The Australian Curriculum can be used flexibly by schools to develop teaching and learning programs that meet the educational needs and interests of their students. The curriculum comes alive in the hands of teachers, who make expert decisions about the learning experiences each student needs to progress.
Introduction
Teachers use the content descriptions and achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum as the key elements to help them plan, teach, assess and report according to jurisdictional and system policies and schedules.
Teachers develop teaching and learning programs designed to build on their students’ current levels of learning. Teachers use content descriptions to understand the content required to be taught, while they use achievement standards to understand the expected standard of learning required.
The optional content elaborations give teachers suggestions for teaching the content, and the annotated work samples can help teachers judge the extent to which the achievement standards are met.
Diversity in the Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum values diversity by providing for multiple means of representation, action, expression and engagement, and allows schools the flexibility to respond to the diversity of learners within their community. All schools have a responsibility when implementing the Australian Curriculum to ensure that students’ learning is inclusive, and relevant to their experiences, abilities and talents. For some students with diverse languages, cultures, abilities and talents, it may be necessary to provide a range of curriculum adjustments so they can access age-equivalent content in the Australian Curriculum and participate in learning on the same basis as their peers.
Read more about student diversity and the Australian Curriculum here.
How content descriptions are used
Content descriptions are not all of “equal size”, so it's not expected that teachers will allocate equal time to each in their planning and teaching. While some content descriptions are so fundamental and critical to a student’s development they should be revisited and retaught numerous times during the year, others might only be taught in a few lessons. Teachers, schools and/or jurisdictions will make decisions about the time required to address content descriptions depending on the complexity within each content description and on local context.
How achievement standards are used
The achievement standards assist teachers to monitor student learning and to make judgements about student progress and achievement. Teachers may also use the achievement standards at the end of a period of teaching, to make on-balance judgements about the quality of learning demonstrated by students and to report that information to parents.
The use of Australian Curriculum achievement standards as a common reference point for reporting to parents supports national consistency in reporting.
State and territory curriculum and school authorities and individual schools determine, in consultation with parents and communities, and with regard to agreed national requirements, the style and format of reporting that best meets local needs and circumstances, including provision of any additional elements of student reports.
The Australian Curriculum provides achievement standards for all subjects. In The Arts and Technologies, achievement standards are provided for the learning area as well as for each subject. The learning area achievement standard may be useful when schools are teaching integrated Arts or Technologies programs and may help with the manageability of reporting in the primary years. State and territory school and curriculum authorities determine the reporting requirements for their schools and should be consulted about whether learning area or subject-specific achievement standards are to be used for reporting.
