Opinion surrounding Western Australia's provision of compulsory education via an outcomes-based education (OBE) paradigm is severely divided. At the centre of debate is an attempt by authorities to extend OBE into the final years of secondary schooling, Years 11 and 12. In this paper an examination is made of OBE as a curriculum paradigm.…

Government-provided services are caught in the jaws of a "cost-tax vice". On the cost side, the long-term trend of rising relative prices of services, including education, seems set to continue. The other jaw of the vice is the high efficiency cost of raising additional taxes. Recent research making the case for public provision of…

Outcomes based education (OBE), which emphasises a radical reinterpretation of the enterprise of education, is a phenomenon enveloping the Australian compulsory education sector. This paper examines the theoretical tenets of OBE as articulated by its chief exponent, William Spady. It then explores the effects that OBE implementation is having on…

As countries continue to invest in information and communication technologies (ICT) and they become even more common in the workplace, there is an increasing demand for schools to produce technologically literate students. This report presents results from the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA) 2003, and examines how…

A paradox seems to exist where a child, of compulsory schooling age, is excluded from a school. The practice of exclusion has evolved over the almost two centuries of compulsory schooling. Abolition of corporal punishment in Western Australia and elsewhere has tended to focus attention on exclusion and the grounds justifying such action by school…

It is an underlying principle of Australian Education Review (AER) 54 that active efforts should be made to cultivate the latent bilingual potential within Australia's wider population and that this should be linked to major improvements in the quality of language teaching in schools. A combined approach of this kind will require investment in…

As the secondary school has become an agent of mass education, it has been beset by complex problems, particularly in the identification of its educational role and its purposes as a social institution. Key features of the identity crisis in Australian secondary schools are described. (MLW)

Data collected from 501 University of Central Queensland students required to attend at least one residential activity, such as science lab, found that significant numbers did not find residential experiences useful or important. The many reasons students choose distance education make it imperative that any necessary residential activities be…

Numeracy in the workplace is much more complex than the simple application of mathematical knowledge and skills learned in school or vocational education. Although the knowledge and skills developed in compulsory education or in formal adult and vocational education and training courses play a foundational role, they are inevitably transformed…

Explores the common law-bill of rights debate in Australia and the probable impacts of extending constitutional and statutory rights to the educational system. Closely examined are compulsory education, the courts' role, children's rights, and the law and education interface, with reference to equality and quality issues in the United States.…

Compares Australian and French postcompulsory education delivery systems, focusing on participation by young people within respective frameworks. Examines substantial difference between teenagers' educational participation in two countries, reflecting basically different organizational frameworks. Examines educational stratification, suggesting…

It is argued that gender-related inequalities in education and elsewhere are embedded in ideology about the family, which is at least partially reproduced through the educational system. Western Australian educational reform from 1900-1929 is described from this perspective and in the context of the formal educational system of the time. (MSE)

Reviews changes introduced to Australian public education over the past decade, comparing them against the "free, compulsory, and secular" education acts implemented in every Australian colony during the late 19th century. The principles and social values underlying the establishment of public education have been significantly eroded.…

The case for more technology in schools is compelling. The leverage for a school based solution is traceable to the "Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling" (AEC, 1989), namely that students will develop skills in "information processing and computing". Schools have wrestled with this "integration challenge"…

Australia is currently witnessing a melding of its various education sectors and a gradual erosion of distinctions between school, vocational education and higher education. Such developments are leading toward a "seamless web" of post-compulsory education, a goal strongly articulated by governments, bureaucrats, business and educators…