ACCOUNTABILITY IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Accountability is defined in terms of the monitoring of the rights and duties of teachers, which are themselves always open for negotiation and, therefore, change through time as in consequence must the mechanisms for monitoring them. In Australia accountability has grown less centralised and less bureaucratised as teachers have become more knowledgeable and better trained until to‐day the situation may be seen as one where educational aims are uncertain and monitoring, except of academic knowledge at Year Twelve, is vestigial. Economic factors and the tradition of Australian administration are currently forcing a reconsideration of this position, but ideologies, held both internationally and within the Australian teaching force, operating particularly through teachers' unions, oppose great redefinition. In as multidimensional an administrative field as Australian schooling accountability can not be rendered through one mechanism, but, taking into consideration the varying expertise of all involved, the definition of what is on the educational agenda, and the distinction between consultation and making decisions, a complex, constantly changing system of monitoring must inevitably evolve.