Design for the arts under fire

THE new national arts curriculum has been criticised as an "incoherent" attempt to harmonise state standards.

THE new national arts curriculum has been criticised as an "incoherent" attempt to harmonise state standards by appealing to the "lowest common denominator".

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority's draft syllabus, released for consultation yesterday, makes each of five arts subjects -- dance, drama, music, visual arts and media arts -- compulsory for the first nine years of school.

The authority will not dictate to the states how many hours must be spent teaching the arts, although it anticipates that students will begin with about 4 per cent of their classtime, increasing to about 8 per cent by Year 7.

By comparison, science is expected to take up 4 per cent of a student's time in their foundation year, building up to 12 per cent by Year 9.

An ACARA spokesman said the policy was designed to be flexible, and expected students would not have enough time to cover the workload.

"They're covering this curriculum over a number of years so they're not covering all five each time they sit down for an arts class," he said yesterday.

"(From Year 9) they'll have the choice to specialise in one field, having had broad exposure to all five, and really drill down in that."

But the Visual Arts Consortium, a NSW-based lobby group, doubted whether students would be given enough time to engage with the workload, given the pressure on teachers to produce higher NAPLAN literacy and numeracy results.

The group also said the syllabus was an "incoherently written" document, which lowers standards to appeal to the governments of states that have historically lagged behind in the arts.

Karen Maras, an Australian Catholic University senior lecturer and VAC spokeswoman, said the new curriculum was inferior to the NSW syllabus, focusing too heavily on art-making in the early years.

"It's as if they expect students to understand art purely intuitively by creating it . . . It's not until Year 3 and 4 that students start looking at other people's artworks," said the former classroom teacher.

"It's simply too late. It underestimates the intellectual capacity of children to not only paint pictures but analyse what their work means."

ACARA maintains the draft curriculum "draws on current arts curricula in each state and territory and reflects best practice in arts education across the country".

Federal School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the positive impacts of compulsory classes in the full range of arts subjects would be "huge".

"Learning subject areas like music and drama inspires creativity, encourages young people to think critically, helps develop their sense of identity and can provide great benefits for learning in other core areas," Mr Garrett said.

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