Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

A 64% collapse in Australian history and politics enrolments demands a back-to-basics reset in Victorian education.

Family First’s Jane Foreman has called for an urgent reset in Victorian education after a Herald Sun analysis revealed a 64 per cent collapse in VCE enrolments in both Australian history and Australian politics over the past decade — one of the steepest declines of any subject statewide.

In raw numbers, just 424 students studied Australian history in 2024, down from 1,181 in 2014. Australian politics fared even worse, falling from 238 students to a mere 86. The number of schools offering Australian history has halved, dropping from 81 providers to just 36.

“When fewer than 90 students in the entire state are studying how our democracy works, we have a crisis on our hands. You cannot be a citizen of a country you know nothing about. This is what happens when ideology replaces fundamentals in the classroom.”

Ideology and Ignorance

Ms Foreman said the figures were a direct consequence of an education system that has progressively sidelined the foundational knowledge — history, civics, and democratic values — that enable young Australians to participate meaningfully in public life.

Family First has long advocated for a back-to-basics approach to education, including mandating Australian history and civics as compulsory learning at both primary and secondary levels. Ms Foreman said that commitment has never been more urgent.

“Children are leaving school without knowing the story of their nation, without understanding how their parliament functions, and without the civic foundation to think critically about who leads them and why. We wouldn’t accept this in mathematics or literacy — we should not accept it here.”

While subjects like environmental science have seen enrolments nearly triple, Ms Foreman said the surge reflected broader ideological pressure on school curricula rather than a genuine commitment to a well-rounded education.

“Of course students should understand environmental issues. But a student who can recite climate policy and cannot name the branches of government, or who has never studied Federation, is not educated — they are half-educated. We owe our children more than that.”

Environmental Science Surges as Civics Fades

Family First’s education platform calls for Australian history and civics to be compulsory from Year 5 through to Year 10, with structured content covering the nation’s founding, constitutional democracy, the ANZAC legacy, and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. At the VCE level, the party supports incentives to encourage schools to maintain and promote these subjects.

Ms Foreman said the Allan Labor Government’s failure to arrest these trends — or even acknowledge them as a problem — was emblematic of its wider neglect of core educational outcomes in favour of progressive curricula priorities.

“A government serious about the future of Victoria would be alarmed by these numbers. Instead, Labor has allowed the slow erasure of our national story from the classroom. Family First will reverse that.”

___

Image courtesy of Adobe.