 Hello and welcome to another edition of my video log entitled Fanning the Flames of Wonder. And I've called the video log that because I think that that is what real education is all about. In previous editions of my video log, I've been going through each letter in a carer's name. And today I were up to the fifth and last letter, A for authority. And I wanted to talk a little bit about what that letter means and how we exercise our authority at a carer and what the source of our authority is. Australians have always had a very ambiguous and ambivalent relationship with authority. Going right back to the time when the English settlers arrived and it was about full of convicts and soldiers establishing a penal colony. And there's also been a very strong kind of larrick and streak in Australian culture where we like to cut down tall poppies and make fun of people in authority. So we're in an interesting culture when it comes to authority. Anyway, coming back to the issue of asking questions, surely that's got to be one of the most important aspects of a quality education to be able to encourage students to ask questions. And that can be a very dangerous thing to do when I think of the philosopher Socrates who lived about two and a half thousand years ago in ancient Athens. He ended up being put to death by the authorities in Athens because he was encouraging the young people to ask too many uncomfortable questions around the way society was organised and questioning whether the way things had always been should be the way they are going forward. But we should always be curious about the way things are. That's what wonder is. And as educators, we should be engaged in fanning the flames of wonder, helping our students to ask more questions. So a key question is why should people listen to Akara when it comes to educational issues? What is the basis of Akara's authority? So there are two parts to the answer and they're related. The first is that Akara has been established by an act of a democratically elected parliament. And so Akara's very existence is the result of a democratic process. And we bring to our role the authority of that democratic process, the authority of the people. We've been tasked by the Australian parliament to do what we do. And our work program is approved by all Australian education ministers, who are themselves all elected officials, all there by virtue of our democratic processes. Secondly, at Akara, we aim to exercise the authority that has been given to us in a way that honours that democratic process and is faithful to it. All jurisdictions and schooling sectors are represented on our board. And we have a vast array of consultative committees that draw on the expertise of the whole education community. So we want to be an authority in the best sense of the word, a trusted source of information for all those who are interested in and invested in the learning of our young Australian citizens. In other words, we want to be authoritative rather than authoritarian. And this means we have to listen to stakeholders and collaborate with them, working closely with a community of partners who have insight and expertise, who are passionate about educating our young people. So our national leadership role is not one that we carry alone. We draw and have drawn on the expertise of people around the country and internationally. So for example, when developing the Australian curriculum, which is now implemented across the country, we had over 7,000 educators around the country who provided input into its foundational document called The Shape of the Australian Curriculum. We also had more than 12,000 individuals and groups who provided information and important advice on the draft curriculum and over 2,000 primary and secondary teachers in real classrooms who tested the curriculum before it was published in 2014. Also, when it comes to the NAPLAN tests each year, many people don't realise that these tests actually take about 18 months to develop. And that's because we have to bring together expertise, not only our own in-house expertise, but also experts from around the country, expertise in curriculum, in content, in assessment, in test design and measurement. This is all part of the process. We have students from each state and territory and each school sector and each part of the country, including remote and regional areas, who participate in trialling the questions and then their answers are analysed by our independent experts in assessment and measurement. So in whatever we do at Akara, whether it's moving forward to online assessment or continuing to improve the Australian curriculum or providing data and reporting on schooling, we draw our authority from the experience and expertise of the whole education sector. As I said, that is the basis on which we aim to be authoritative, not authoritarian in the way we exercise the authority that has been given to us by ministers. So that concludes our series on the five letters in Akara's name and what they stand for. I hope you've enjoyed watching them and found them informative. Thanks very much and let's keep fanning the flames of wonder in our students.