In April 1999, State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers of Education met as the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in Adelaide. At that meeting, Ministers endorsed a new set of National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century. The new goals were released in April 1999 as The Adelaide Declaration (1999) on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century.

The Adelaide Declaration (1999) arose from a Discussion Paper (1998) reviewing The Hobart Declaration (1989) and supersedes these earlier documents.