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Key Learning Areas
The Key Learning Areas referred to are the subject areas identified by the Australian Education Council, and developed by CURASS (the Australian Education Council's Curriculum and Assessment Committee) in answer to a formal initiative to develop "national collaborative curriculum projects".
These subject areas were defined as:
| Nationally | NSW |
| The arts | Creative and Practical Arts |
| English | English |
| Health and physical education | Personal Development Health and Physical Education |
| Languages other than English | Languages |
| Mathematics | Mathematics |
| Science | Science and Technology |
| Studies of Society and environment | Human Society and its Environment |
| Technology | Technology and Applied Studies |
This led to the development what we refer to as the National Statements and National Profiles
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The thinking behind the concept of a national collaborative curriculum had 3 basic elements:
- Quality: To raise standards by using the expertise of specialists
throughout Australia to collectively work on important aspects of learning
and classroom best practice
- Cohesion: To allow a qualitative standard to be designed that
would provide the same basic framework in all states and territories in
a way that would also allow for individual differences and variation. In
theories this would assist transferrability of educational standards between
states and territories.
- Resource savings: There would no longer be the need for the
enormous amount of duplication presently involved in each authority designing
and implementing their own documents and teaching resources
The statements define:
- the learning areas
- the agreed knowledge and skills students must be able to attain
The aim of a statement is to offer a broad outline or framework, not a syllabus.
The profiles define:
- student outcomes
- expected levels of student achievement
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The profiles offer detailed descriptions of what students should achieve at various points in their schooling. Each outcome is related to a given standard. It is not a couse outline nor a guarantee that students will achieve at that given standard.
There are various documents in the Curriculum Resources Collection explaining the role of the statements and profiles. These will be found by searching the catalogue in the Call number option for:
- It is important to remember that the courses of study for the School Certificate have been updated and reviewed. The relationship between each individual document and the
concept of Key Learning Areas has undergone a change.
The KLA initiatives, while dated, still inform much of the thinking within the development of curriculum documents.
The statements and profiles are found in the library in their subject areas and can be retrieved by doing a search on the computer catalogue. To look at all documents, do a keyword search for:
- national statement
- then choose Location "Fisher Curriculum"
An excellent article on the history of the development and implementation of the concept of a national curriculum can be found in Clements, M.A. (Ken) "The National Curriculum in Australia", Education Research and Perspectives Volume 23, No. 1, June, 1996 (available online through the library's catalogue)
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