", there is also a clear expectation that all students, by the end of each year level, will have reached the required level of ability.

Having a common and agreed "syllabus" across Australia in key subjects like English and mathematics would mean that students could move around the country without being disadvantaged.