National curriculum????????

[Labbie]

My husband saw in the daily paper, only this week, we are to have a National Curriculum for Australia, based on NSW current curriculum, for English Maths & Science, the other depts to join in later I guess. Did any one else see this in the paper????????

[smiley]

Not in my paper. I guess they wouldn't print that story on principle!

Cheers, K

[dolphinscales]

here in the west there is a rumour we are going to national curriculum some time inteh year 2012 but not based entirely on anyones current cirriculum thus why there is trouble with getting it together.
I know we will miss out here for as far as i know we are the only state still doing biology and human biology as seperate TEE (HSE) subjects.

[Labbie]

The lovely lady in the Library find it for me.

The Daily Telegraph page 16 Wed 26th March 2008

Perhaps it can be goggled??

[Slartibartfast]

Is this it?

THE head of the new National Curriculum Board, Barry McGaw, has a big idea that will affect what happens in every school.

He wants to help your children build something called social capital.

Follow this. You may have heard of physical capital - screwdrivers, machinery, power plants or anything you can use to produce something - and human capital - the skills and education you acquire that helps you produce something.

Australia uses its physical capital and human capital to run a very successful economy.
There is also social capital which, put simply, is the networks you build in life with people and communities.

If you are involved with your child's school in any way, from helping with the canteen to going to P&C meetings, or if you belong to a social or neighbourhood group, you are building your social capital.

Any sort of voluntary work, involvement in your church or belonging to a sporting club will build up your social capital.

The more social capital you have the more likely you are to lead a productive and happy life. For example, you might be offered a job by someone you meet in your networks.

Children from families with lots of social capital are much more likely to succeed at school.
Communities that have good social capital have lower crime rates, better child welfare, less corruption and so on.

Poor and disadvantaged families in Australia usually don't have much social capital and that means less success with education and less satisfaction with life.

So Barry McGaw wants to build into our national curriculum ways in which children can learn about and grow their social capital. Interesting enough - but there is more.

He talks about bonding social capital and bridging social capital. The bonding is what you do within your community -- people who are like you in many ways.

It happens in schools, in ethnic groups or the local bowling club. Bridging is different.

To get that you have to build bridges between your network and completely different ones.
In Australia today, with schools increasingly divided by gender, faith and social background, there is lots of social capital within schools but not much between schools.

And this is what Barry McGaw wants to see. Today's schools need to build their bridging social capital to guard against ethnic, religious or cultural conflict in the future.

I will be interested to see how he will get this into the national curriculum. But then, he is also going to build in a national agreement on how to teach reading (remember the hysteria around whole word versus phonics?) so he is not afraid of hard tasks.

The first national curriculum in English, maths, history and science from Kindergarten to Year 12 is due in 2011.

[Labbie]

I think thats it Richard, I was going to read it in lunch break. Do not have a scanner here, so was unable to put it on the site. Thank you