Nurturing wonder and igniting passion: designs for a new school curriculum: NSW Curriculum Review

In May 2018 the New South Wales (NSW) Government announced a comprehensive review of the school curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 12 to 'ensure that the NSW education system is properly preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century'. The announced Review was described as the first major review of the entire NSW school curriculum since 1989. This report of the Review is based on statewide consultations and online submissions, including public feedback on an Interim Report [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 138.271] released in 2019. The Review found strong community support for change and is recommending both short-term and long-term reforms that will deliver a new curriculum for NSW schools.

The Review has identified several key concerns that must be addressed in any new curriculum. First, the crowded nature of the current curriculum, including the amount of content some syllabuses expect teachers to cover, is not conducive to teaching in depth or helping students see the relevance of what they are learning. Second, the frequent separation of knowledge and skills, theory and application, and academic and vocational learning in the current curriculum, and the associated undervaluing of skills, do little to support students' understandings of how knowledge can be put to use or their development of skills in applying knowledge. Third, the timed nature of syllabuses that specify not only what should be taught, but also when it should be taught and how long should be spent teaching it, means some students are being required to move to the next year-level syllabus before mastering the content of the prior syllabus and so are falling increasingly behind in their learning over time. Other students are being required to mark time rather than advance to the more challenging material for which they are ready. Teachers require a more flexible curriculum to ensure every student is provided with well-targeted stretch challenges and so makes excellent ongoing progress.

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