Australian students let down by ‘impossible’ national curriculum neglecting maths and reading

If teachers don’t focus on maths and reading students will never catch up, education experts warn – saying classroom time is being monopolised trying to tick boxes.

Prospect North Primary School students Ziaan, 11, Alina, 11 and Oti, 9 with principal Russell Barwel inside the interview room. Picture: Ben Clark

As Australian students steadily decline in reading and writing, leading educators warn “tick the box” requirements are eating up class time, including emotional management skills, road safety, wellbeing and traditional Indigenous science.

The national curriculum has also been accused of prioritising breadth over depth and being too vague, as the country struggles to reverse a two-decade decline in the leading international benchmark for academic performance.

Amid calls for the eduction system to concentrate on the essentials, News Corp’s Great Parent Survey found more than half of caregivers believe the school curriculum is too crowded.

A third of parents also feared their children are not being taught “the basics of reading, writing and mathematics well”.

Australia has recorded seven consecutive drops in numeracy on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment since 2003, falling to 16th among 81 developed countries, also recording three drops in reading to 12th place.

Australian Catholic University senior fellow Kevin Donnelly, who co-authored a review of the Australian Curriculum in 2014, said there was too great an emphasis on “cross-curriculum priorities” which are woven into subjects.

Mr Donnelly said while the three categories – Australia’s engagement with Asia, sustainability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island histories and culture – had value, they amounted to “tick the box exercises” putting unnecessary burden on teachers who should be prioritising the basics.

“If you look at the Asian countries that perform academically well, they are far more concise in terms of what’s essential, regardless of the subject,” he said.

“What’s happened in Australia in the last 30 or 40 years is that we’ve adopted such a broad approach to what should be taught that it includes a lot of things that were usually on parents … cyber-bullying, road safety and wellbeing, all of that. There’s almost the expectation teachers should be social workers.”

Australian Catholic University senior fellow Kevin Donnelly. Picture: David Geraghty / The Australian

Australian Primary Principals Association president Angela Falkenberg. Picture: Supplied

The Australian Curriculum runs nearly 3500 pages and Australian Primary Principals Association president Angela Falkenberg said it was “impossible” to cover all the content, and “engagement and deep learning” should be the goal.

“The current curriculum, if taken literally, is too crowded and the expectation for a single teacher to cover it all is unrealistic,” she said.

“The curriculum can be best managed through trusting teachers to make the decision about what and how the disciplinary knowledge, skills and understanding relevant to children’s stage is best taught.”

Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Trisha Jha said the curriculum’s size meant teachers ended up interpreting it differently, so much so that “two schools half a kilometre apart could be teaching core concepts in very different ways”.

Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Trisha Jha. Picture: Adriana Samanez

Ms Jha said the curriculum needed to be overhauled to reduce disparity between schools and go back to teaching kids’ basics.

“Even though it’s quite long, (the curriculum) actually doesn’t really go into enough detail about how you should craft a lesson plan … have no way of actually knowing how schools are teaching and interpreting that curriculum, and the variation across the country is massive,” she said.

A spokesman for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority said the current 2022 version was “a more stripped-back and teachable curriculum that identifies the essential content our children should learn”.

He said while “achievement standards and content descriptions” are mandatory, “content elaborations”, which make up a large part of its length, “are optional and developed working with relevant sector specialists”.

He also said “cross-curriculum priorities are best taught and learnt in the context of the learning areas and are not taught by themselves”.

Originally published as Australian students let down by ‘impossible’ national curriculum neglecting maths and reading