National Curriculum (Australia)
Encyclopedia
A National Curriculum for schools in all states and territories of Australia, from Kindergarten
to Year 12, is currently being developed. The first stages are scheduled to commence in 2011. Credentialling, and related assessment requirements and processes, will remain the responsibility of states and territories.
for several decades, but the current Federal
Labor
government is currently making significant progress towards this goal.
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 resistant 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 April 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.
In April 2008, the Rudd Government established the independent National Curriculum Board. 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". 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.
regarding certain areas such as Mathematics, English, Sciences and the Histories. Peter Brown, a Mathematics lecturer of the University of New South Wales
has criticized the National 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.
Anna Patty, an Education Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald has criticized the National 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 states that the curriculum would highly disadvantage gifted students.
The New South Wales Board of Studies has criticized the National Curriculum and threatens to delay the implementation until a better curriculum is developed. The Board considers the National Curriculum to be vastly inferior to the NSW curriculum. The English curriculum has been criticized as artificial and does not enable teachers to integrate all the dimensions of English effectively. The Science curriculum has been criticized 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 has been criticized as too ambitious for effective teaching. Jenny Allum, the head of SCEGS 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.
Forums such as the infamous Bored of Studies
has also criticized the curriculum.
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
to Year 12, is currently being developed. The first stages are scheduled to commence in 2011. Credentialling, and related assessment requirements and processes, will remain the responsibility of states and territories.
History
A nationwide curriculum has been on the political agenda in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
for several decades, but the current Federal
Federation of Australia
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation...
Labor
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
government is currently making significant progress towards this goal.
In the late 1980s a significant push for a National Curriculum in Australia was mounted by the Hawke
Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....
Federal Labor government. Draft documentation was produced but resistant to achieve agreement from the mainly Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
State governments led to the abandonment of this initiative in 1991.
In 2006, then Liberal Prime Minister John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
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 April 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
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC , is a prominent Australian historian.Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of...
, Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson is a conservative Australian newspaper columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.. He is also Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded current affairs forum. His wife Anne Henderson is Deputy Director.-Education:Henderson attended the Jesuit Xavier College in...
, 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.
In April 2008, the Rudd Government established the independent National Curriculum Board. Tony Taylor, who had written the original draft for the Howard government-appointed Australian History External Reference Group, told The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
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". 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
Stuart Macintyre
Stuart Forbes Macintyre , Australian historian, academic and public intellectual, is a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. He has been voted one of Australia's most influential public intellectuals...
), English (Peter Freebody
Peter Freebody
Peter Freebody is currently a Professorial Research Fellow with the Faculty of Education and Social Work and a core member of the CoCo Research Centre at The University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. His research and teaching interests include literacy education, classroom interaction and...
), Science (Denis Goodrum) and Mathematics (Peter Sullivan
Peter Sullivan
Peter Sullivan may refer to:* Peter Sullivan , alderman and a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from Manchester, New Hampshire...
). In May 2009 the statutory
Statutory authority
A statutory authority is a body set up by law which is authorised to enforce legislation on behalf of the relevant country or state. They are typically found in countries which are governed by a British style of parliamentary democracy. They are common in the UK, Australia, New Zealand etc but...
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was established to oversee the implementation of the planned nationwide curriculum initiative.
Phases of development
The National Curriculum is being developed in several phases.- 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
Criticism
The design of the National Curriculum has been met with criticism especially in New South WalesNew South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
regarding certain areas such as Mathematics, English, Sciences and the Histories. Peter Brown, a Mathematics lecturer of the University of New South Wales
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
has criticized the National 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
Higher School Certificate
The Higher School Certificate, or HSC, is the credential awarded to secondary school students who successfully complete senior high school level studies in New South Wales, Australia. It was first introduced in 1967, with the last major revision coming into effect in 2001. It is currently...
curriculum.
Anna Patty, an Education Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald has criticized the National 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 states that the curriculum would highly disadvantage gifted students.
The New South Wales Board of Studies has criticized the National Curriculum and threatens to delay the implementation until a better curriculum is developed. The Board considers the National Curriculum to be vastly inferior to the NSW curriculum. The English curriculum has been criticized as artificial and does not enable teachers to integrate all the dimensions of English effectively. The Science curriculum has been criticized 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 has been criticized as too ambitious for effective teaching. Jenny Allum, the head of SCEGS 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.
Forums such as the infamous Bored of Studies
Bored of Studies
Bored of Studies is an Australian website targeted at students in New South Wales and Victoria. It is prominent among students for its Student Assessment Modeller that calculates approximate Universities Admission Index or Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank results, and for hosting study...
has also criticized the curriculum.