I have previously referred to the NSW curriculum reform that is currently being undertaken and have also written about the frivolity of reform movements. I also wrote previously about the new mathematics curriculum and the new history curriculum, so, why another post on reform? The NSW curriculum reform will be a recurring theme in this blog as it has significance to the work of teachers and teacher educators. This post is about the reform and whether it is really necessary. The curricula I previously wrote about is part of a larger reform of all curriculum in NSW, resulting from the first such review in 30+ years. Considering there hasn’t been a review in 30+years, it does seem like it is about time this work was undertaken, but wait… I hear all the teachers out there saying, didn’t we just finish implementing new syllabi this year. Yes… many schools just finished implementing new syllabi for the Australian Curriculum (AC), which began in 2014.
There are so many questions: Firstly, how and why is the implementation and adaptation of the AC for NSW not considered a review? But let’s just leave that one alone for a moment. A more important question is: will another review achieve the ground-breaking changes they are hoping? Keeping in mind of course that the new syllabi, based on the AC, have only recently all been updated after a staged rollout that began in 2014. Call me a sceptic, but I don’t think that another review and another new curriculum is going to fix the… wait. What is the new curriculum aiming to achieve?
According to the NSW Curriculum Reform website, the curriculum reform has four major aims to: build strong foundation in English and mathematics in the early years; more time for teaching, by reducing the hours teaching extracurricular topics and issues, and compliance requirements; strengthening post-school pathways and new learning pathways in the senior years; and finally, a new curriculum. The review, which led to the current reform noted that, “Detailed planning, piloting and implementation of the new curriculum will be required over an extended period of time, possibly a decade.” So, it would make sense that this would be a long process with plenty of consultation and planning, but no. What timeline did NSW set for this major overhaul, the first of its kind in over 30 years? Two years, with the first changes coming in next year and the final changes in 2024. The review recommended a decade; NSW decides it can be done in two years. Considering it took 5-6 years to update syllabi in NSW to comply with the AC, I’m not hopeful or optimistic about a holistic curriculum that can be revamped in two years.
Here’s a revolutionary idea and one that can be accomplished in two years – why not just adopt the Australian Curriculum in its entirety? NSW, like every other state, agreed to adopt the curriculum, but then went on to adapt that curriculum. NSW took a less crowded and pared-down curriculum that incorporates a standards-based framework in singular years and adapted it into a syllabus- and outcomes-based system that dictates what children learn and what they should be able to do at the end of that learning and broke it up into stages; each stage incorporating two years, except in the case of Stage 1 (K-2), which is broken up into Early Stage 1 and Stage 1. In other words, it over-complicated it. Now it seems as though the new curriculum reform is attempting to achieve some of what the original AC sought to achieve a decade ago. Certainly, the de-cluttering of the curriculum is achieved in the AC – it doesn’t have syllabi, which addresses a major contention of the review – that the syllabi are too crowded. This would also allow teachers more flexibility to teach what is necessary, which is a main concern of teachers according to the review.
Before you start to think I am against the reform, I’ll say that I agree that the curriculum needs a reform and I’m hopeful about what changes the reform will bring. However, from what I’m reading about mathematics and the issues in making it practical and accessible to all students, it sounds like a watering down of the curriculum to me. It seems we might be moving farther in the wrong direction in preparing our youngest students to have the requisite skills to prosper in higher-level mathematics classes. A less crowded, less prescriptive curriculum sounds great. Giving teachers the freedom and autonomy to teach students what they need to know and are capable of learning is a worthwhile goal of any curriculum. Having a curriculum, in the later years, with varying pathways for students with different trajectories is also worth pursuing; however, revamping the current system and achieving this in a year seems monumental and foolish.
I realise that reversing the decision to adapt the AC to the NSW framework would be a step too far for the NSW Education and Standards Authority (NESA). It would be admitting that they made a mistake and that maybe they should have adopted, rather than adapting the AC, which would have given the country a true national curriculum. However, one major concern here, which I don’t think is actually being taken seriously is the well-being of teachers. There is a growing recognition that the work teachers do is hard and continues to get harder in an age of increased accountability and workloads. While the reform aims to address ‘compliance requirements’ for teachers, this is a small part of what teachers do. As I mentioned previously, new syllabi for the AC have only just been implemented this past year in some schools. Imposing an entirely new curriculum doesn’t make teachers’ jobs easier, it makes it harder and more cumbersome. This is coming at a time when teachers are dealing with teaching remotely; the impending staged-restart to classroom learning; the uncertainty of the continuity of in-school learning given the Covid-19 situation; and, considerable teacher shortages throughout the state. This really does beg the question:
Is this really the time to be implementing a new curriculum?
However, I’m a realist. We know the reform is coming and we also know that is coming quickly, much faster than recommended. While the government is ignoring the review timeline, we can at least hope that they follow some of the recommendations in the review. I linked to the review above if you want to read it (or the executive summary), but some key features that I really do hope make it through are:
- Untimed syllabi – something I wrote about here
- Minimum standards of achievement that students must achieve before they progress – something I wrote about here
- Requiring every student to commence learning a second language in primary school, something I have not written about, but strongly support
- Investigate the feasibility of not calculating and reporting ATAR, something I wrote about last week (let’s hope they also stop spending $100m annually on the HSC)
- Review the external demands on teacher’s time, so they can spend more time on teaching and learning
I will continue to follow the reform from time to time and I look forward to writing more about the success, failures and challenges faced along the way. If you have anything in particular you would like read my thoughts on, feel free to comment below.
Maximising Student Potential 