Unhelpful for students and for teachers

Finally, in Victoria, there is also a belated admission that not all is well: "It can be argued that the current ways in which many curriculum authorities have conceived the curriculum for schools have resulted in poor definitions of expected and essential learning and provides teachers with insufficient guidance about what to teach".

One might be forgiven for thinking, such are the acknowledged flaws in OBE, that those responsible would heed teachers' complaints, and as the teachers connected to PLATO argue, provide schools with clear, succinct and academically sound syllabuses.

This is not the case. Such is the bizarre and unaccountable world of curriculum development that the majority of Australian states and territories are renewing their efforts to develop more extreme forms of outcomes-based education.

In Tasmania, subjects such as history, mathematics and English have been replaced with vague and new-age essential learnings such as: "Thinking, communicating, personal futures, social responsibility and world futures".

South Australia defines essential learnings as "futures, identity, interdependence, thinking and communication" on the basis that "these understandings, capabilities and dispositions are personal and intellectual qualities, not bodies of knowledge".

As might be expected from the territory that hosts the nation's capital, the ACT, not to be outdone by Tasmania or South Australia, lists 36 essential learning achievements, ranging from the banal, "the student understands change", to the trite, "students use problem-solving skills".

As evidenced by the history of Australian education, the harsh reality is that, instead of being listened to, an increasingly frustrated and overworked teaching force is set for yet another tidal wave of jargon-ridden and time-consuming curriculum experimentation.