Letters, sounds at core of new curriculum
Justine Ferrari, Education Writer From: The Australian February 25, 2010 12:00AM
ALL states and territories will be forced to follow a set program for teaching reading under the first national English curriculum, which stipulates the letters, sounds and words students must learn in each year of school.
The curriculum, obtained by The Australian, dictates what students from kindergarten until the end of Year 9 are expected to know and be able to do in English, history, science and maths.
The English curriculum, to be released for public consultation next week, enshrines the importance of teaching letter-sound combinations, or phonics, giving examples of the sounds and words to be taught from the start of school. Students in their prep year will learn to sound out simple words such as "cat", recognising the initial, middle and end sounds; by Year 1, they will have learned two consonant sounds such as "st", "br" and "gl".
The national curriculum ends the piecemeal approach to what is taught in schools, with state curriculums emphasising different course content and teaching it at different stages of school.
The new curriculum is a detailed document that provides specific examples and is longer than many existing state syllabuses, some of which are a couple of pages long for each subject.
The curriculum for the senior years of school, from Years 10 to 12, will be released separately by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority later this year.
The English curriculum places a strong emphasis on the study of grammar, from learning different classes of words such as verbs and nouns in the early years through to the difference between finite and non-finite clauses in high school.
In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Education Minister Julia Gillard welcomed the "strong appearance" of grammar in the national curriculum.
Announcing its release next Monday, she said the curriculum set out the essential content for each year of learning as well as the achievement standards students should be expected to perform.
"This will not be a curriculum `guide' or a supplement to what states and territories currently teach," she said.
"It will be a comprehensive new curriculum, providing a platform for the highest quality teaching."
Ms Gillard also outlined the next phase of Labor's education revolution, including the external assessment of schools and the introduction of student identity numbers to enable parents and schools to track a child's individual progress through school.
After the speech, a spokesman for Ms Gillard said the government would investigate different systems for assessing school performance in coming months, including a form of school inspectors and the method used in Britain, where the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills conducts detailed inspections of schools and publishes its findings.
"The government believes that some external inspection or assessment of schools would be an additional way of ensuring that our schools are providing the best possible education for our children." the spokesman said.
Ms Gillard said the government would examine "how every school can get the right support and scrutiny to make sure it is performing well and improving in the areas where it needs to improve".
The idea of external assessment of schools was mooted by the national teachers union for public education, the Australian Education Union, in a charter of school accountability reported by The Australian in December.
The AEU proposal advocates a system of regular assessments against a set of standards by a panel of principals, teachers and education experts, and then working with struggling schools to lift performance.
AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said yesterday teachers wanted to see the detail of the government's proposal on school assessment before giving their support, although they were still committed to the principle of accountability and external review.
"But the government must consult with teachers," he said.
"We're seeing announcement after announcement without consultation and the Rudd government has to realise that it needs to consult with the profession.
"Ultimately, we're the ones who implement education policy."
Mr Gavrielatos said the union was also not opposed in principle to the idea of student identity numbers and welcomed moves to improve the measure of student progress than that currently used on the My School website.
Tony Abbott said students already had unique identifiers in the form of names, and questioned why their results could not be tracked using their names.
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3 years ago
It's a good start to improve on the English performance. I agree that this curriculum should be imposed to students from pre-schools to high schools. what most important is that it should be a continuous programme to ensure that the effort would not be put in vain. Reviewing our education system, I'm thinking perhaps our government should have taken this curriculum into consideration. What I've realised for our education system is that the curriculum doesn't really focus on reading. Some of our students may write fantabulous English, but when come to reading, they face problems even if they are graduates from universities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you KC, If our government have thoughts to impose such curriculum, earlier, I might have confident in my English, to write or talk.....huhu..
ReplyDeleteWell actually it's more to our effort, either we want to improve or not. Time is really an enemy but if we know how to control it, we could let ourselves to do a lot of things.....
hm...I always said to myself that learning is hard but the results is sweet.....go English!!!!
Yes. I also wish that Malaysia could try to implement that approach to make the english proficiency of people especially teenagers up to standard. Government should also improves the speaking part where i find most of the students cant speak proper english.
ReplyDeleteIf government could consider this curriculum before, perhaps I would have a better spoken English now. I do agree with the policy. Most Malaysians face the problem when it comes to write and speak in English. Government could have do something. Like what soo said, to bring the teenagers up to standard. I dont know what's happening to other places, but around my hometown, very little teenagers could speak well in English including me as well. English significance is much more important than what I could think of. Secondary students are not trained to have good command in English languages. Mother languages are heard everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI like Katy's word, LEARNING IS HARD, BUT RESULT IS SWEET^^