Education in Western Australia
[4] From the 1850s schools became more common around Western Australia, with many of the teachers being sourced from educated convicts who had obtained their ticket of leave.
[citation needed] Initially there were no official qualifications required to teach, only that a teacher be literate, and many schools were run by nuns or single women.
[citation needed] The first school in the state with a focus on educating Indigenous children, Annesfield, was opened in 1852 by clergyman John Wollaston and Anne Camfield in Albany.
To this end he worked with the headmaster Roderick Brooke Cowden[9] and his staff to design the equipment needed to enable the students to be more independent and resourceful in the learning process.
School gardens were established where the children experimented with different types of grains such a wheat, oats and barley, and the growing of vegetables and flowers.
When teaching standard curriculum subjects such as arithmetic and history, teachers were encouraged to use local sources, for example "figures showing the district's imports and exports were computed from the railway records".
This success was in no small part due to the government's recognition of the state's dependence on agriculture.
Before that time, many children were attending pre-primary education programs, but the government of Western Australia put in place legislation to bring the state into line with other jurisdictions.
[27] The Selective Academic Program is accelerated and differentiated to support the needs of gifted and talented students.
The Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) was introduced in 2010 in Australia as a means of standardizing the national university entrance system.
The classification of tertiary qualifications in Western Australia is governed in part by the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), which attempts to integrate into a single national classification all levels of tertiary education (both vocational and higher education), from trade certificates to higher doctorates.
They include: In size these RTOs vary from single-person operations delivering training and assessment in a narrow specialisation, to large organisations offering a wide range of programs.
Vocational education and training (VET) programs delivered by TAFE Institutes and private RTOs are based on nationally registered qualifications, derived from either endorsed sets of competency standards known as training packages, or from courses accredited by state/territory government authorities.
All trainers and assessors delivering VET programs are required to hold a qualification known as the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAA40104) or demonstrate equivalent competency.
Edith Cowan University is the newest education department associated university, with campuses in a number of locations, and includes the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Mt Lawley and a Joondalup campus, which also houses the WA Police training facility.
