At Ipswich Central State School we implement the Australian Curriculum. Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), is responsible for the development of the Australian Curriculum. The following information is provided by ACARA regarding the Australian Curriculum.
Structure of the Australian Curriculum
The Australian Curriculum sets out what all young Australians are to be taught, and the expected standards of achievement as they progress through schooling.
For additional information view the Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum.
What are the elements of the curriculum?
The overall structure of the curriculum is consistent across learning areas and includes the following elements:
A rationale that explains the place and purpose of the learning area in the school curriculum.
Aims that identify the major learning that students will be able to demonstrate as a result of learning from the curriculum.
An organisation section that provides an overview of how the curriculum in the learning area will be organised from Foundation to Year 12.
Content descriptions that specify what teachers are expected to teach. These are accompanied by elaborations that illustrate the content descriptions.
Achievement standards that describe what students are typically able to understand and able to do, and which are accompanied by work samples that illustrate the achievement standards through annotated student work.
General capabilities that describe a set of knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that can be developed and applied across subject-based content.
Cross-curriculum priorities that ensure the Australian Curriculum is relevant to the lives of students and addresses the contemporary issues they face.
What are the content descriptions?
The content descriptions specify what teachers are expected to teach. They include the knowledge, skills and understanding for each learning area as students progress through schooling. The content descriptions provide a well-researched scope and sequence of teaching, within which teachers determine how best to cater for individual students’ learning needs and interests. Examples that illustrate content descriptions can be found in elaborations. These assist teachers in developing a common understanding of content descriptions.
What are the achievement standards?
An achievement standard describes what students are typically able to understand and able to do as they progress through schooling. An achievement standard comprises a written description with illustrative student work samples.
The sequence of achievement standards across the Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum describes and illustrates progress in the learning area. This assists teachers to plan for and monitor learning and to make judgments about their teaching to support student learning. The achievement standards can support formative and summative assessment practices and provide a basis for consistency of assessment and reporting.
Work samples play a key role in establishing and communicating expectations described in the achievement standards. The examples of student work include the task and a student’s response, with annotations about the learning evident in that response in relation to relevant parts of the achievement standard.
What are the general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities?
The Australian Curriculum pays explicit attention to how seven general capabilities and three cross curriculum priorities contribute to, and can be developed through, teaching in each learning area.
The seven general capabilities are:
Literacy
Numeracy
Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
Critical and creative thinking
Personal and social capability
Ethical understanding
Intercultural understanding
The three cross-curriculum priorities are:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia
Sustainability
Further detail is available by visiting the ACARA website.