‘Disjointed and inadequate’: inquiry calls for compulsory civics education

The committee behind the inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation in Australia has put forward 23 recommendations to strengthen the way civics and citizenship is taught – one being that the subject should be nationally mandated as a standalone curriculum.

Most students who provided extra comment in an inquiry survey said that they had either not been taught the history of Australian democracy at all, or had only been taught aspects of it.

Committee Chair, Senator the Hon Carol Brown, said as democracies around the world – including Australia – face “rising disengagement, distrust, and misinformation and disinformation” encountered online, it was now critical that school leavers were equipped to participate in elections and democratic life.  

“…Both formal and informal education is disjointed and inadequate to not only prepare our young people to cast an informed vote, but to ensure that citizens of all ages can take an active interest in public life,” Brown said.

She warned that a ‘strong theme’ emerging from the inquiry was the inconsistency across the country and between individual schools in how the national curriculum was delivered at the coalface.

“…Many inquiry participants agreed that what the Australian Curriculum sets out is not necessarily what is implemented in each school – highlighting a gap between policy and practice, with many students not having the same opportunities as their peers in other jurisdictions.”

For all Year 11 and 12 students, the Federal Government should develop a compulsory civics and citizenship course to ready them for participation in our electoral processes, the inquiry proposed.

“Noting successful programs in some jurisdictions, a minimum of two pilot programs should commence across all states and territories by July 2026, with a view to integrating the programs in the next version of the Australian Curriculum,” Brown added.

Launched as part of the inquiry, a survey canvassing the views of teachers, students and school leavers found most educators were in favour of making civics education compulsory.

Yet concerns were raised about students’ clear disinterest in the area of study. 

“Could they? Perhaps. Are they interested in doing so? Highly unlikely,” one regional NSW teacher commented.

Another common view was that students were ‘parochial’ in their interests, the inquiry found.

“They are often unaware of even very high-profile debates,” noted one Victorian public school educator.

Some students reported that they could not see the purpose of civics education.

“It feels pointless … like im [sic] not making an impact and the world's gonna go to shit anyway so why care abt [sic] civics”, a Year 11 student from regional Victoria noted.  

Others claimed they had not received any civics education at all.

As one Year 12 Victorian student wrote, “I don’t really know what civics is, never learnt a thing about it."

Meanwhile, one recent NSW school graduate reported their civics elective was “very insufficient and didn’t teach anything about how to participate in democracy, who are the parties and what they stand for, and why voting is important…”

Yet one public school teacher from Victoria argued that while students are “unlikely to ever be enthusiastic about [compulsory civics lessons] en-masse”, it should be made compulsory because the classroom remains “one of the few spaces where heterogenous thinking can be modelled and where students are obliged to think – even if superficially – about the social and political structures that underpin their experiences”.

Multiple teachers also expressed concern about the already packed curriculum, with one saying “something would need to come out” if civics were to be mandated.

Limited and inadequate professional development options were also flagged, with many teachers saying their civics PD was only ever informal.

“We usually rely on the teachers trained in civics to support other staff,” a Victorian public school teacher noted. Others stated that they attended conference events which were not available to all teachers.

The committee has called for media and digital literacy in the Australian Curriculum to be prioritised, after teachers expressed concern that misinformation within online environments had seen students absorb skewed or false political and social narratives.

“Understanding of bias and balance without civics education is lacking,” one Victorian public school teacher wrote.  

“Media literacy/competency can and should be spread across all subjects,” a democracy education specialist from NSW added.

Today Education Minister Jason Clare announced the launch of the Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) Hub, which contains more than 200 high-quality teaching resources for teachers across Years 3-10.  

The materials include guides on how to run mock parliamentary debates and elections, quizzes, case studies and a range of other resources designed to build students’ knowledge of Australia’s system of government, legal system and citizenship.