Australian curriculum won’t be dictated by OECD

Parents don’t send their kids to school to be taught the latest fashionable trends in education.

Mindfulness and resilience are great skills, but they’re no subsitute for English and maths.

The federal government is providing record funding of $309.6 billion to all schools across the next decade. Our job is to ensure this delivers a better education and a better future for our children.

Our federated education system means the states and territories run the schools and employ the teachers, complemented by a vibrant non-government sector.

The first Australian curriculum was created in 2010, with English, mathematics, science and history as its basis. By 2015, the humanities and social sciences, the arts, technologies, health and physical education, and languages had been added. The states and territories progressively have been implementing the curriculum.

This national curriculum was established to improve consistency and quality across jurisdictions for all students and help teachers focus on teaching what is important. It was agreed to by state and federal ministers from both sides of politics and informed by the work of teachers in classrooms and independent, expert advice.

The curriculum sets out the learning areas and capabilities for every student, no matter where they live or what school they attend. It is not prescriptive. It does not tell teachers what to teach in English on a Monday or in science on a Tuesday.

The fundamentals of the Australian curriculum have not changed since it was first agreed to in 2009. It is recognised globally as one of the best in the world. But like the Richmond football team or the latest Ferrari, there is always room for improvement. We would be doing our kids a disservice if we did not try to do things better.

In 2019-20 the Council of Australian Governments’ Education Council will be asked to consider whether the curriculum requires reviewing and refining. It may decide it doesn’t. I will consider all the evidence presented at the time before deciding which way to vote.

What I can say is the Australian curriculum will be written by Australians for Australians. Our government will support only a national curriculum that aims to provide the foundations of knowledge for every Australian child.

Our education system must ensure that every child gets the basics right. If you can’t read, write and count, you can’t continue to learn.

If anything, there is too much being taught and we should be concentrating on developing a deeper understanding of essential content. It’s the old quality v quantity argument.

Our government will never support any change to the curriculum that diverges from these priorities. The fundamentals of educa­tion will always remain, so the curriculum should remain stable. We cannot keep shifting the goalposts on teachers and expect students to alter the foundation of their education.

When the Education Council is asked to consider possible revisions and refinements, it will be informed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, the independent statutory body that develops the curriculum. To provide the best possible advice, it is entirely appropriate that ACARA should look to world-leading research to inform decision-making. If the school system in Denmark or Singapore is achieving outstanding results, ACARA should look at what it is doing and ask: How could this work in Australia? This is why Australia is part of the OECD Education 2030 project.

But let me be clear: we will not be dictated to by the OECD. This government will never commit Australia to a pan-national education project. Instead we will look for what provides clear benefits for our students and teachers. Parents don’t send their kids to school to be taught the latest fashionable trends in education. And parents would be concerned, rightly, if they thought schools were moving away from the essentials and focusing on topics such as mindfulness and resilience. That would be a big mistake. The Australian curriculum will never teach resilience in the way it teaches English. But, in a similar way to life more generally, it can aspire to develop those skills that best prepare students for life and work beyond school.

The Australian curriculum at present includes general capabilities such as critical and creative thinking and information and communications technology cap­ab­ility, which are developed in students across the subject areas. For example, if mathematics is taught well, young people also will be developing their critical and creative thinking abilities. Mindfulness and resilience are just another way of describing life’s lessons learned through experience, and are qualities we should encourage in every Australian child.

It is the same when it comes to the three cross-­curriculum priorities: sustainability; Asia and Australia’s engage­ment with Asia; and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Teachers are not compelled to incorporate these priorities into every subject. It would be ridiculous to do so. But in a subject where it does make sense, such as history, teachers should be asking: How can we better teach the history of indigenous Australians?

The Australian curriculum will also not be replaced by the National Education Reform Agreement, which was informed by the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, otherwise known as Gonski 2.0.

The Australian curriculum and the idea of learning progressions in the Gonski 2.0 report are not competing ideologies, they are complementary. Learning progressions will not replace the curriculum; they will provide support for teachers to teach the curriculum in a way that best suits individual students.

We need to recognise that children are different, they have different starting points and learn at different speeds. This does not mean we should throw out a focus on results.

Our government will not support the abolition of grades, as Labor does. We continue to support the principle of the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy because we believe parents and teachers want to see how students are progressing.

School funding is important, but it is not the be all and end all. The money is only the means for us to achieve our goal, and our goal is for every Australian child to have an education that teaches them deep subject knowledge, essential literacy and numeracy skills, and gives them the ability to achieve their potential.

When it comes to what we expect from our education system, the bar can never be too high.

Dan Tehan is the federal Education Minister.