Respected academic and curriculum advisor Dr Beverly Derewianka takes a detailed look at the Donnelly report on Australian curriculum and finds it lacking credibility.

For someone who is purporting to champion rigour and academic standards, Dr Kevin Donnelly has produced a flawed and cynically inaccurate report (Where do we stand? The intended primary school curricula within an international context) in the interests of promoting his 'backwards to basics' agenda.

While there is much to criticise in terms of his methodology and 'findings', I will take just one example: his review of the NSW English K-6 syllabus. I have chosen this example because, as a member of the writing team, I am most familiar with this syllabus.

In his 'international benchmarking' exercise, Donnelly selects three syllabuses from other countries-USA (California), England and New Zealand-against which he compares the Australian syllabuses. In the process, he dismisses the New Zealand syllabus, leaving the Californian and UK syllabuses as those he feels are superior to the Australian syllabuses.

It would appear that, with regard to English, the report has maligned a locally produced syllabus in favour of foreign ones which are not remarkably different from the home-grown product when judged by his own criteria.

Inferior ranking in doubt
Donnelly selects two areas of the English curriculum for analysis: 'early years of reading' and 'literature'.

In relation to 'early years of reading', Donnelly assigns 'top marks' to the Californian standards statement on the (somewhat spurious) basis that there are more descriptors relating to the development of basic reading skills. However, a close reading of the documents reveals that the Californian syllabus has 44 instances, that from England (which was ranked equally with NSW) has eight, and the NSW syllabus has 91 instances in the Scope and Sequence statement alone-not including the Outcomes Statements where these are further elaborated.

In addition, the NSW English K-6 has a 124-page Literacy Support Document for Students Experiencing Learning Difficulties outlining in great detail the support to be provided for such students.

Donnelly himself admits that English K-6 "gives teachers detailed guidance as to the types of skills needed related to phonics", providing numerous examples from the syllabus and a qualitative analysis would demonstrate that the NSW and Californian syllabuses draw on similar research and have similar intentions. One is forced to question, therefore, the inferior ranking to the Californian syllabus.

Explicit and systematic
Mischievously, Donnelly criticises the NSW English K-6 for not using terms such as 'phonemic awareness', 'phonics' and 'explicit'. He makes the claim that there is only one instance of 'phonemic awareness' in the English K-6 syllabus. An informed reading of the document, however, would have identified multiple references to 'phonological aware-ness', a term referring to the same phenomenon but which extends beyond the phoneme, and 'sound awareness', a more transparent term for the benefit of parents.

Similarly, he claims that the term 'phonics' was not referred to at all. But again, a reading of the syllabus shows that the notion of 'letter-sound correspondence' (graphophonic relationships or, less technically, 'phonics') is well recognised-for example, "draws on knowledge of letter-sound relationships when trying to read unknown words". In each case, the terminology was carefully chosen to more accurately reflect the most advanced research in the field. With regard to 'explicit and systematic', it is hard to imagine how the 91 descriptors above could be taught 'covertly', rendering redundant the need to use the term 'explicit'.

Sound theory ignored In terms of 'literature', the Californian document was ranked by Donnelly as exemplary, receiving twice as many stars as the NSW English K-6. And yet, it is hard to know the basis for this judgment. His criticism of English K-6 is that "very few of the indicators deal with the technical aspects of literature". However, an examination of the indicators reveals equal attention as the Californian syllabus to traditional aspects such as author, illustrator, characters, setting, events, plot, conflict, resolution, acts, scenes, stage directions, cinquain, haiku, visual images and to the use of stylistic devices (see 'Aspects of literature').

In addition to these stylistic devices, NSW English K-6 systematically includes indicators that refer to how language functions to construct meaning in various literary texts-for example, "identifies doing, thinking, feeling and saying verbs in a narrative"; "identifies adverbial phrases that tell us more about the action in terms of where, when, why, how, and discusses the effect of this use in texts"; "identifies quoted and reported speech in literary texts and discusses the different effects of their use"; "identifies evaluative language in texts and discusses the effects of such language", and so on.

Donnelly claims that "many of the curriculum descriptors show little evidence of any increase in complexity or difficulty across the levels (see, for example, RS1.5-RS2.5-RS3.5)". However, an examination of these descriptors reveals a distinct recognition of increase in complexity (see 'Increasing complexity' below), which is then further illustrated by the indicators.

These descriptors are grounded in sound developmental theory with regard to the degree of autonomy in reading, the familiarity and predictability of the content, the degree of challenge and complexity in the texts, the sophistication of the reader's response, the length of the text, and the range of types of texts. It is hard to imagine fitting more developmental description into such brief statements.

In comparison, the NZ syllabus, which is ranked equally with NSW English K-6 (see box below), gives the highlighted descriptions of progress over six years of schooling (aspects of development bolded by me). The lack of equivalence is self-evident to anyone familiar with literacy development and syllabus design.

Simplistic attacks
With regard to NSW English K-6, Donnelly states that the indicator-"interprets a variety of literary and factual texts"-begs the question of what types of text, but then omits to mention the accompanying indicators, which refer to stories and poems, recounts (eg historical, empathetic), reviews of children's literary works, procedures, instructions, rules, information reports, electronic texts, causal explanations and sustained arguments.

NSW English K-6 is criticised for failing to define what is meant by 'text structure' or identify which 'grammatical features' need to be covered, yet there are two substantial support documents that address these aspects comprehensively. In this area, as anyone really familiar with the primary literacy field would be aware, Australia is a world leader.

From the information available in the Where do we stand? The intended primary school curricula within an international context report, it appears that Donnelly has been able to identify only one syllabus internationally that he considers to be superior to NSW English K-6, and from the above observations even this is open to question. Using different (and more theoretically appropriate) criteria, it could be demonstrated that English K-6 is a far superior document to those from California or England in many respects.

If Donnelly's report is so wilfully inaccurate in terms of one of the syllabuses it criticises, then how credible is the rest of the report? One would need to ask why the Department of Education, Science and Training would give its imprimatur to such a poorly researched document, unless the 'findings' conveniently support a conservative push to discredit current Australian syllabuses in order to pursue its own agenda. One might also ask about the process used to select Donnelly, a former chief-of-staff to Federal Liberal Minister Kevin Andrews, to produce the report.

Literacy educators are becoming increasingly demoralised and frustrated at the relentless, simplistic, headline-grabbing attacks on their professionalism. Literacy research in Australia is well-regarded internationally and NSW English K-6 has been recognised as a comprehensive, theoretically coherent, balanced and practical syllabus. Why, in the context of international competition, would Australia want to be seen to be denigrating its own?

Dr Beverly Derewianka is the director, Centre for Research in Language and Literacy, Faculty of Edu-cation, University of Wollongong, NSW.

This is an edited extract of a paper given at an Australian Curriculum Studies Association forum.