In the Australian Curriculum, general capabilities equip young Australians with the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions to live and work successfully. General capabilities are developed through the content of the learning areas.
Overview
The 7 general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum are:
- Critical and Creative Thinking
- Digital Literacy
- Ethical Understanding
- Intercultural Understanding
- Literacy
- Numeracy
- Personal and Social capability.
In the Australian Curriculum, general capabilities are addressed through the content of the learning areas; they are not separate learning areas, subjects or isolated skills. The teaching of learning area content will be strengthened by the application of relevant general capabilities, as will the development of the general capabilities through appropriate learning area contexts.
Opportunities to develop general capabilities in learning area content vary. Some general capabilities are essential to, and best developed within, specific learning areas; others support learning in any learning area. General capabilities are identified in content descriptions where they are developed or applied through learning area content. They are also identified in content elaborations where they offer opportunities to add depth and richness to student learning.
In the learning areas of the Australian Curriculum, general capabilities are identified, using icons, where they are developed or applied in the content descriptions and elaborations.
Search for topics
General capabilities FAQs
The general capabilities are one of the 3 dimensions of the Australian Curriculum. They define a set of knowledge, skills and behaviours that will support students to become lifelong learners who can effectively navigate their future. As teachers use all 3 dimensions of the Australian Curriculum, they work towards achieving this goal with their students. The development of the general capabilities occurs when students engage with the content of the learning areas. There are 7 general capabilities described in the Australian Curriculum:
- Critical and Creative Thinking
- Digital Literacy
- Ethical Understanding
- Intercultural Understanding
- Literacy
- Numeracy
- Personal and Social capability.
Each General capability is presented as a learning continuum or learning progression.
The general capabilities are presented as learning continua or learning progressions. Both the learning continua and the learning progressions are structured in the same way using elements, sub-elements and levels. The learning continua are set out as a developmental sequence of learning aligned to stages of schooling. The learning progressions are set out as the learning pathways along which students typically progress regardless of age or year level.
The description of each general capability and its learning continuum have been revised to refine language and improve clarity for teachers, update the developmental progression and ensure that the understandings, skills and dispositions are current and relevant for Australian students.
Click here to understand more about the changes to each General Capability.
General capabilities are developed as students engage with the content of the learning areas. Opportunities to include general capabilities in teaching and learning have been purposefully included in the revisions to content descriptions and elaborations across the learning areas.
Some learning areas explicitly develop certain general capabilities which may then be applied in other areas of the curriculum. For example:
- English is the foundational learning area for the development of Literacy.
- Mathematics develops the numeracy skills required to engage effectively with other learning areas.
- Health and Physical Education provides the foundational knowledge for the ongoing development of the Personal and Social Capability.
- Digital Technologies provides the foundational knowledge for the application of Digital Literacy across the curriculum.
The Literacy general capability is presented as a learning progression that describes the typical sequence of literacy development. It supplements the English curriculum; it is not a standalone curriculum. The English curriculum identifies what teachers need to teach at each year level; the general capability describes the learning pathway(s) along which students typically progress in particular aspects of literacy regardless of age or year level.
Literacy skills are explicitly taught in the Australian Curriculum: English. The Literacy general capability can assist schools and teachers in all learning areas to support their students to successfully engage with the literacy demands of the F–10 Australian Curriculum. The sub-elements of Listening, Interacting, Speaking, Understanding texts and Creating texts in the Literacy general capability, for example, have specific relevance for learning areas other than English.
The Literacy general capability is intended for teachers to use as a supplement to the curriculum. It does not replace the curriculum; rather, it provides more detail about the literacy knowledge and skills that are in the learning areas of the Australian Curriculum.
The Literacy general capability has indicators that describe what students do or produce as they develop in aspects of literacy.
They help teachers ‘drill down’ into specific areas of literacy knowledge, to inform their planning and teaching. For example, a teacher could use the general capability to help identify what students misunderstand or do not know, or to determine next steps in learning, or to group students for instruction.
