Curriculum Council of Western Australia

The Curriculum Council of Western Australia is a defunct government department that once set curriculum policy directions for kindergarten to year 12 schooling in Western Australia. It was located at 27 Walters Drive, Osborne Park, Western Australia 6017. The Curriculum Council was governed by the 1997 Curriculum Council Act.

Set up in 1997, the Council was disbanded following a litany of failures in 2012. It was replaced by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority.

The goal of the Curriculum Council was to provide for the development and implementation of a Curriculum Framework for schooling which sets out the knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes that students are expected to acquire; provides for the development and accreditation of courses of study for post-compulsory schooling; and provides for the assessment and certification of student achievement.

Student learning is the major stated principle of the Curriculum. The Curriculum policy directions are underpinned by the following stated principles:

Paul Albert was appointed as the inaugural Chief Executive of the Curriculum Council by the then education minister, Colin Barnett, shortly after the formation of the Council in 1997 when it superseded the Secondary Education Authority. Albert was appointed on a five-year contract, and left the Council in 2001, leaving Norma Jeffery as the CEO.

Norma Jeffery was appointed as Chief Executive of the Council in 2003. Jeffery was responsible for the implementation of the Curriculum Framework and in 2005 began to introduce the new courses of study into Year 11 of senior high schools in Western Australia under the direction of the then education minister Ljiljanna Ravlich.

Jeffery commissioned a report on the assessment scheme that was to be used in the controversial system of outcomes based education from Professor David Andrich, the Dean of Education at Murdoch University in 2005. The report was duly completed later the same year and found that strongly argued case for marks arising from analytic assessments to be used for tertiary selection and against the levelling system that was currently being used. Consequently, Jeffery was removed from her position and transferred elsewhere in the public service and replaced by Greg Robson. Robson left shortly afterward accepting a position in the Department of Education in South Australia.

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