Theoretically, by 2011, all school students in Australia will be taught history as a core part of the curriculum. Not ‘Australian History’, please note, but a more general and, as yet undefined, version. For the past two decades history has, in many schools, been distinctly on the back foot — and in most university faculties of education (outside NSW, that is) history has all but disappeared off the menu.

Indeed, in one major Australian university, from 2009 onwards, secondary history teachers will receive a mere eight sessions in their area in their entire pre-service program — and this is not an uncommon allocation of time for many other universities.

What this means, unless there is a radical change at both the school level and in the teacher education faculties, the new national curriculum in history, to be taught to 3.4 million students, will be serviced by teachers whose immediate grasp of history education might be limited to reading the syllabus and curriculum framework assessment requirements.

The solution? Start a program of reform within faculties of education right now. Start providing good, sustained professional development at the school level that leads into 2011, and start designing classroom materials, including books, that combine professional learning for teachers with history resources for students — and ensure that these materials explicitly lead to a firm and clear understanding amongst teachers and students both about what constitute historical literacy.

This is what we in the National Centre for History Education called ‘PD on the page’. Otherwise, as a famous Hollywood star once said, ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night’.

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