Employability is a construct that includes soft and hard skills to prepare a person to gain employment, progress in it and sustain a career. The employability discourse, in the context of linking education with skills development, has gained increased attention globally. However, engagement with this agenda differs across countries, as it depends…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ending of fee-free higher education in Australia for overseas students in the 1980s, and the ways in which the government managed the diplomatic relationships that were affected by this policy shift. The introduction of fee-free higher education in Australia in 1974 was incredibly popular,…

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, both the Gosford Training School for Boys in New South Wales and the Westbrook Farm Home for Boys in Queensland were well-established institutions. Both were state-run facilities that ostensibly existed to incarcerate, educate and reform boys convicted of criminal offences. Gosford and Westbrook had total…

Teacher Education in Australia seems to be in a dynamic and constant cycle of review and change. Policy governing teacher education has also been eminently changeable and dynamic. To some extent this stems from three year terms for governments where a short term and expedient political view is taken. There has also been ongoing centre-periphery…

Currently the Australian university sector almost has a monopoly in the provision of courses and programmes for the initial preparation of teachers across the nation. What the future holds for the filed, however, is quite uncertain. This uncertainty, as this paper will demonstrate, is reflected in a number of trends. First, while a trend has…

Purpose: Self-determination policies and the expansion of bilingual schooling across Australia's Northern Territory (NT) in the 1970s and 1980s provided opportunities for Aboriginal educators and communities to take control over schooling. This paper demonstrates how this occurred at Shepherdson College, a mission school turned government…

This occasional paper provides an overview of the development of Australia's national training system and is a key knowledge document of a wider research project "Consistency with flexibility in the Australian national training system." This research project investigates the various approaches undertaken by each of the jurisdictions to…

This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores…

The standing of vocational education is salient for how it is perceived by those who sponsor, participate in and work within it and how its provisions are supported and administered. Yet, this standing continues to be intractably low, compared with other education sectors, more so in some countries than others. The consequences for this low…

As a response to the 2013 special issue of "Discourse" on marketisation and equity in education, this paper suggests it is important to understand how school sectors (independent, Catholic and government) continue to play a significant role in how we constitute education, markets and equity in Australia. The first part of this paper…

This article is concerned to respond to recent UK governments' attitudes to teachers, who are predominantly women, and who are denied a voice and sense of professionalism. It looks to the role of teacher research in school decision-making, including school improvement, historically in England, which set a pioneering example in years before the…

This paper traces the evolution of Australia's apprenticeship and traineeship system since permanent European settlement in 1788. The system was imported from Great Britain; it has evolved and diverged in some areas but retains many of the features of the British model. Most major changes have occurred in the last 25 years. The apprenticeship…

This article explores the impact of student self-financing systems on inequalities of access to higher education (HE) through comparative analysis of two national systems, those of England and Australia. The analysis of the historical development of HE in each nation identifies a set of comparative global themes: the expansion of HE in response to…

Whilst the past 35 years have seen numerous attempts at national curriculum collaboration in Australia, these have invariably failed largely due to the constitutional reality that the States have responsibility for curriculum. Federal government involvement in curriculum can only be achieved, therefore, with the consent of the States. To achieve…

Recent moves in Australia to institute a national curriculum emanated from federal governments of ostensibly different political persuasions in the period from 2003, building on developments that go back over 25 years. This article traces continuities and new developments, meditating on two questions: whether the current moves are politically…