English in Australia and New Zealand

Under the Australian Federal system of government, education has been largely the separate concern of the six states and two territories. These eight systems have historically designed and implemented their own curricula and administered their own education bureaucracies. However, at the time ofwriting, moves away from this history of curriculum design towards national curricula in key disciplines such as English are well under way. In any case, much commonality already exists in English, as discussed below. Broadly, schooling is for 13 years in each state and territory, with the compulsory years of schooling being generally to Year 10. The final years -Years 11 and 12 -include some form of assessment towards university entrance. English is a compulsory subject throughout the compulsory years of schooling in each jurisdiction. In contrast to Australia, New Zealand already has a history of national curricula, with its latest manifestation - The New Zealand Curriculum (MoE, 2007a, 2007b) -due for full implementation at the beginning of 2010 and including English as a 'Learning Area'. Part ofthe policy context for both countries is their performance in international literacy testing. Only one country, Finland, gained (statistically) significantly better mean scores than Australia and New Zealand in reading literacy in both of PISA 2000 and 2003.1 In PISA 2006, Australia dropped into the third group among (then) fifty-seven countries, but New Zealand retained its position.