The curriculum for each learning area or subject has common elements.
- Year or band level descriptions – provide an overview of the learning that students should experience in each year or 2-year band.
- Achievement standards – describe the expected quality of learning that students should typically demonstrate by the end of each year or 2-year band. Achievement standards are accompanied by annotated work samples to assist teachers to make judgments about the extent to which the achievement standard has been met.
- Content descriptions – specify the essential knowledge, understanding and skills that students are expected to learn, and teachers are expected to teach, in each year or 2-year band. Content descriptions are organised into strands and, in some learning areas, are further organised into sub-strands. They are accompanied by content elaborations.
- Content elaborations – provide teachers with suggestions and illustrations of ways to teach the content descriptions. They are optional material only; they are not a set of complete or comprehensive content points that all students need to be taught. They illustrate and exemplify content descriptions with a diverse range of examples.