On 7 May, we farewelled Professor Barry McGaw AO, who was Chair of the Interim National Curriculum Board since 2008 and the inaugural ACARA Board Chair since 2009. We also farewelled three Board members: Tom Alegounarias, Helen Wildash and John Firth, whose terms had also come to an end. You can watch Prof. McGaw’s farewell video on our YouTube channel. Our new Chair and Board members will be announced soon.

In curriculum, we released the language curricula for Turkish and Hindi for public consultation and I encourage you to provide your feedback by 14 July. We also released a fact sheet <link> to explain what we are doing to improve the Australian Curriculum by addressing themes endorsed by the Education Council. The first outcome of this work has been completed – you can read more below.

With the conclusion of NAPLAN for 2015, our focus continues to be on the future of these annual literacy and numeracy assessments – namely the introduction of NAPLAN online from 2017. We know there are a lot of questions about how online assessment will work, the logistics around delivering NAPLAN online and the validity and reliability of tailored testing. Some of these questions will be answered in consultation with our state and territory partners and/or with Education Services Australia. Others will be answered through various research projects that are underway to ensure we have the best possible arrangements in place for the move of NAPLAN online. We will share the results of our research in the coming months. In the meantime, see the video in this issue to find out what has been done so far.

Regards,

Robert Randall
Chief Executive Officer

First step to uncrowd
the Australian Curriculum

The first step by ACARA to improve the Australian Curriculum has been completed. Following analysis, the identification of the general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities on the Australian Curriculum website has been updated

Previously, the way in which general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities were presented gave the impression of more work being required from teachers. This was one of the factors contributing to the curriculum being seen as overcrowded.

Click on the image to view the full version (PDF 832 kb)

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Public consultation:
Turkish and Hindi language curricula

Language curricula for Turkish and Hindi have been released for public consultation. You can find the language curricula and provide feedback on the curricula at the Australian Curriculum: consultation website.

Eleven languages have been released as a part of the Australian Curriculum: languages (Chinese, French, Indonesian and Italian in 2014; and more recently, Arabic, German, Japanese, Korean, Modern Greek, Spanish and Vietnamese).

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STEM projects bring subjects together

How do you get students more engaged with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects? The study of STEM subjects allows students to apply a wide range of computational and analytical skills to contemporary and emerging information systems and practices.

Thirteen schools around the country are being supported to investigate and document an integrated approach to teaching and learning STEM in Years 9 and 10 – showing how individual subject skills can be brought together and applied to a specific school project. ACARA has partnered with the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT) to support these projects and is working collaboratively to identify inter-relationships between STEM disciplines in the Australian Curriculum.

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