For most eligible voters who started primary school after 1986, the proposed referendum on the First Nations Voice to Parliament will be their first time participating in such an event. This Flagpost article explores the state of civics knowledge for first-time referendum voters.

A very brief history of civics education

Despite ‘[i]nterest in civic education dat[ing] back to federation in 1901’, the subject has had a difficult past. Abandoned as a separate subject in the 1930s by all states except Victoria, it was revived in the 1980s (McAllister 2002). Since this time, key developments include:

• recommendations to improve young people’s understanding of, and participation in, decision-making structures (Senate Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training’s Education for Active Citizenship (1989, p. 15) and follow-up report Active Citizenship Revisited (1991)).
• Civics Experts Group’s report Whereas the people … (1994), which found a ‘civic deficit’ in Australia and made 34 recommendations, including need for a non-partisan civics education program.
• creation of curriculum resources such as the Discovering Democracy project (1997) and Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2008).
• recommitment for several successive decades since 1989 in the Hobart, Adelaide and Melbourne declarations by state, territory and on occasions federal education ministers to students being able to participate as active and informed citizens.

Civics in the Australian Curriculum

Australia has a national curriculum, endorsed by education ministers, which sets out expectations for what students should be taught across Australia. States and territories are responsible for how the Australian Curriculum is implemented in their jurisdictions. The Australian Curriculum (Version 8.4) includes a subject on Civics and Citizenship (CC) as part of the Humanities and Social Sciences learning area for Year 7 to 10 students. The CC curriculum covers government, Constitution, legal system, rights, participating in a democracy, making laws, political parties, policy and international comparison. In Year 7 students learn about ‘the process for constitutional change through a referendum’.

According to the sequence of content, referendums are not explicitly revisited in later years but may be incorporated in Year 12 politics or legal studies.

Score card

Beginning in 2004, the National Assessment Program­­­ – Civics and Citizenship (NAP CC) assessment has tested a random sample of Year 6 and 10 students every three years. The assessment has undergone various methodological changes and since 2010 students have been surveyed about their civic engagement (NAP CC 2010, pp. ix–x). Notably, year 6 students take the NAP CC despite not having formally studied civics as part of the Australian curriculum. However, they may have participated in on-site learning at Canberra-based national institutions through the Parliament and Civics Education Rebate (PACER) program.

Percentages of Year 6 and 10 students who were at or above the proficient standard since 2004

Source: NAP CC 2019, pp. 23–24

It is apparent that young people are not ‘acing’ civics and citizenship understanding. On average 52.5% of Year 6 and 42% of Year 10 students were at or above the proficient national standard (NAP CC 2019, pp. 23–24). Of the participants since 2004, all except the Year 6 students in the 2019 assessment and possibly some in the 2016 assessment will be first-time referendum voters in 2023, provided they’re eligible.

Participants’ specific knowledge of referendums has been tested on two occasions:

1. in 2013 Year 10 students were asked about the advantages of the double majority provision, with only 3% of students receiving full marks (NAP CC 2013, p. 43).
2. in 2019 students were asked who decides the result of the referendum, with 36% of Year 6 students (ineligible for 2023 referendum) and 45% of Year 10 students achieving full marks. Of note, 28% of Year 6 and 24% of Year 10 students believed that the government determined the referendum result (NAP CC 2019, pp. 126–127).

The NAP CC results are consistent with low findings of civics and citizenship knowledge in other studies, as mentioned by Krink in 1999 and more recently in a study by Ghazarian, Laughland-Booÿ and Skrbis (2017). These low results also extend to eligible voters as found in the Australian Election Study (Gibson & McAllister 2014, p. 7; McAllister 2016, p. 1226).

Where to from here?

Ghazarian and Laughland-Booÿ (2021, p. 123) observe that ‘it is typically argued that in order to vote in an informed and knowledgeable manner, the voter should have a fundamental understanding of their nation’s political system, electoral system, political parties and representatives, and current political debates’. In the context of changing the Constitution, Anne Twomey (2022) provided the following commentary on civics education:

… the failure to provide proper civics education in schools means most people don’t feel they have an adequate grounding to embark on making that assessment. Decades of neglect of civics has left us with a population that is insufficiently equipped to fulfil its constitutional role of updating the Constitution.

Further historic information

Civics Expert Group, Whereas the people …, report, Australian Government Publishing Service, 30 November 1994.

Katie Krinks, Creating the active citizen? Recent developments in civics education, Research paper series, 1998–99, (Canberra: Parliamentary Library, 23 March 1999).