National Curriculum

2009/18847(2)

What has come before?

• Ministerial agreement on national goals • Hobart Declaration (1989)• Adelaide Declaration (1999)• Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for

Young Australians (2008) • Current moves to a national curriculum

• Driven through COAG and MCEETYA• Interim National Curriculum Board – to May 2009

Scope of work

• Initial brief English, mathematics, science, history; literacy and

numeracy continua (ICT added by iNCB)• An early addition

Geography and languages other than English• Added in April 2009

The Arts• Report requested by October 2009

on implications of making the entire curriculum national

Shape of the Australian curriculum

• Curriculum sets the level of expectation of learning; high-performing countries set high expectations

• Support expectations with high-quality teaching, school and system leadership

• Goals of education• Curriculum content -

knowledge, skills and understanding; general capabilities

• Achievement standards

Some challenges for national curriculum

• To raise the quality of learning even higher Stretching the high performers Setting high expectations for low performers

• To improve the equity of learning Reducing the impact of socio-economic

differences

Curriculum design 1

• Rationale• Aims of the learning area (LA)• Organisation of the LA curriculum• Content• Achievement standards• General capabilities• Cross-curriculum dimensions• Links to other learning areas

Curriculum design 2

• The nature of the learner and learning.• The whole curriculum and how national curriculum

learning areas relate to it. • Structural matters, including commencement and

completion of school and transition points.• Inclusivity and how the national curriculum will provide for

the educational needs of every child.• General capabilities, describing how the national

curriculum will attend to general capabilities learning.• Cross-curriculum dimensions, describing perspectives to be

included in each learning area.

Timeline - Phase 1Stage Activity Timelines

K-10 Snr yrs

Curriculum Framing

Confirmation of directions for writing Curriculum (English, mathematics, the sciences, history)

April, 2009 April, 2009

Curriculum Development

2 step process for development of curriculum documents• Step 1 - broad outline; scope and

sequence• Step 2 – completion of ‘detail’ of

curriculum

May – Dec, 2009

June, 2009 – January, 2010

Consultation National consultation and trialling January - April, 2010

March – June, 2010

Publication Print and digital publication June – July, 2010

July – Sep, 2010

Other curriculum areas

Phase 2: Geography, languages, and the arts … about 12 months after phase 1.Phase 3: ACARA to report to MCEECDYA on‘the approach that will be taken to health and physical education, ICT, design and technology, economics, business and civics and citizenship’

Assessment

• Responsibility for NAPLAN and broader national assessment program e.g. science, civics - from 2011

• Consideration of other opportunities to gain better understanding of student learning?

Reporting

• ACARA assumes responsibility for the reporting/ transparency agenda

• Performance reporting – Ministerial agreement in April … a new era in transparency

• Challenge is to determine which metrics best add to the educational debate; which are fair e.g. statistical neighbours rather than fixed like school groups

Recognition of ‘alternative’ curriculum

• ACARA Charter includes the development of ‘nationally agreed criteria for determining how well-established alternative curriculum frameworks meet the requirements of the national curriculum.’

• Draft process subject to consultation with relevant state and territory education and regulation authorities.

• Following consultation, ACARA will present a recognition process to MCEECDYA.

Senior years position paper

• To guide development of national curriculum. • Outlines the relationship between ACARA and

state and territory curriculum and certification authorities.

• Subject to wider public comment through to end of September.

Curriculum for the senior secondary years

Assumptions:• the curriculum will be designed to meet the needs of the full

range of students; need to anticipate and provide for increase in students

• state and territory certifying agencies will continue to be responsible for assessment, certification and its quality assurance

• the extent of the senior secondary national curriculum in the first four subjects, and in other subjects, may grow over time

• where a course is developed nationally that covers the scope of learning in existing courses, states and territories will cease to offer the existing courses.

Curriculum for the senior secondary years

Course structure and time allocation• four sequential units, units 1 and 2 designed to follow on from

learning in Year 10; units 3 and 4 will be developmentally more challenging and assume learning in units 1 and 2

• each unit will be designed to be taught in about ‘half a school year’ of approx. 50-60 hours duration

• courses will specify core content, electives will be kept to a minimum

• courses will be linked to a qualifications framework.

Curriculum for the senior secondary years

Courses for phase one subjects• English to have four courses• mathematics to have four courses• science to have: biology, chemistry, physics,

earth and environmental Science• history to have: ancient history, modern history

Curriculum for the senior secondary years

Achievement standards:• an achievement standard is an expectation of the

quality of learning that students should achieve • for senior years, the achievement standards: will

be course specific for each pair of units; will describe five levels of achievement; and will be accompanied by work samples.

Implementation• From 2011 sequence to be determined• Factors that influence implementation:

The extent of difference between existing curriculum requirements, in terms of what is to be taught and assessed, in any particular year or sequence of years.

The extent of change in how the curriculum content is organised, (e.g. by years of schooling) and how achievement standards are presented.

The extent to which state and territory credentialing or other arrangements require additional material to be developed and made available to teachers.

The extent and place in the cycle of curriculum change.

Planning for implementation

• How might we best assess the extent of change? (What’s your sense at this point in time?)

• How might we best consider the extent to which current curriculum and professional learning resources can be used to support implementation? Time for professional learning?

• What opportunities to meet local gaps by partnerships between jurisdictions etc?

For more information and to register for e-alerts go to …

www.acara.edu.au