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A radical shake-up of the NSW school curriculum will give teachers clearer and more specific guidance on what students need to learn in a bid to make syllabuses less vague or open to interpretation.
NSW Education Standards Authority chief executive Paul Martin said the new curriculum – which is being rolled out in all primary and high schools over the next three years – will include more detailed content and “essential knowledge” to help lift the baseline level of learning for all students.
More than 100 syllabuses across dozens of subjects are being rewritten following a root-and-branch review of the state’s curriculum that aimed to halt a two-decade slump in students’ results in international tests.
“Teachers will benefit from syllabuses that are much clearer about what needs to be taught, and that ultimately reduces workload pressures over time,” Martin said.
School syllabuses for key subjects will contain more content and specific detail about what students should be taught and when, removing ambiguity and giving pupils access to “a common body of knowledge regardless of their background or what school they go to”.
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“It marks a significant shift away from the focus on skills that has characterised syllabuses for the past three decades, bringing NSW in line with what high-performing countries are doing,” Martin said.
“Skills are an application of knowledge and cannot be developed in a vacuum. The new syllabuses clearly set out the knowledge students need in a subject so they can then develop the necessary skills.”
Changes to the year 7 to 10 science syllabuses will include moremaths content – including equations, statistics and data analysis – and will also prescribe exactly what students are expected to learn when studying forces and motion.
Students will be taught important facts about Australia’s democracy and legal system under sweeping changes to civics education in primary and secondary years, while the year 3 to 10 English syllabus stipulates that grammar must be taught in a more prescriptive way.
Martin said that for decades the NSW school curriculum has been more skills-based, which has been reflected in student-led or inquiry learning approaches.
“The new syllabuses will put a strong emphasis on developing knowledge first and spell out the facts and information students need to know. Skills will be more easily acquired once they have developed the knowledge base.”
The NSW Education Standards Authority is reviewing 110 syllabuses, with new kindergarten to year 10 syllabuses to be taught by 2027 and HSC courses by 2030.
Some syllabuses, including kindergarten to year 10 English and maths have been released, while others such as high school science, history and geography are still in the review phase.
“A knowledge-rich curriculum supports strong reading comprehension by building vocabulary and rich background knowledge,” the report states.
Knowledge acts as the bedrock on which skills are honed and applied, said the head of AERO, Jenny Donovan.“It not only fosters subject proficiency but also supports students to achieve their potential by building the knowledge and skills they need for future success,” she said.
“It also supports equity in schooling by setting high expectations and making explicit the shared knowledge all students should be supported to access,” the report said.
Education consultant Ben Jensen, who has benchmarked science curriculums in Australia with comparable countries, says the new NSW syllabuses now compare more favourably with other leading jurisdictions.
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“While people may complain that they are too large a shift, too prescriptive or too focused on content, they could still go further down the path of a content-rich and explicit curriculum,” he said.
Teacher Sophie Wade, who oversees Strathfield Girls High creative arts program, said her school focuses heavily on explicit teaching, particularly on developing literacy skills across multiple subjects, including in visual arts.
“Clear syllabus documents help teachers easily access what needs to be taught. This is so important for new teachers coming into the profession; the syllabus is like their map or guidebook,” Wade said.
“There is a balance that needs to be found with being directive and giving teachers with expertise some autonomy. But it helps to be more explicit on what we are assessing and how we are getting kids there, syllabuses can’t just be about enjoyment or investigating. They can’t be open-ended.”
Wade said within the new music syllabuses there is greater detail in years 7 and 9 performing content. “Students must be able to understand melodies, musical styles and the different roles in an ensemble,” she said.
4 answersThe matatag curriculum aims to improve the K-12 curriculum in the Philippines by aligning it with international standards and addressing gaps in competencies.
As a body of knowledge, the curriculum refers to the set of courses, subjects, and learning activities that are designed to be taught to students in a particular educational program or institution.
Knowledge provides a driving, underpinning philosophy. The knowledge content is specified in detail. Knowledge is taught to be remembered, not encountered. Knowledge is sequenced and mapped deliberately and coherently.
The purpose of curriculum in an educational context is to provide not only learning standards that educators need to meet while teaching a class or subject, but also details, lessons, and supporting materials that can aid teachers in conveying the content needed in order to ensure that students meet the learning ...
Understanding the Core Principles: Leaders must shift paradigms and thoroughly understand the four pillars of MATATAG – Make Relevant, Accelerate Services, Take Care of Learners, and Give Support to Teachers.
The difference lies in their purposes, with the Matatag curriculum focusing on social and religious values while the K-12 curriculum focuses on knowledge and skills development.
A hidden curriculum is a set of lessons "which are learned but not openly intended" to be taught in school such as the norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the classroom and social environment. In many cases, it occurs as a result of social interactions and expectations.
First introduced by social scientist Phillip Jackson in 1968, the hidden curriculum includes implicit rules and norms that educators pass on without consciously realizing or teaching them, including interactions, modeling, systems, relationships, communication styles, and behaviors that take place in a school.
' Simply put, knowledge is the aggregated information, facts, skills, and understanding about a subject that a person gains through education, experience, and reasoning.
Explanation: The relationship between the curriculum and knowledge is integral to the educational process. The curriculum is a structured plan that outlines what students are expected to learn during a specific course or educational program.
Knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more — the rich get richer.
Curriculum innovation is the introduction of new and improved practices and methods into how students are taught. It covers both planning and implementation and involves a wide range of actors that include learners, teachers, guardians, and education experts,, among others.
The purpose of the curriculum is encapsulated in the four capacities - to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor.
A good curriculum makes space for the recognition of each learner's personal, social and cognitive capacities, and respects differences in the ways in which children prefer to learn. It will support teachers in leading, assisting and encouraging each student to achieve his or her potential.
Core curriculum refers to the classes and coursework that all students are expected to take, regardless of their educational goals. Learn about core curriculum, including its definition, meaning, and repetition as a curriculum standard.
After the review, DepEd made adjustments to the curriculum for K to 10 and called it the MATATAG Curriculum. MATATAG means “Makabagong kurikulum na napapanahon”; “Talino na mula sa isip at puso”; "Taapang na humarap sa ano man ang hamon sa buhay”; and “Galing ng Pilipino, nangingibabaw sa mundo.”
The Curriculum Committee is responsible for the development, review, renewal, and proposal of curriculum, including courses, programs, and curriculum-related policy.
Curriculum Compacting is an instructional strategy designed for educators seeking to make appropriate curricular adjustments for students who can demonstrate mastery in any curricular area and at any grade level, replacing content students know with new content, enrichment options, or other activities.
The purpose of the curriculum is encapsulated in the four capacities - to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor.
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