Huge changes proposed for Australia’s national curriculum

Students will be taught about the “invasion” experience of First Nations Australians as part of a major shake-up of the national curriculum.

Students being taught about the “invasion” experience of Indigenous Australians at the hands of European colonisation is one of the many changes proposed under a major shake-up of the national curriculum.

Released for discussion today by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the changes also include scaling back of humanities subjects and a shift towards problem solving in maths and inquiry learning in science.

For primary school students, the syllabus will be simplified to ensure they have a solid grasp on foundational literacy and numeracy.

Huge adjustments to sex and relationship education – including more explicit guidance on the teaching of consent – have also been proposed, after a viral petition exposed the disturbing rate of sexual assault and harassment among Aussie high school students.

ACARA chair, Belinda Robinson, said the curriculum reflects aspirations for future generations of students.

“This review seeks to ensure we set high expectations for them and equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to be confident and creative individuals, lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the communities, including our national and global communities,” she said.

“Our students deserve our best efforts and these revisions come at a time when our students’ performance in recent international assessments demonstrates that we need to raise the bar and set challenging but achievable standards.

“In revising this curriculum, our focus has been our students and preparing them for the world they will inherit, for the jobs, challenges and opportunities of the future.”

RELATED: Inside Australia’s most expensive schools

This is the first time the curriculum has been reviewed in its entirety, Ms Robinson said, and will be available to schools and systems for implementation from early next year.

In maths, Year 1 students won’t be taught to tell the time until they’re “more conceptually ready” in Year 2. And students will only start rote learning of times tables in Year 4.

Naming and ordering the seasons has been taken out of Year 2 maths, as it has been deemed “not essential mathematical content”.

Other key maths concepts will be taught 12 months earlier: Percentages in Year 5; pi for measuring circles in Year 7 and Pythagoras theorem in Year 8.

Instead of analysing cultural differences in English, those learning a second language will focus more on speaking and writing.

In health and physical education, students will partake in less classroom theory and learn things such as teamwork, leadership and ethics “while they are participating in physical activities”.

A shift in humanities subjects means the amount of history topics required to be studied between years 7 and 10, will drop from 12 to eight “to allow for depth of study”.

As part of this shift there will be a greater emphasis on Australian Government, both World Wars and the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people — which will be a cross-curriculum priority.

Existing themes in maths, science and history failed to recognise that “the First Peoples of Australia experienced colonisation as invasion and dispossession of land, sea and sky”, the summary of the proposed changes said.

RELATED: Elite Sydney school eyes up major change

The reviewed national curriculum will come into play next year.

The terms “Aboriginal” and “Indigenous” in the curriculum will also be replaced by “First Nations People”.

Pro vice-chancellor of Indigenous strategy at Deakin University and chair of ACARA’s Indigenous advisory committee, Mark Rose, told The Sydney Morning Heraldit is important children are taught about different perspectives.

“We do it not because we’re pandering to a minority and we’re politically correct,” he said.

“We think embedded in Indigenous knowledge for all kids is an ability to anchor themselves in competing world views.

“The kid sitting on the reading mat today is going to face a world with multiple world views, with changes to world powers, and Indigenous knowledges – by putting through different ways of seeing the world – will give kids a real advantage.

“It’s a reality for our kids. Some people will find it may be controversial, but if you peel back our society, there are four faces of this nation. We have a colonial past, which is significant and should be in the curriculum.

“We are part of Asia. We are one of the world’s most multicultural nations. And we house the world’s longest-living continuous culture. If those four faces are not represented, we are doing our kids a disservice.”