Stephen Gniel will immediately head up the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), following a “competitive” selection process carried out by an executive search agency, and overseen by a selection panel made up of board members and a representative from the federal education department.

“The Board selected its preferred candidate, which was then considered by the Cabinet at federal government level,” the authority noted in a statement. 

Gniel assumed the role of acting CEO last November, following the resignation of then CEO David de Carvalho.

Education Minister Jason Clare welcomed Gniel’s appointment and said he brings a “wealth of experience across early childhood education, schools, and tertiary portfolios” in the sector.

“Mr Gniel will lead ACARA in providing guidance and reporting on school curriculum and assessments, including NAPLAN,” Clare added. 

Gniel is a former member of the ACARA board and has previously served as the CEO of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA). 

He has also held other senior positions within the Victorian and ACT Education Departments, and was the National President and Board Chair of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) between 2016 and 2022.
 
“I congratulate Mr Gniel on his appointment and look forward to continuing to work with him to build a better and fairer education system,” Clare concluded. 

Gniel said he was “delighted” to lead the authority at what was a “very important time for education in Australia”. 
 
“As a passionate and a committed educational leader, having started my career as a primary school teacher and principal before moving into senior education system leadership roles, I’m honoured to lead the talented team at ACARA,” Gniel said. 

“Our relentless focus will continue to be on ensuring we support our teachers and inspire improvement in the learning of all young Australians through world-class curriculum, assessment and reporting.”

ACARA is an independent statutory authority that takes a “national approach to setting educational expectations for all Australians”, and its work is set and agreed upon by all education ministers. 

To this end, its purpose is to “be the authoritative source of advice on, and delivery of, national curriculum, assessment and reporting for all Australian education ministers”. 

ACARA administers the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the three-yearly NAP sample assessments in science literacy, civics and citizenship, and ICT literacy, plus NAP Opt-in assessments in sample assessment domains.

NAPLAN has long attracted criticism from experts, teacher unions and educators, who say the standardised assessment narrows teachers’ focus in the classroom, places unnecessary stress on students and leads to unhelpful school ‘league tables’ disseminated by the media. 

Others say NAPLAN is an invaluable tool that provides a critical insight into the state of teaching and learning in Australian schools, and can thus help to drive improvement reform.  

In March ACARA came under fire for having what was called a ‘disgraceful’ lack of transparency around the content of its NAPLAN numeracy tests, with one mathematician claiming schools and the public at large had no way of critiquing the quality of questions being posed to students online. 

Dr Marty Ross, who blogs regularly on maths education, told EducationHQ it was both appalling and incomprehensible that the last time a NAPLAN test was made available was back in 2016.

“The major issue at the moment is the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability of ACARA – that simply they can conduct these tests online and no one sees them,” Ross said. 

“As far as I can tell … I do not know how anybody outside of ACARA can see, for example, any of the questions from last year’s tests.

“So, we simply have no way of knowing whether these tests are mathematically correct, let alone good.”

Ross argued that because the authority functions as a “kind of quasi government” entity, it’s really answerable only to education ministers.

“They’re (ACARA are) not accountable enough. You cannot see the questions, so you cannot critique the questions,” he said. 

The national NAPLAN results for this year are expected to be published next month.