I want to continue my exploration of the National Curriculum with you. As a parent and a teacher I find that when parents understand what is happening in schools and education, there are more positive outcomes for the child.

Curriculum documents can be very boring, but while you don’t need to have a great understanding of it, it is good to have a basic understanding of what it is that your children will be doing.

The new Australian National Curriculum has been written with a number of elements in mind. These include:

The content descriptions

The Achievement standards

General capabilities

Cross-curriculum priorities

The content descriptions are basically the statements that indicate what it is that the teachers are expected to teach. These can be seen by clicking on the Australian Curriculum home page and clicking on the Tab curriculum and opening to whichever subject you want to look at. Each has a list of the content descriptions that will be taught at that level.

The achievement standards basically describe what is expected of the students. By the end of a particular year level they explain what it is expected that children will know, will understand and be able to do. The aim of the curriculum is to get all students above the expected levels. Meeting the basic expectation/achievement standard gives the child a C on the grade scale.

The general capabilities are the skills and behaviours that apply across all subjects. There are seven general capabilities and they include:

Literacy

Numeracy

ICT – information and communication technology

Critical and creative thinking

Ethical behaviour

Personal and social competence

Intercultural understanding

These 7 areas underpin all the learning areas. For example, regardless of the subject, whether it is maths or science, there is a great degree of literacy that is needed by a child to understand the subject. All of the above are incorporated into the subjects where it is possible – some more than others.

Lastly, the cross-curriculum priorities refer to the issues that will have an effect on the children as they live in the 21st century. These cross-curriculum priorities include:

Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander histories and culture

Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

Sustainability

These priorities will only be included where it is relevant to the learning area. For example we may find Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island histories and culture in history and the Arts, and we may find sustainability in Science and Geography.

TIP: You can actually filter the curriculum to show you which general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities are included within a subject area. When you click onto a subject curriculum there is a pale box with the heading Filters – choose your topics in the 4 boxes and apply your filters, it will show you how much of each is to be included.

Please share your thoughts or questions about the National Curriculum below in the comments section, as I would love to hear your thoughts.