- National Curriculum (Australia)
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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.[1] Credentialling, and related assessment requirements and processes, will remain the responsibility of states and territories.[2]
Contents
History
A nationwide curriculum has been on the political agenda in Australia 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.[3] 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".[4] 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.[5]
Phases of development
The National Curriculum is being developed in several phases.[6]
- 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 Wales 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.[7]
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.[8]
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.[9]
Forums such as the infamous Bored of Studies has also criticized the curriculum.
See also
References
- ^ ACARA: Australian curriculum
- ^ [1]
- ^ Minister for Education: Media release: Delivering Australia's First National Curriculum, 12 October 2008
- ^ [2]
- ^ Minister for Education: Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority: Joint Media Release with the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs, 3 June 2009 In March 2010 a draft national curriculum was released.
- ^ ACARA: Australian curriculum
- ^ Stripping out options will dumb down maths
- ^ National curriculum content not up to scratch: critics
- ^ New curriculum slammed by studies board
External links
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