Why did Queensland schools teach the wrong content?

When it was revealed last month that nine Queensland high schools had taught the wrong content for the Year 12 Ancient History external exam, most people were shocked. About 140 students were affected. They spent the year studying Augustus Caesar, only to discover the correct topic was Julius Caesar.

The Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority had notified schools of the change back in 2023. Yet the misalignment still slipped through. It should not have happened, but with the way curriculum planning works in many schools, it easily could have.

This is not the first time such a story has broken. In 2017, a school in NSW did the exact same thing in Mathematics. And these are the stories we know about.

The Real Issue Is Not Teacher Error

Whilst it might be easy to blame the teachers, it’s not their fault. They are expected to keep abreast of all the requirements of a highly complex curriculum issued by state and federal governments. Add on top the fact that curriculums are being regularly updated and it’s a recipe for disaster.

Teachers across Australia are not really provided with any solution to this challenge. They do not work with purpose-built planning systems. Instead, they work on shared drives, loose documents, version chaos, email threads, and a lot of manual checking.

Most faculties and teams rely on:

• folders filled with multiple versions of programs
• outdated units accidentally reused
• files saved as “final” and “final_v2”, and other amendments
• Templates that vary year to year and across programs
• personal edits that never make it back to the faculty or stage master copy

In this environment, confusion is not surprising. It is predictable.

Planning Is Fragmented and Hard to See

Each faculty often maintains its own version of the curriculum its suppose to deliver.

But these pieces rarely exist in one place. Leadership teams have limited visibility which makes it extremely difficult to keep on top of what is actually being delivered. Many teachers deliver what they have been provided, trusting that it is correct.

When curriculum planning lives across scattered folders and personal devices, it only takes one outdated document to send an entire cohort down the wrong path.

No Single Source of Truth

Most schools cannot quickly answer a simple question:

Can we prove that the entire school is teaching what the curriculum requires?

Not because teachers are careless, but because the system they work in makes accuracy difficult.

Problems arise because:

• programs exist in multiple formats
• there is no automated version control
• communication is siloed
• documents are easily lost
• updates are slow to spread across faculties

Errors do not announce themselves. They creep in quietly.

When Mistakes Happen, Students Pay the Price

The Queensland incident became a headline because of its scale, but smaller misalignments happen every year in schools everywhere. Units get taught out of order, key outcomes are skipped, content is repeated, or assessments fail to match what was delivered.

These issues do not always make the news, but they affect learning all the same.

What Schools Need Instead

Schools need planning systems that reduce the risk of errors and increase visibility. Systems that:

• provide one central, always-up-to-date program
• allow leaders at all levels visibility over the curriculum
• ensure new syllabus changes flow into every program
• prevent outdated units from being reused
• link lessons, assessments, and outcomes consistently
• allow teachers to collaborate in one place and push changes back to faculty or stage masters

How Planuva Solves This

Planuva gives schools a single source of truth for curriculum planning. It allows schools to:

• have one source of truth for their curriculum
• track exactly what units and outcomes are being taught
• update programs centrally so no one uses old documents
• ensure that all curriculum requirements are being met
• collaborate in real time without version chaos
• build a culture of continuous improvement of teaching and learning in their schools

The Queensland incident should not be dismissed as a rare mistake. It should be a wake up call for all of us. Schools deserve tools that make accuracy easy and errors unlikely.

👉 Join the waitlist at planuva.com