Australian Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum is a national curriculum for schools in all states and territories of Australia, from Kindergarten to Year 12, is currently being developed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. The first stages are scheduled to commence in 2013.^[1] Credentialling, and related assessment requirements and processes, will remain the responsibility of states and territories.^[2]

Accessing the Australian Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum can be accessed at its own website.^[3] Full curricula can be downloaded by any member of the public.

Learning areas

The learning areas in the Australian Curriculum are: Arts F–10, English F–10, English 11–12, Health and Physical Education F–10, Civics and Citizenship 3–10, Economics and Business 5–10, Geography F–12, History F–10, History 11–12, Languages F–10, Mathematics F–10, Mathematics 11–12, Science F–10, Science 11–12, Technologies F–10, Work Studies 9-10.^[4] (F means Foundation, or the pre-primary years of schooling).

History

A nationwide curriculum has been on the political agenda in Australia for several decades. In the late 1980s a significant push for a national curriculum in Australia was mounted by the Hawke Federal Labor government. Draft documentation was produced but failure to achieve agreement from the mainly Liberal State governments led to the abandonment of this initiative in 1991.

In 2006, then Liberal Prime Minister John Howard called for a "root and branch renewal" of Australian history teaching at school level, ostensibly in response to building criticism of Australian students' (and Australians more widely) perceived lack of awareness of historical events. The Howard government convened the Australian History Summit in August 2006 to commence the process of drafting a national History curriculum. The Summit recommended that Australian History be a compulsory part of the curriculum in all Australian schools in years 9 and 10. The Australian History External Reference Group was then commissioned by the government to develop a Guide to Teaching Australian History in Years 9 and 10. The Reference Group comprised Geoffrey Blainey, Gerard Henderson, Nicholas Brown and Elizabeth Ward, and was presented with a draft proposal prepared earlier by the historian Tony Taylor. The Guide was released to the public on 11 October 2007, but little was achieved toward its implementation following the Howard government's defeat at the federal election in November 2007. The current Labor initiated National History Curriculum remains politically contentious.

In April 2008, the Rudd Government established the independent National Curriculum Board.^[5] Tony Taylor, who had written the original draft for the Howard government-appointed Australian History External Reference Group, told The Age that he expected that the Reference Group's Guide to Teaching Australian History would be discarded by the new Board. Taylor had expressed public disapproval of the changes made to his original draft, both by the Reference Group and, Taylor suspected, by Howard himself. Taylor was of the opinion that the Guide had sought to establish a curriculum that was "too close to a nationalist view of Australia's past", and hoped that the new Board would produce a curriculum that was more in line with what Taylor saw as Rudd's "regional and global world view".^[6] In September 2008, the Board appointed four academics to draft "framing documents" which would establish a broad direction for the National Curriculum in each of four subject areas: History (Stuart Macintyre), English (Peter Freebody), Science (Denis Goodrum) and Mathematics (Peter Sullivan). In May 2009 the statutory Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was established to oversee the implementation of the planned nationwide curriculum initiative.^[7]

Phases of development

The National Curriculum is being developed in several phases:^[1]

• Phase 1: English, Mathematics, the Sciences and History – for implementation from the start of 2011
• Phase 2: Languages, Geography and the Arts
• Phase 3: Health and Physical Education (HPE), Information & Communications Technology (ICT), Design & Technology, Economics, Business and Civics & Citizenship

Implementation Issues and Criticism

The Australian Curriculum has experienced implementation issues due to compatibility issues with existing state curriculums. New South Wales in particular has been the source of significant criticism and has delayed the roll out of the new curriculum.^[8]

The New South Wales Board of Studies has criticised the Australian Curriculum and threatens to delay the implementation until a better curriculum is developed. The Board has stated that the Australian Curriculum to be vastly inferior to the NSW curriculum. The English curriculum was specifically criticised as artificial and does not enable teachers to integrate all the dimensions of English effectively. The Science curriculum was criticised for its heavy emphasis on the History of Science, which would prevent the development of foundational skills, as well as core concepts and scientific skills. The History curriculum was criticised as too ambitious for effective teaching. Jenny Allum, the head of SCEGGS Darlinghurst who previously worked for the Board of Studies stated that We should be proud of what we have here in NSW and not accept anything of lesser quality.^[9] Forums such as the infamous Bored of Studies have also criticised the curriculum. The NSW Board of Studies has now released its own NSW Syllabuses for the Australian Curriculum, found on their website launched in October 2012 (BOS.NSW).

Peter Brown, a Mathematics lecturer of the University of New South Wales has criticised the Australian Curriculum's lack of flexibility within the Year 9–10 and the Year 11–12 syllabuses. Within the New South Wales Board of Studies year 9–10 curriculum, there are three different levels of Mathematics; 5.3 (Advanced), 5.2 (Intermediate) and 5.1 (Standard). The National Curriculum would consolidate the levels into one common level, in which Brown would consider it too hard for some and too easy for others. The flexibility would also be lost in the Senior levels of Mathematics, as the Extension courses would be phased out under the national curriculum. One would be able to take only two or four units of Mathematics as opposed to three units, which is offered in New South Wales. Brown has also considered the National Curriculum as a dumb down of the existing New South Wales Higher School Certificate curriculum.^[10]

Commentators have offered criticism of the Australian Curriculum over several years. In 2010, Anna Patty, an Education Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald criticised the Australian Curriculum as it threatens to water down the content for senior students compared with the Higher School Certificate. She mentions that the senior curriculum does not 'extend students as much as existing' HSC courses. Under the new curriculum, students would have to learn statistics in Mathematics, while content such as geometry and existing Extension 1 and 2 topics would be erased from the syllabus. The English focus would shift towards language and literacy as opposed to literature, although literature would still exist. Patty stated that the curriculum would highly disadvantage gifted students.^[11] In 2013, University of Melbourne economist Judith Sloan criticized especially the business and economics components of the Australian Curriculum, and offered the general criticism that [t]he real rationale for a national school curriculum relates to the pursuit of centralised control by the federal government and the scope to impose fashionable values dressed up as the pursuit of educational excellence.^[12]

See also

• Education in Australia
• Australian Certificate of Education
• Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority

References

External links

• Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority official website
• The Australian Curriculum official website
• New NSW Syllabuses