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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; highperforming 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
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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 1
Stage
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