About the Project
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The project Senior secondary certification: Meeting the national agenda? is being funded as an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (2010-2012) in partnership with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the Queensland Studies Authority. This project aims to use legacies of development, management and innovation in senior secondary curriculum and certification to investigate options for future certification reform, in light of multiple demands regarding the national curriculum, qualifications and post-school pathways. State-based senior secondary certificates are subject to multiple sets of national demands that risk weakening their historical roles and undermining stakeholder support. This project will provide a deeper understanding of the nature of the tensions that need to be balanced within the design and management of the certificates and provide information for future design options in the context of national developments. The project has the potential to assist state and territory agencies that are responsible for senior secondary curriculum and certification in making their contributions toward the national goals and targets for education participation set by the Australian Government. Over the past three decades, senior secondary certificates in Australia have been reformed on numerous occasions in response to a range of state, national and international political and economic challenges. As a result of these reforms, the certificates have become simultaneously symbolic of the democratic ideal of access for all and a site of individual positional competition linked to the quest for tertiary entrance. History reflects the multiple stakeholders invested in senior certificates and the often-fragile political terrain around them. Issues regarding their ownership, design and assessment have a history of strong contestation. At present, senior secondary certification in Australia is subject to an evolving set of national demands. Significant national reforms include: the setting of a 90 percent Year 12 or equivalent retention target by 2015 (COAG 2008); the development of an Australian Curriculum that will replace state curricula over the next five years (ACARA 2009); and the establishment of a Trade Training Centres in Schools program to extend applied learning options to secondary school students (Australian Government 2010). These reform agendas will require a significant rethinking of the current eleven state-based senior certificates, which are administered by eight separate agencies across Australia’s states and territories. A core challenge for state agencies is how to respond to these emerging national imperatives and priorities whilst continuing to accommodate for the traditional and multiple state objectives. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) have been active innovators in senior secondary certification. Historically, these agencies have implemented multiple, different and successful senior secondary certificate innovations, however, they now face common sets of policy demands that are national rather than state-based. This project is located at the nexus of the historical and continued roles of the VCAA and the QSA in light of evolving national demands. It seeks to provide the agencies with data and analysis to allow them and the agencies in all states and territories to meet this challenge. This study considers myriad historical, present and future challenges facing senior certification at a time of inevitable change. At this point in the history of Australian education and training, it will provide a unique study of the capacity for the accommodation of state based differences to meet converging national policy imperatives. The project is also innovative in an international context, for its location within the Australian model of distributed responsibility for senior secondary curricula and certification within a growing national policy framework. It seeks to utilise this diversity to inform national responses to a common set of demands. In doing so, it has the potential to advance national and international knowledge of how diversity and the capacity for regionalised innovation can contribute to national goals in senior secondary curricula and certification. The project combines historical analyses, policy and governance studies, together with empirical analyses of patterns of participation and outcomes across the certificates and the states. The empirical component will involve interviews with key policy actors in senior secondary certification across Victoria, Queensland and at the national policy level. These policy actors will include relevant personnel within certification agencies, government departments and other relevant education associations, as well as practitioners from education providers (such as schools and TAFEs) who are involved in the provision of senior certificates.
Education Policy and LeadershipThe project is being led by Educational Policy and Leadership (EPL) within the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. EPL conducts research into the broad areas of policy, educational reform and leadership at the system, institutional and individual levels and across primary, secondary and post-compulsory sectors. More specifically, educational policies, practices and discourses are explored through research on identity, inequality and difference, youth and career transitions, vocational education, new knowledge, transnational policy, system and schooling governance, and professional and workplace learning. The team brings interdisciplinary expertise in the areas of philosophy, sociology, history, global studies, curriculum, psychology, policy studies and political economy to explore new ways of understanding educational institutions and of connecting education with diverse communities and learners across the life span. Members bring a wealth of expertise in a range of research methods and theoretical approaches, including advanced quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods, comparative and historical studies, discourse and institutional analysis, grounded theory and material semiotics. The following section Related projects illustrates related projects that have been or are currently being carried out by members of Education Policy and Leadership.
Related projects
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