Growing up in Vanuatu I was exposed to many varieties of accents and also spellings, as some books and readers are made in America...and we used them at the British school I went to as well as readers from Australia, NZ and other places. We had a lot of expatriates there, from many different countries. I NEVER realised that the Chinese people spoke English with a different accent, and I could understand them clearly. I could understand any accent of English from any country, and never ever noticed that we all sounded different.
...
Or notices that we Aussies sound different to them.
... Please dont bring up your kids to be one of those people that cant understand different accents. Expose them to all accents so they get a better trained ear.
I agree with you in that accents are different throughout the world and it is not only an american-british issue. But as you said, the Australian accent is.... (horrible??? no ofense). I have cousins living in Australia and they had real problems at first in trying to understand what australians where saying.
I consider american and british accents are most representative and very good.
Finally i agree 100% in bringing kids that can understand different accents.
So as my conclusion it is great to have a British curriculum set up and you decide which one to use or both one after the other.