The Australian Curriculum is designed to teach students what it takes to be confident and creative individuals and become active and informed citizens. It sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life wherever they live in Australia and whatever school they attend.

There are three dimensions in the Australian Curriculum:

  • learning areas
  • general capabilities
  • cross-curriculum priorities

1. Learning Areas
The Australian Curriculum is organised into 8 learning areas:

  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Health and Physical Education (HPE)
  • Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS)
  • The Arts
  • Technologies
  • Languages

Learning areas contain content descriptions that detail knowledge, understanding and skills to be taught each year or across a band of years. These content descriptions are accompanied by achievement standards that describe what students will know and will be able to do as a result of teaching and learning in the classroom.

2. General Capabilities
General capabilities are included in the content of the learning areas. These are the skills and abilities intended to help prepare young Australians to learn, live and work in the 21st century.

The Australian Curriculum has seven general capabilities:

  • Literacy
  • Numeracy
  • Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
  • Critical and Creative Thinking
  • Personal and Social
  • Ethical Understanding
  • Intercultural Understanding

3. Cross-Curriculum Priorities
In a similar way, there are three priorities critical to Australia’s future:

  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Histories and Culture
  • Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia
  • Sustainability

They build across the curriculum and allow students to connect the content of learning areas.

Intellectual Stretch
As expressed in our school vision – ‘Creating intellectually stretched, self-directed, powerful learners’ we strive to raise the intellectual demand of tasks to enable students to be challenged and to enhance their learning capacity. Teachers work collaboratively to differentiate all tasks to give students the opportunity to show their ability and their thinking.