Australian Journal of Education

An appreciation of contemporary demography and impending shifts within it are needed for the efficient and equitable allocation of the limited resources available for education in Australia. The school-age population of Australia is increasing at substantially lower rates than the population as a whole. The paper examines recent trends in population growth in Australia from the perspective of their effects on the school-age population. Projected trends in population growth and age structure over the next two decades indicate that the school-age population at most will be stable and probably will decline. Shifts in levels of participation in the later years of secondary schooling are also examined. The paper then examines how the composition of the school-age population is changing and notes increasing levels of diversity and inequality. Finally some observations are made on policy influences on the future school-age population of Australia.

This paper considers tensions associated with constructing literacy curricula for students in the post-compulsory years of schooling, where discourses of work, higher education and school accreditation jostle for prominence. Using an Australian state as example, the paper demonstrates how students are channelled towards different versions of English literacy in the senior secondary school, and how literacy curricula become complicit in the hierarchical sorting and streaming of young adult learners. Students seeking immediate post-school employment are offered a literacy program which emphasises practical, routine literacy skills and procedures, whereas students preparing for higher education entry are offered a curriculum which emphasises public, formal, theoretical analysis and imaginative and creative language play. The paper argues that post-compulsory students need access to a literacy repertoire that extends beyond such simple differentiation: a flexible and intelligent repertoire of literacy practices that prepares students for the changing and dynamic face of contemporary literate practice.

Social differences in curriculum access and student achievement are a feature of schooling in Australia. These differences are usually documented at the senior secondary level where the curriculum is most differentiated, but the present study found large social, gender and school differences in levels of study at a more junior year-level. Using detailed information from the certificate records of 5491 Year 10 students, this study found that in English and mathematics the level of study students access is strongly related to socioeconomic background, gender and school attended. Differences between schools, measured using multilevel modelling techniques, are related to the type of school, enrolment size, and social composition. The study also found strong effects of curriculum location in the middle years of school on school completion, access to academic courses in senior school, and final year achievement. The results show significant between-school effects suggesting that schools can make a difference.

Using interest group theory and the idea of public policy development and application following sequential stages, this paper explores how key decisions were made about the establishment and implementation of the controversial national quality assurance program for higher education that operated in Australia from 1993 to 1995. The paper explains how Australia came to introduce a quality assurance program that differed substantially from those established in other OECD countries.

The Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire from the United States of America (Friedlander, Pace, & Lehman, 1990) was revised and rewritten for Australian university students. The Australian Quality of Student Experiences Scale comprises 60 items relating to student expectations and, in direct correspondence, 60 items relating to their experiences. The items are based on a model involving academic, personal and group experiences for eight areas: My Course, The Library, My Lecturers, Student Acquaintances, The Arts, Writing, The Sciences and Vocations. The convenience sample was 305 first year students and the data were analysed with a Rasch measurement model. Fifty-eight items did not fit the model and were discarded. Most of these items came from the sub-scales: The Arts, The Sciences and Writing. The final scale of 62 items had excellent psychometric properties. Expectations are easier than experiences, as conceptualised, and the conceptual design of the scale is confirmed.