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National curricula influence, and are influenced by, political agendas. Understanding political enmeshment (both overt and covert) in curriculum development is therefore vital for ensuring transparency and quality in curricula. This paper analyses how the Australian Curriculum is represented in the federal Education Ministers' media releases. Using NVivo, media releases were inductively coded into two broad themes: (a) back to basics, overcrowding and phonics; and (b) Australian ‘truth’: History, democracy and identity. By organising political discourse into the narrative presented below, I argue that the Australian Curriculum is used as a weapon of mass construction. In other words, politicians use curriculum development and renewal to enforce particular subject positions and attack the other side of government. As a result, genuine curriculum renewal is stymied, with each new government claiming that it is correcting the mistakes of the previous government while appearing to make no tangible changes. The implications of this analysis are that greater transparency of political involvement is needed in curriculum materials, greater teacher autonomy is needed to adapt curricula to localised contexts and greater student freedom to contest curricula is needed to ensure robust literacy development and meaningful engagement with subject knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the language of examination reports for senior secondary English courses in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. A combination of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is used to examine the types of knowledge and knower that are valued in examinations; and how language is used to describe successful and less successful writing, and the candidates who produce these texts. The analysis suggests that subject English values an élite code (at least, in examination settings), in which both an 'insightful' approach to texts and skilled writing justifying analysis is valued; and that students who are unable to take up these discursive practices are imagined as lazy and callow. The paper concludes with implications for teachers and examiners, arguing that teachers must make students aware of the 'dual-sided' nature of subject English, and that examiners should be cognisant of potential bias in their view of responses and their writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]