About Values Education

Values education – any explicit and/or implicit school-based activity which promotes student understanding and knowledge of values, and which develops the skills and dispositions of students so they can enact particular values as individuals and members of the wider community.
National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools (2005)

Both the Adelaide Declaration on the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century (1999)  and the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) underline the importance of education in equipping students with values to enable them to face future challenges and to live healthy and satisfying lives. Within the community at large there is also discussion about how our children acquire their values and how they make sense of values promoted by the media and their peers. Parents, caregivers and families are the primary source of values education for their children but they expect support from schools in this endeavour. Values education is an essential part of effective schooling.

To assist schools in implementing values education across the whole school the Australian Government funded the Values Education Program. 

The National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools underpins the Values Education Program. It was developed from the Values Education Study (2003) and national consultation of a draft framework. The national framework was agreed to and endorsed by all the State and Territory Ministers of Education and distributed to all Australian schools in February 2005.

The vision of the Framework is that all Australian schools provide values education in a planned and systematic way by:

• articulating, in consultation with their school community, the school’s mission/ethos;
• developing student responsibility in local, national and global contexts and building student resilience and social skills;
• ensuring values are incorporated into school policies and teaching programs across the key learning areas; and
• reviewing the outcomes of their values education practices.

The Australian Government is funding the Values Education website www.valueseducation.edu.au to support values education in Australian schools.

Previous initiatives funded by the Australian Government as part of the Values Education Program include:

• the Values Education Good Practice Schools Project – Stages 1 and 2
• the Values in Action Schools Project
• funding for state and territory education authorities to conduct a Values Education Professional Learning Program for teachers and Values Education Forums
• the Values for Australian Schooling resource series
• national activities, including partnership projects with parents, principals, teachers and teacher educators and a national forum/conference. 

Values Education 2002-2003 Archive

Values Education 2004 Archive