The school curriculum in New South Wales is being overhauled for children from kindergarten to Year 2, putting a bigger focus on learning the basics.
The new lesson plans will be rolled out statewide to 1600 students this term, after nearly 400 primary schools were early adopters of the curriculum in 2022.
English and maths teachers will use the new curriculum in an effort to ”build foundational skills” from day one.
The English lesson plans put a bigger focus on phonics, spelling and handwriting.
Maths will be more hands-on, focusing processes so students learn how they arrived at an answer.
Teacher Taylor Ford said they could plan out a whole term ahead.
“We can see what outcomes we need to hit,” Ford said.
Education minister Sarah Mitchell said decluttering the system was a real focus.
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”It is making it clear for teachers what the priorities need to be,” Mitchell said.
“We want to see better outcomes for our kids, we want to support our teachers and that’s exactly why we introduced these reforms.”
Shadow education minister Prue Car said they needed to attract more teachers to the profession.
“We’ve got falling education outcomes and a chronic teacher shortage,” Car said.
“We need to get more teachers in classrooms, teaching those lessons so our children have a chance to improve those outcomes.”
The NSW government said the new curriculum is designed to give teachers clearer benchmarks and better support.
