“It’s a small world after all,” is a refrain we hear outside of Disneyland. Even when borders were closed during COVID lockdowns, we were all inter-connected through online learning and fast internet connections. Geography may have separated us, but we were not separated for education.
The world is looking for global solutions, not local ones.
Federal and state governments are keen to maintain their control of quality delivery, by doing so they possibly neglect the opportunities and possibilities that can be achieved by working internationally to create curricula that are truly international. The vast majority of schools in Australia still teach a national or state curriculum.
As we have students who fly off around the world to university, or we welcome international students to Australia for their undergraduates, it is interesting to look at curricula from around the world to see how it stacks up to the ACARA.
It is because of this comparison that Australian schools feel content to look only within our own borders for a curriculum that meets immediate student needs.
From 2016-2018, the Australian government commissioned a report to compare the ACARA to the Singapore, Finnish, New Zealand and British Columbian curricula. [i] The findings were that in general, the ACARA was more rigorous than some other curricula. It has more systems in place to monitor teachers/delivery to try and ensure consistency. It focused more on breadth than depth of content, compared to some others. For all curricula, the challenge seems to be that they tried to cover so much, it was hard to cover it all well.
Thus, overall, the Australian curriculum stacks up well. This is evidenced by how well an Australian diploma is regarded when students apply overseas. However, it is still ‘Australian.’
The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) was developed in 1978 to make a high school diploma an international certification. However, even with over 5000 schools across the globe delivering the IB curriculum or some part of it[ii], it still plays a relatively small part of the global education picture. There are more than 13000 ‘International schools[iii]’ in the world and more than 5.5 million schools across the world[iv] so 5000 is merely a drop in the bucket.
The IB has never taken off on any large scale in Australia. There are only 215 schools offering some part of the IB curriculum in Australia out of approximately 9600.
The IB has some unexpected perceived disadvantages when the ATAR scores are mapped to the IB diploma results. It is generally perceived that students in the IB program are expected to have higher scores than their ATAR counterparts. There is little advantage for students to take the IB when the ATAR route is considered safer and easier. The same is true in many Canadian provinces. The IB is considered more academically rigorous than GCSE[v] in the UK. This is not true of all countries. It is generally conceded that the IB has more value in the USA than in the UK or some other countries.[vi]
Overall, it seems that the Australian high school diploma is still widely regarded around the globe and at home. Students can easily use their ATAR and Australian scores to apply to other countries and international universities. However, as with all university admissions, academics are only ‘part’ of the application process. Many international universities want to know more about your extracurricular activities and overall development than how you are academically ranked in exams compared to your national counterparts.
Here in Australia, the International Diagnostic & Admissions Test tries to play its part in making the school sector genuinely global. While not focusing on graduating students, the IDAT focuses on student admissions in the K-12 space worldwide. In 2020, IDAT commissioned C. Amelia Davis, Ph.D from Louisianna State University, Shreveport, to map the common outcomes of four international curricula: The National Curriculum for England, the US Common Core, the Australian National Curriculum and the Ontario Curriculum for English from K-12. Considering the IB curriculum added for the IDAT for IB, and with this mapping of commonalities, the IDAT curriculum was created to test students for admissions to schools around the globe. IDAT currently works with more than 50 schools across three continents to help them create learning profiles for incoming students worldwide. Regarding admissions testing, the IDAT is unique in that it does not disadvantage students who have studied other curricula when they apply to study elsewhere. The IDAT curriculum is a publicly available document.
The world is global, and Australia is playing a small part in making admissions more global. The call is now out for the ACARA to work more closely with their international counterparts and the IBO for consistency in teaching and learning across the globe. Let’s take the high standards of ACARA and combine them with best practices from around the world. It is time for the governments to work together so that students can openly move from curriculum to curriculum, country to country and school to school without any disadvantages to their education or outcomes. Let’s open the borders for education.
[i] https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/media/4394/ac-bcc-fncc-sc-nzc-key-findings.pdf
[iii] https://thepienews.com/news/intl-schools-market-is-flourishing-isc-report/#:~:text=Overall%2C%20the%20number%20of%20international,from%2012%2C853%20schools%20in%202022.
[iv] https://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/how-many-schools-are-there-in-the-world/
[v] https://www.nordangliaeducation.com/ism-moscow/news/2023/05/31/a-level-ib
[vi] https://www.crimsoneducation.org/au/blog/ib-scores/
