NSW science education changes criticised by teachers
25 June 2012
The federal government’s Australian Curriculum Reporting and Assessment Authority has released a draft national senior secondary curriculum for chemistry, biology, earth and environmental science and physics. It is left to individual states and territories to decide how to build it into their existing offerings.
[However] the draft…will be unmanageable to teach, will narrow student options and take away teachers’ ability to cater for different student interests, NSW educators say.
Consultation on the curriculum is open until July 20.
The draft and consultation survey are available online; I’m going to check them out and provide some input.
One of the criticisms mentioned in the newspaper article is that current options for students to pick science topics they’re interested in would be removed, and a more fixed curriculum be instituted. I can see how the options would be good for ensuring students’ interest, but also run the risk of missing some of the basics.
[...] to implement the guidelines being put forward by the national education assessment authority, which I blogged about recently, because some of the language sounds quite similar. If that’s true, then these are only a [...]