Top marks to syllabus road maps

Not only have the states and territories persevered with a jargon-ridden, faddish and obsolete OBE approach to curriculum development, but an analysis of Australian curriculum documents in mathematics, science and English shows that, compared with better performing overseas systems, ours are largely second rate.

In terms of being detailed, unambiguous, measurable and having strong academic content, the sad fact is, on the whole, Australian documents are inferior to those written in Japan, Singapore and California.

In relation to English, Australian OBE-inspired documents are outranked by those developed in England and California. In mathematics, the curriculum documents from Singapore, Japan and California are clearly superior to the locally designed.

The strength of the overseas documents is that they embody a syllabus approach to curriculum and, as a result, have a strong academic focus, are teacher friendly and are more likely to produce higher standards.