Who is behind the techno-education review?
The Federal Government will not reveal the identities of ‘subject matter experts’ engaged in the review of Australia's national curriculum.
It has been announced that Professor Kenneth Wiltshire AO and Dr Kevin Donnelly will lead the review, but just who will be undertaking individual reviews of each subject will remain a mystery until they are complete.
Science and technology news outlet The Register has been seeking information on the figures behind possible reform of the Digital Technologies curriculum.
The paper questions if the unnamed reviewers will be IT high-flyers like Bill Gates or Ray Kurzweil, or whether they will even be able to spell ‘HTML’.
The Digital Technologies curriculum has been part of the wider Technologies curriculum, which was itself under the umbrella of “industrial arts”.
This has raised concern that the reviewers may not be properly qualified to review digital technologies content specifically.
The Register has published the following statement it says was receved from the Department of Education;
Subject area specialists have been engaged to conduct the curriculum analysis and benchmarking aspect of the Review in all learning areas of the Australian Curriculum, including Technologies.
Reports from subject area specialists will inform the Review’s final report, which will be presented to the Government on 31 July 2014. The report will be publicly released, along with the names of all contributors, when the Government has considered its findings.
Little information has been given as to the size and scope of the education review, which could modify many of the mechanisms designed to implement the ‘Gonski review’ of national education funding.
Opponents say the appointment of ‘LNP-friendly’ reviewers shows that the Federal Government wants to move further from the recommendations of the review, which was undertaken under the former Labor government.
The first reports from the most recent education funding review are expected at the end of July.