In 1973, a major national report on education (the Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission, 1973) called for a more active role for the teaching profession in developing standards for practice and in exercising responsibility for professional development. The report argued that: A mark of a highly skilled occupation is that those entering it should have reached a level of preparation in accordance with standards set by the practitioners themselves, and that the continuing development of members should largely be the responsibility of the profession. In such circumstances, the occupational group itself becomes the point of reference for standards and thus the source of prestige or of condemnation… in Australia, teachers as an occupational group have had few opportunities to participate in decision-making. Their organisations have been traditionally more concerned with industrial matters, including those that affect the quality of services offered, than with the development of expertise, which has been seen as primarily the responsibility of the employer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]