industry & reform
Tick of approval
Experts say revised Australian mathematics curriculum is mostly on the ‘ right track ’.
By Wade Zaglas
A team of mathematics experts have given their support to ACARA ’ s proposed revised mathematics curriculum , saying primary school teachers and parents can be confident that the F-6 part of the curriculum is largely “ on track ”.
Executive chairman and founder of ORIGO Education James Burnett collaborated with his Mathematics Advisory Board colleagues to review “ every aspect of the proposed mathematics curriculum for students in Foundation through to Year 6 ”. The advisory board , which includes mathematics experts including Dr Calvin Iron , Dr Sara Delano Moore and Peter Stowasser , spent a combined 45 hours working through the review in forensic detail .
“ Since the curriculum was first published in 2010 , Australia has performed poorly on international tests in mathematics , in particular PISA ,” Burnett said .
“ This revision provides a rare opportunity to get Australia back on par with our economic peers around the world .”
Burnett has authored and co-authored more than 300 mathematics resources for teachers and students aged five to 12 and is regularly invited to speak to audiences across North America and Australia .
“ Our Mathematics Advisory Board members have more than 100 years ’ combined experience in mathematics education , working across the globe , and believe this proposed curriculum is on the right path to support our young Foundation to Year 6 children ,” Burnett added .
“ Having read much of the recent mainstream criticism regarding the proposed revision of the Australian mathematics curriculum , we conducted and submitted ( 6 July ) a thorough , detailed review to assist ACARA in moving forward with decisions .
“ It ’ s unfortunate that metropolitan media reporting continues to focus on the negative , rather than highlight two hugely popular decisions , that is to decrease rote memorisation and procedures , and to emphasise computational thinking – a much-needed skill that has been missing from the current curriculum .”
However , despite his general praise for the revised F-6 mathematics curriculum , Burnett said there was “ room for improvement ”.
“ For example , the first three year levels should explicitly address the three types of subtraction problems , as these are prerequisites for content that ACARA has mapped out in later year levels . The same could be said for number tracks . Experience with this length model will assist in the number line work that comes later ,” he said .
“ And , while for the most part the document is well sequenced , there does
This revision provides a rare opportunity to get Australia back on par with our economic peers around the world .
seem to be inconsistent writing across Years 3-5 in some space and algebra content descriptions and their matching elaborations .
“ The work in algebra on properties of operations is done far too late to help with computation . These properties ( commutative , associative , and distributive ) are not complex and should be explored earlier so they can be used with computation with greater whole numbers , fractions and decimals .
“ We believe these issues are easy to fix and hope that ACARA takes our review as a positive contribution to this extremely important process .”
Final revisions to the Australian Curriculum , which were open to the public to comment on through submissions , closed in July . These submissions will be provided to education ministers for their consideration and endorsement before the end of 2021 .
The updated Australian Curriculum will then be made available on an improved , redesigned Australian Curriculum website at the start of 2022 . ■
10 | educationreview . com . au