Australia is now well on the way to having a national curriculum, with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) tasked with implementing a national curriculum in four subject areas by 2011. For more information on the development and implementation stages of a national curriculum visit the ACARA website here.
The development process has involved extensive negotiation with stakeholders and interest groups, including the Australian Curriculum Studies Association. ACSA continues its commitment to providing leadership in promoting productive national curriculum work.
ACSA's contribution to developing a twenty-first century school curriculum for all Australian students
ACSA's work commenced in 2006 when ACSA hosted the National Approaches to Curriculum Forum and the Approaches to National Curriculum Work symposium which resulted in the Guide to Productive National Curriculum Work for the Twenty-First Century.
Report - National Approaches to Curriculum Forum, February 2006.
Report - Approaches to National Curriculum Work, August 2006.
Guide to Productive National Curriculum Work for the Twenty-First Century.
To ensure the continuation of this national curriculum work ACSA convened the Curriculum Standing Committee of National Education Professional Associations (CSCNEPA), which first met in February 2007. CSCNEPA has served to encourage a full, rigorous and wide ranging dialogue around the development and implementation of a twenty first century curriculum for Australian schools.The membership of CSCNEPA is made up of the Chairs and Directors of fourteen national professional associations. CSCNEPA Membership and Purposes
In May 2007 CSCNEPA developed a statement on what a 21st century curriculum must achieve for all Australian students and how it can be achieved. Amongst the papers used to inform the group during the development of this statement were two discussion papers on School Curriculum for the 21st Century by Bruce Wilson and Peter Cole. These papers may be accessed at the links below and we hope will serve the purpose of informing your own discussions around national curriculum.
Paper - School Curriculum for the 21st century by Bruce Wilson
Paper - School curriculum for the 21st Century: A Rough Guide to a National Curriculum by Peter Cole
At the ACSA Biennial Conference - July 2007, an exposure draft of What a 21st Century Curriculum must achieve for all Australian students and how we can achieve it, developed for CSCNEPA, was tested during a panel session with input from participants. As a result of this input and the work undertaken by CSCNEPA, a working paper - Developing a Twenty-first Century School Curriculum for All Australian Students was developed. The working paper, which can be accessed at the link below is intended to provide an informed basis for continued thinking and sharing of perspectives about what a 21st Century curriculum should achieve for all Australian students and how we should achieve it.
Working Paper - Developing a Twenty-first Century School Curriculum for All Australian Students.
At the first meeting in February 2008 Barry McGaw Chair, National Curriculum Board and Tom Bentley, Senior Advisor on Schools to the Minister attended to brief members on the then newly established National Curriculum Board and to hear members' views. Barry McGaw has attended further CSCNEPA meetings to inform members on the work of the National Curriculum Board and to hear the views of CSCNEPA members.
Consistent with CSCNEPA's desire to appropriately include the voices of the subject associations that are essential to the first round of work by the National Curriculum Board, representatives of Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, Australian Association for the Teaching of English, Australian Literacy Educators Association, e:lit, Australian Science Teachers Association and the History Teachers Association of Australia have been invited to join CSCNEPA meetings.
In October 2008 CSCNEPA released a stimulus paper Aligning curriculum with the goals of schooling: developing a Twenty-first Century School Curriculum for All Australian Students which was written, for CSCNEPA, by Peter Cole. This paper takes a fresh look at the way that curriculum in the post-compulsory years (Years 10-12) is structured and delivered in schools. Its starting point is a concern about the apparent divide between the national goals for schooling in the 21st Century and the actual curriculum that schools are expected to deliver in the post-compulsory years. It does not address all learning that a student might choose to undertake in the post-compulsory years but focuses particularly on discipline based learning and how this might be reconceived so that all students can leave school with a broad understanding of core concepts and big ideas in the key discipline areas. It advocates alternative ways of packaging and delivering post-compulsory curriculum to those generally adopted in Australian jurisdictions and proposed in the national curriculum project, and where available references arrangements in jurisdictions nationally and internationally that illustrate the proposed alternative practice.
Stimulus Paper 2008 - Aligning curriculum with the goals of schooling by Peter Cole.
Late in 2009, it was agreed that CSCNEPA should reassess its direction in light of the progress that has been made towards a national curriculum. From 2010 CSCNEPA will meet as a forum with a continuing commitment to providing productive curriculum work.