Aus: Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum April 2022 - and news on phonics check developments

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Aus: Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum April 2022 - and news on phonics check developments

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

https://ministers.dese.gov.au/robert/ed ... curriculum
Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum

Ministers:
The Hon Stuart Robert MP
Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business
Acting Minister for Education and Youth

Australian schools will have a new curriculum to teach after Education Ministers today endorsed the revised Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum.

At a virtual meeting on Friday, Commonwealth, state and territory Education Ministers agreed the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has met key objectives to refine, realign and declutter the curriculum, with a focus on reducing content in primary years and lifting quality.

Acting Minister for Education and Youth Stuart Robert said the Australian Curriculum is now a much stronger document which can be taught in Australian schools from 2023.

‘The Australian Curriculum now sets a higher standard for educational achievement in Australia going forward. It has been decluttered, allowing teachers to focus on what matters most, and it is evidence-based, with phonics now embedded in the teaching of English, for example,’ Minister Robert said.
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum April 2022 and news on phonics check developments

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The latest version of the Australian Curriculum 9.0 has now been published online. It was substantially revised and improved after public consultation on the draft document released last year. The draft of the primary school English curriculum released for consultation contained numerous references to predictable texts and non-evidence-based approaches to reading. An open letter prepared by Robyn Wheldall and Max Coltheart with more than 600 signatures was submitted to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) as part of the consultation, expressing concerns about these aspects of the draft curriculum. Jennifer Buckingham prepared and submitted extensive feedback and recommendations and was consulted on the revisions. These contributions along with others from teachers, parents and others, led to the much higher quality final primary English curriculum. Jennifer’s comment piece in The Australian about the final version can be read on the Five from Five website.

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check has now been adopted by three states. It was introduced in South Australia in 2018, in New South Wales in 2021, and will begin in Tasmania in 2022. Western Australia and Victoria are taking a different approach. In WA, public schools will be required to use a phonics assessment of their choice in the first half of Year 1. The Victorian government has reportedly developed its own assessment to be used at the beginning of Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2. In 2020, the federal government produced an online version of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check as part of its Literacy Hub and made it available to all Australian schools along with extensive advice on how to administer it and respond effectively to the results.

Australian Curriculum, version 9.0

https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au

Five from Five website

https://fivefromfive.com.au/uncategoriz ... n-reading/

Ten years after the first version, the Australian Curriculum gets it right on reading

When the draft of the revised Australian Curriculum was released for consultation last year, the response was swift and emphatic from hundreds of reading scientists and well-informed educators and parents familiar with the scientific evidence on reading and literacy. They were dismayed that the draft curriculum did not reflect the accumulated evidence on reading and writing that has been published and disseminated over the past thirty years or more. Instead, the draft curriculum retained content that endorsed out-dated approaches to literacy teaching, based on the now disproven whole language methods that are to blame for thousands of students leaving school without adequate literacy skills. To their credit, the federal and state education ministers agreed with this assessment and instructed ACARA to take note.

The final revised version of the Australian Curriculum for English in Foundation to Year 6 contains few traces of the whole language approach. No doubt there will be consternation and niggles from some quarters but the content is substantially sound. It places due emphasis on the sequential development of students’ ability to read and spell words using phonics, as well as giving more explicit guidelines on the development of vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension. There are clear and more detailed descriptions for writing, and the primary English curriculum acknowledges that content and skills cannot be separated from each other. Reading comprehension requires a combination of accurate and fluent word reading, deep and broad understanding and use of language, a grasp of the purposes of types of texts, engagement with literature, and knowledge of the world.

Even though many school systems use their own syllabi or curriculum, the Australian Curriculum matters. It is the blueprint for school education, it is ratified in the Australian Education Act 2013, and it operates alongside the national assessment programs. More practically, it is the reference point for teacher education. With many people enrolling in teaching degrees in a different to state to where they eventually teach, the Australian Curriculum is the keystone document. Fortunately, in terms of literacy, it is now one that will serve students and teachers well.

This article was first published in The Australian on 10 May 2022. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation ... 6f79bf1b6b
Note: Jennifer Buckingham is a member of the Advisory Group for the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction:

http://iferi.org/jennifer-buckingham/
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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Re: Aus: Education Ministers agree a new Australian Curriculum April 2022 and news on phonics check developments

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Here is the open letter prepared by Robyn Wheldall and Max Coltheart with more than 600 signatures submitted to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority:

https://maxcoltheart.wordpress.com/letter-to-acara/

Here is the Literacy Hub where an online version of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check has been made available to all Australian schools along with extensive advice on how to administer it and respond effectively to the results:

https://www.literacyhub.edu.au

Congratulations to all the people who have worked so hard for many years to achieve these advances in guidance for improving literacy in Australia.

As in other English-speaking/teaching contexts and countries, the battle for research-informed and practice-informed guidance, teacher-training and provision for the children has been taking place for many decades. It is a long-term, collective effort and aspiration. It is impossible to identify and name all the participants and contributors to these hard-won goals.
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