Video Transcript

Transcript: "Prof. Barry McGaw - Progress towards an Australian Curriculum"

ACARA video, September 2010

Copyright: ACARA 2010

Australia has been moving towards a national curriculum now for more than 20 years since the ministers set the common national goals back in the late 1980s and we’re almost there. By the end of this year we expect that the ministers will sign off on the shape of the national curriculum to which we will all be committed and for which work on resources and other supporting materials can then start; professional development programs can be designed. So we’re close. There’s a bit to be done. We’re now working multilaterally with the states and territories to make sure that we understand exactly what final changes people think are important to be made and they each understand what the others are saying so that this is a negotiation position that we reach.

There’s been an extraordinary consultation behind this development of this new national curriculum and at this point of course it’s only English, maths, science and history and at this stage kindergarten to year ten but we’ve done it electronically; we’ve put the website up in an electronic form and we had thousands of people around the country respond to that electronically as well as through many of the face to face meetings that we’ve held that have sharpened our understanding of what it is that we needed to do to produce a final form to which we can all sign up. But this is a final form that doesn’t just depend upon a comparison of what’s presently in the Australian state and territory curricula. We’ve looked carefully at the international best as well - so we’ve looked at Finland, we’ve looked at Singapore, we’ve looked at Ontario, New Zealand all of which are countries which are out-performing us in the international comparisons at the moment and we’ve ensured that our new curriculum will not expect less of our students than they expect of theirs. So this is genuinely world class and we believe is going to move us up from very high in the world rankings to the top. Why should Australia not aim to be at the top?

We’re moving now to be in a position to put the full curriculum up to year ten for these first four subjects to a council of ministers in December. Following their adoption, what’s going to come next? Well there is a whole lot of work to be done: resources to be developed to support the implementation; resources for teachers, resources for students. A lot of that already exists of course because this curriculum won’t be entirely different to what we are doing at present but we will have to make sure that all the right materials are there. We will also need professional development programs for teachers. The individual states and territories will then develop the timetable for their implementation. The ministers have agreed that by 2013 there will be substantial implementation of these new curricula across the country.

I want to thank all the people who’ve contributed to this process. We’ve had more than 360,000 visits to the curriculum website. We’ve had more than 26,000 people offer particular recommendations in response to a draft that we’ve put up in March that we’ve taken into account. We’ve had other people working with us in expert groups and through jurisdictions as we’ve progressively revised the original version through to the point we’ve reached now. There’s been an enormous effort gone into this - un-paralleled actually in Australia and I want to thank all those who’ve contributed.