Page 3760 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 29 October 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Education—curriculum
MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Education and Training. Minister, in an interview with the Canberra Times on 13 October you are quoted as saying:
We can’t change curriculums every time we change governments … I would like to see more time given to bed this down first and foremost.
Minister, what do you mean by those remarks?
MS BURCH: The remark that I would have a preference to see the national curriculum bedded down before there was wholesale change I think is self-explanatory. Not every state or territory across Australia has actually embedded the fully endorsed Australian curriculum, and this review is calling for some fundamental changes. My view is that we should allow the Australian curriculum to be bedded in, for that work to be done and for changes to be made at a more appropriate time.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Doszpot.
MR DOSZPOT: Minister, what feedback have you had about the current curriculum being overcrowded?
MS BURCH: The feedback I have had about the development of the national curriculum here in the ACT is that the ACT was a leader in its implementation, and I know many of our educational leaders had a part in the development and the trialling and the testing of the Australian curriculum across a number of subjects.
The other comment is that it is hard to distinguish, in the primary years in particular, whether it is just that the move to change to the national curriculum needs to be bedded in or whether it is, indeed, cluttered and crowded.
There is also a sentiment amongst educational leaders that decisions about what is taught within a class—the curriculum-based activity attached to the national curriculum—is a decision that teachers make each and every week.
Mr Doszpot: A point of order, Madam Speaker.
MADAM SPEAKER: Stop the clock, please.
Mr Doszpot: Madam Speaker, under standing order 118, relevance, I specifically asked the minister what feedback has she had about the current curriculum being overcrowded. She has not addressed that.
MADAM SPEAKER: I uphold the point of order. That is what I wrote down as Mr Doszpot’s question and I have been listening for Minister Burch to come to that. You have occupied half of the time for answering the question, so I ask you to come to the substance of Mr Doszpot’s question about feedback about the overcrowding of the curriculum.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video