Both sides of politics are saying the Australian school curriculum needs to change.

The Coalition has proposed changes it says would strengthen the teaching of Western values and Australia’s civic traditions. It also wants to make Indigenous history and culture, and sustainability discrete subjects, instead of topics taught right across the curriculum.

When looking at falling test results, Coalition education spokesperson Julian Leeser says “the curriculum is part of the problem”.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Jason Clare argues the primary curriculum needs further reform to address concerns about students’ maths results.

Changing the curriculum can appear to offer a direct and visible response to complex educational challenges. However, while curriculum reform is relatively easy to announce, changing what happens in classrooms is much harder.

What is the curriculum and what’s in it?

In its most basic form a curriculum sets out what students should learn throughout their years of schooling. But it does much more than provide a list of topics. It reflects broader societal goals for education including helping young people become active and informed citizens.

One way to think about a curriculum is as a “map”, which identifies the destinations and major landmarks along a journey, but does not dictate every turn a traveller must take.

The national school curriculum is organised into eight learning areas including, English, maths, science and humanities and social sciences. There are also seven general capabilities, including literacy and numeracy, and cross-curriculum priorities, including Indigenous histories, Australia’s engagement with Asia and sustainability. These are taught across all subjects as teachers see opportunities to weave them into their teaching.

Who sets the curriculum?

Australia’s current national curriculum was approved by education ministers in 2022 after a lengthy review process.

But the Australian Curriculum does not operate identically across the country. Some states and territories use the Australian Curriculum largely as it is written, while others repackage it into state-based syllabuses and curriculum documents.

Implementation can also vary between school sectors and individual schools, further complicating the relationship between curriculum policy and classroom practice.

Curriculum debates are often political debates

Curriculum debates are rarely only about curriculum. They often serve as a proxy for broader social and political concerns.

In Australia, curriculum discussions have included debates about Australian history, Indigenous perspectives, civics education, and literacy and numeracy standards.

Similar disputes have occurred internationally. In England, governments have repeatedly revised the national curriculum in response to concerns about standards and national identity. In the United States, battles over history, race, and civic education have frequently played out through curriculum debates.

This perspective is useful when considering recent proposals in Australia to change the curriculum.

For example, the Coalition wants to emphasise Western history and democracy in the curriculum. Yet both themes already appear in the curriculum. As an illustration, Year 7 civics and citizenship includes content which directly addresses “democracy” and “the rule of law”. Similarly, Year 6 students also learn about “monarchy and federation”.

So the disagreement is often less about whether particular topics appear in the curriculum and more about how much emphasis they should receive and how they should be interpreted.

What happens when governments change the curriculum?

Public discussion often assumes that changing a curriculum document automatically changes what happens in classrooms.

In reality, curriculum reform is complex. In Australia, curriculum change happens through state and territory implementation processes, school systems and teachers’ own curriculum decision-making – this means reforms take time to reach classrooms.

New curriculum documents also mean schools and teachers need to revise programs, adjust assessment practices, review resources and complete professional learning.

Research also shows teachers do not simply deliver a curriculum as it appears on paper. Teachers interpret curriculum documents, adapt them to local contexts, respond to their students’ needs, and make judgements about pacing and emphasis.

As a result, curriculum reform often places additional demands on the teaching workforce – which we know is already stretched. Recognition of these challenges was one reason education ministers moved towards a longer ten-year curriculum review cycle following the 2022 revision of the curriculum.

How much say should teachers have?

Recent policy debates increasingly focus not only on what should be taught but also on how much discretion teachers should have in teaching it.

There is growing interest in more tightly prescribed approaches. These include highly sequenced programs, mandated curriculum materials, detailed teaching guidance, and efforts to reduce variation between classrooms.

Supporters argue this can improve consistency, provide clearer expectations and support new and out-of-field teachers.

However, research points to limitations. If the curriculum is tightly controlled, it can reduce opportunities for teachers to adapt learning to student needs. Recent Australian research has also linked the increasing use of standardised materials to lower levels of teacher satisfaction.

This suggests curriculum debates are not only about student learning outcomes, but also about the nature of teachers’ professional work and the extent to which they are trusted to make curriculum decisions.

What now?

The challenge is not choosing between complete teacher autonomy and complete curriculum prescription. Few education systems operate at either extreme.

It is a question of balance. Schools need enough coherence to ensure students get equal learning opportunities. Teachers need sufficient flexibility to respond to the students in front of them.

In the meantime, curriculum reform remains attractive to politicians because it is something concrete and comparatively quick to announce.

But improving education depends on much more than rewriting curriculum documents. Teacher knowledge and expertise, implementation support, workload, resourcing and broader system conditions all shape what students ultimately experience in classrooms. The curriculum matters, but changing it is rarely the simply solution political debate sometimes suggests.

Emily Ross receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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