Howard calls for national curriculum
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has called on the eight states and territories to adopt a single national school curriculum.
Mr Howard said the move would improve education standards and prevent thousands of students from being disadvantaged when they move between states.
He said a single curriculum could mean higher standards and would eliminate differences between the different state school syllabuses that affect students whose parents move interstate.
'We want uniformly high standards. And what we need to have is an elimination of differences that disadvantage people when they move from one part of the country to the other,' Mr Howard said.
But the Labor Opposition attacked the government's call and said it was trying to take control of the national education curriculum.
Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop also called for a national schools curriculum, claiming that state schools were being run by left-wing ideologues.