The general capability is not intended for use as a checklist. It is a resource for teachers that helps identify the literacy demands of various aspects of the curriculum. For teachers, the general capability represents a consistent shared understanding of the knowledge and skills students will need as they progress through increasingly complex curriculum content.
The Literacy general capability describes observable student behaviours at increasing levels of sophistication or proficiency in aspects of Literacy
- is organised into 3 elements (speaking and listening, reading and viewing, writing), then further refined into sub-elements, levels and indicators
- supports tracking and monitoring of individual student’s literacy development
- sub-element levels do not necessarily align with the same level in other sub-elements has some sub-elements, such as Phonemic awareness, that are constrained and usually aligned with the early years of the curriculum
- has other sub-elements, such as Understanding texts, that are unconstrained and describe Literacy knowledge and skills which continue to develop, from F-10.
Constrained skills are those that can typically be learnt in a limited amount of time. Once they are achieved, they require no further teaching. Examples include phonological awareness and phonic knowledge. Unconstrained skills continue to be developed throughout each year and from year to year. Examples include vocabulary and comprehension. Constrained and unconstrained skills are developed in parallel in the early years of the English curriculum.
The Numeracy general capability is presented as a learning progression that describes the typical sequence of development for the key aspects of mathematics that underpin Numeracy as a general capability. The Numeracy learning progression can be used to support teachers when implementing the Australian Curriculum, by providing a granular and detailed description of the typical learning pathways for these identified areas of learning in mathematics, that underpin the Numeracy general capability.
The Mathematics curriculum identifies what teachers need to teach at each year level; the general capability learning progression describes the learning pathway(s) along which students typically progress in specific aspects of mathematics that support numeracy regardless of age or year level.
Mathematics skills that underpin Numeracy are explicitly taught in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. Sub-element levels in the learning progression for Numeracy capability are aligned to year levels within the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. This provides an indication of where you might expect students to be within the specific learning pathways. This can assist teachers when planning for learning and assessment, especially in learning areas that have an identified numeracy demand such as Science, Technologies and HASS.
The learning progression for Numeracy capability can assist schools and teachers in all learning areas to support their students to successfully engage with the numeracy demands of the F–10 Australian Curriculum.
Representing the Numeracy general capability as a learning progression provides teachers with evidence- based learning pathways to support learning and enable students to engage with the numeracy demands of the Australian Curriculum from Foundation to Year 10. It is not an alternative mathematics curriculum; rather, it provides more detail about the mathematical knowledge and skills that underpin the Numeracy general capability, that are developed through the learning area content in Mathematics and applied across all the learning areas of the Australian Curriculum.
The learning progression for Numeracy general capability has indicators that describe what students can typically demonstrate as they develop aspects of the Numeracy general capability. They help teachers ‘drill down’ into specific areas of learning in mathematics, to inform their planning and teaching. For example, a teacher could use the progression to help identify what students misunderstand or do not know, or to determine next steps in learning, or to group students for some targeted teaching intervention.
The progression is not intended for use as a checklist. It is a resource for teachers that helps identify the Numeracy general capability demands of various aspects of the curriculum. For teachers, the progression represents a consistent shared understanding of the knowledge and skills students will need as they progress through increasingly complex curriculum content.
The learning progression: describes observable student behaviours at increasing levels of sophistication or proficiency in aspects of Numeracy
- is organised into 3 elements (Number sense and algebra, Measurement and geometry and Statistics and probability), then further refined into sub-elements, levels and indicators
- supports tracking and monitoring of individual student’s Numeracy development
- sub-element levels do not necessarily align with the same level in other sub-elements has some sub-elements, such as Counting processes, that are constrained and are usually aligned with the early years of the curriculum
- has other sub-elements, such as Interpreting and representing data, that are unconstrained and describe Numeracy knowledge and skills which continue to develop, from F-10.