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In Australia, the idea of a national curriculum has been on the federal government agenda for several years. The 2004-05 federal budget contained a reference to investigating the feasibility of an Australian Certificate of Education. A report was duly commissioned but the potential ACE was buried under the avalanche of attention given to private school funding.

A year later, The Australian newspaper began its campaign for curriculum reform and as a result discussion of a national curriculum has reached a prominent position in the daily news. The problems with state curricula were given a public working over by former education minister Brendan Nelson, and now current federal education minister Julie Bishop has staked her claim on the issue and is gunning for reform.

According to Ms Bishop and her supporters, including The Australian, state-developed curricula are rabidly anti-government, radically left-wing and outrageously politically correct. Numerous examples from syllabus and curriculum documents demonstrate how schools are being used as vehicles for social engineering, with a decline in academic rigour.

Professional teacher organizations and state governments are united in their opposition to Bishop’s plan to overhaul curriculum, but for different reasons. English and history teachers associations and teachers unions do not dispute that curriculum has become ideologically-charged and even defend its right to be so. State governments, however, deny that their curricula are biased and intellectually impoverished and reject any need for reform.

In the court of public opinion, it appears that the federal minister is gaining ground. A recent poll revealed that 69 per cent of Australians are in favour of a national curriculum. University academics have also been confirming what parents and employers have long suspected – that there has been a significant decline in standards and therefore in the abilities of high school graduates. It is not just English and history that have been hijacked by agenda-driven curriculum development. Serious problems have been identified with maths, the sciences and even geography.

The question now is what to do. Having severely undermined the credibility of the states, there seems to be little clear thinking on what should be the next move. Bishop initially came on strong with media reports of a “Commonwealth takeover” of curriculum but that has since been watered down to “ensuring a greater level of national consistency”.

The federal government needs to decide what it is going to do soon. Australians tend to look sorely on “knockers” – people who criticize the efforts of others but have nothing to offer as an alternative. The federal government must strike while the issue is hot and before cynicism takes over.

What are the options? One is to centralize curriculum development in Canberra and mandate a national curriculum and assessment to be used in every school, leading to a single national certificate. This would guarantee consistency but whether it would increase standards is debatable. A national curriculum development board would be just as vulnerable to bias as the state boards. As another former education minister, Dr David Kemp, has pointed out, there would be great pressure to negotiate with the states and to involve the same people who have ruined state curricula. Furthermore, a change of federal government would create upheaval and any flaws in the curriculum would cause skill deficiencies across the whole country, not just variation in standards between the states.

Another option is for the federal government to develop a curriculum it believes to be the ‘gold standard’ and to offer it as an alternative to the state curricula. This introduces the idea of competitive curricula. Schools choose the curriculum they think is best and most appropriate for their students. State curricula would have to improve, or lose the faith of parents and eventually be phased out. This option allows some consistency but with less risk of pegging standards at the lowest common denominator.

It is possible, and preferable, to extend the competitive curricula concept further, although perhaps not as far as allowing schools to develop their own curriculum. The federal government need not reinvent the wheel but instead establish an accreditation authority. An accreditation authority could evaluate and benchmark various curricula and syllabi, including those developed by the states as well as curricula from other countries and from the private sector. Schools could choose any accredited curriculum. Assessment could be done by a single non-content specific national assessment or the various examinations could be equivalised (ranked on a common scale). The latter is more complicated but it possible — it is already done to calculate a national university entrance score from the different state assessments.

Developing curriculum is a long slow process. It necessitates extensive research and consultation and of course, lots of money.  When it is finally complete, imposing it on the states would be even harder and installing it in schools would be hugely expensive and traumatic. Even if state governments relent, it is inevitable that teachers unions will fight tooth and nail, causing enormous disruption for students and parents. It would be a decade before any progress was made.

A better strategy is for the federal government to use its funding muscle to force the state governments to allow curriculum choice. Presently, state schools must use the curriculum of their state (a very small number of schools are allowed to use the International Baccalaureate as well). State schools and non-government schools should be able to offer any quality, accredited curriculum. For example, there is no good reason why a school in Western Australia should not be able to offer the New South Wales Higher School Certificate if that is perceived to be superior.

The curriculum choice option is the best we have. It offers consistency with the least potential for mediocrity. It is the least expensive and, importantly, the most expedient. A national curriculum is a possibility but not a necessity. There is no reason to wait for curriculum choice.

Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.