Policy & ReformTop Stories
NSW primary curriculum shakeup from 2027: The changes explained
Kindergarten children will learn about consent, the human body, and world history for the first time under sweeping changes in the NSW primary school curriculum â but for most students the benefits wonât come for another two years.
Please login below to view content or subscribe now.
This is a step backwards! Teaching content in rigid ways does not prepare children and young people for the world they will step into as adults. They can google all the content they need. To move away from capabilities is to move back to industrial era ideas on teaching and learning – that the teacher is the font of knowledge and the student is the sponge. Tomorrow’s young people need to develop creativity to become solution finders. They need to APPLY knowledge not regurgitate it. They need social capacity, discernment and critical curiosity. Were students consulted about this new curriculum? Where is their agency in this? For teachers, it should not be about being ‘clear on what we need to be teaching them’ (Vanessa May) it should be about knowing HOW to effectively teach concepts, ideas, skills and dispositions. The HOW is the craft of teaching.
I think this is a valid shift. I myself, am a pre-service teacher, and I believe that more rigid content is very valid, pecifically for the learning of numeracy and literacy. The sciences and other subjects allow a lot of discovery learning (which is a learning style which I prefer, I simply believe that it is not a “one size fits all” approach), and also creative writing, allows for it in english. I believe that young students should be given firm foundations for spelling, grammar, and mathematics. I have met students in the later years of senior school that cannot tell me what an adjective is, or do simple multiplication. The discovery learning should still be used and implemented, but explicit teaching should be used for what I call “foundation skills” so that students may use those skills to be creative in other areas of their schooling from when they are taught them, and onwards throughout their lives. I think this is a valid change. I would love to see this implemented with a stronger focus on dicovery learning in some senior school subjects, so that they might use their foundation skills from primary school in a creative way.