Board of Studies NSW President
President’s speeches
Moving Forward: Education, our way to success
I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land upon which we gather for this event and thank the Guringai people for generously sharing this place with those of us who culturally are, indeed, guests here. I would like to pay my respects to Guringai Elders and their family members who continue the important role of sustaining connection with Country.
I would like to express my respect and admiration for Aboriginal Elders, past and present, by acknowledging your safe carriage of cultural knowledge and the way you take on your responsibilities for kin and Country.
I also pay my respect to those Aboriginal community members who have a long-standing and special connection to this very beautiful place and who, through their commitment and endeavour, have established a remarkable profile within the area. The annual Guringai festival, the Gawura Aboriginal Learning Centre at Brookvale TAFE, regional and local partnerships with schools and local governments, the uptake of Aboriginal Studies in schools in this region – these are just a few tangible outcomes, a few examples of the cultural prosperity that can only come about through respectful and productive partnerships. It also speaks to the creativity and innovation that is a part of the local Aboriginal community. The academic accomplishments of Aboriginal students in this region remain strong and thanks go to those in Aboriginal education who support those students and their families.
I thank the Metropolitan North Regional AECG for hosting this event and, finally, I thank Cindy Berwick, President, NSW AECG and other Secretariat staff, for their extraordinary effort in coordinating this event and for providing the opportunity for me to speak with you today.
Among guests I acknowledge The Honourable Minister Adrian Piccoli MP, Director-General, Department of Education and Communities, Michele Bruniges AM, Director, Aboriginal Education and Community Engagement unit, Jascenta Sabatino, Executive Director, Connected Communities Strategy, Michele Hall, Aunty Ruth Simms AM, NSW AECG Life Members, other distinguished guests and speakers, Aboriginal education consultants and workers, principals, teachers, AECG regional delegates, AECG members and conference participants.
Aboriginal education is restorative work; it is practical work; it is most often visionary work. In Aboriginal education, the vision is always long-sighted, even when the funding isn’t. The goals are well known and so, until Aboriginal students K–12 enjoy educational outcomes that are equivalent to those of their non-Aboriginal peers, until Aboriginal students recognise schools as places that respect and engage their cultures and ways of knowing, doing and being, until Aboriginal students prosper academically, culturally, socially, physically and spiritually, it continues to be ‘game on’ for all of us.
As 2013 commences, the Board recognises some of the visionary, practical and restorative work that is underway in NSW in Aboriginal Education. The Board recognises the Connected Communities strategy as brave, visionary work by the Department of Education and Communities. Similarly, the Board recognises work by the Centre for Aboriginal Languages Coordination and Development as restorative, visionary and practical work in supporting language reclamation in NSW. The Board also acknowledges that the work for those of us in education that is emerging from the Ministerial Taskforce on Aboriginal Affairs in the area of Aboriginal Languages is restorative work that seeks practical solutions to support the entitlement of Aboriginal people to Aboriginal languages – from birth to adulthood.
The Board of Studies is the curriculum and assessment agency with responsibility for curriculum in NSW. We are sensitive to the expectations of Aboriginal communities and educators when we confront the perennial issue of what and whose knowledge should be represented in curriculum. Bill Green (2010, p.460) states that representation in curriculum is ‘inherently, inescapably political’ and goes ‘hand-in-hand with power’.
At the Board we have the infrastructure to empower Aboriginal stakeholders and to ensure that you are represented – the important messages and advice we receive from members of the Board’s Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee, the sustained partnership between the Board and the NSW AECG and, finally, the NSW AECG representation in our routine work – are evidence of a distributed leadership that takes account of Aboriginal peoples’ interests in education. Later in this presentation you will see tangible outcomes of the Board’s agency in this way.
I turn now to those areas where we continue to demonstrate the Board’s commitment to Aboriginal education in 2013 and beyond. I start firstly with the curriculum work emanating from the development of the Australian Curriculum.
The Board’s new syllabuses in response to the Australian Curriculum demonstrate an ongoing commitment to Aboriginal education by ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander curriculum content has been retained or enhanced where possible.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 2: BOS Website
For those who haven’t yet viewed the new NSW K–10 syllabuses in English, Mathematics, Science and History or, if you would like information about the Board’s consultation on the remaining draft Australian Curriculum, the current slide of the Board of Studies website indicates where you can find the link.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 3: New Syllabuses for NSW incorporating Australian Curriculum
The new NSW K–10 syllabuses in English, Mathematics, Science and History developed by the Board of Studies include Australian Curriculum content in those areas but retain or build-in distinctive features unique to NSW.
After extensive consultation with school sectors and other stakeholders a schedule for implementation of the new NSW syllabuses was agreed upon. In 2013 teachers will spend time familiarising themselves with the new syllabuses while teaching the current NSW syllabuses. From 2014 an implementation schedule starts, the details of which are on the Board’s website.
The Board facilitated an official hand-over of the syllabuses to the Department of Education and Communities, Catholic Education and the Association of Independent Schools last year.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 4: New NSW History Syllabus 7–10
Our commitment to Aboriginal education is evident in, for example, the way in which the Board of Studies, while absorbing mandatory Australian Curriculum History content into the new NSW History syllabus, made independent determinations and adjustments to the representation of content. For example, the NSW History 7–10 curriculum, developed by the Board of Studies of NSW, mandates four depth studies rather than six as recommended by ACARA.
This provides NSW students with more time than their state and territory counterparts to engage in exploration of topics. As a result, in NSW, the mandatory Stage 5 Core Study – Depth Study 4: Rights and Freedoms, from 1945 to the present, will be studied in greater depth than the model originally proposed by ACARA. The location of this Core Study Depth Study 4 alongside other significant content in Core Study – Depth Study 5 ensures that Aboriginal histories and cultures will be respectfully represented.
The new NSW History K–10 syllabus will be optional for schools to start teaching from 2015 with all primary schools commencing teaching from 2016. The new NSW History K–10 syllabus will be introduced into high schools commencing with Years 7–9 the next year.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 5: New NSW History Syllabus 7–10 Depth study ‘Rights and freedoms’
Many of the key events, policies and issues of significance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people …
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 6: New NSW History Syllabus 7–10 Depth study ‘Rights and freedoms’
… retain their prominence as NSW transitions between the current and the new NSW History Syllabus 7–10
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 7: New NSW History Syllabus 7-10 Depth study ‘Rights and freedoms’
This is achieved as much through the time allocated to studying this content as in the selection of content itself.
Similarly, in other cases, for example in the new NSW K–6 curriculum and other new NSW 7–10 syllabuses, the Board of Studies has ensured that the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders of NSW have been upheld as Australian Curriculum content has been incorporated.
In another area of our agency at the Board of Studies we have provided advice to ACARA where issues pertaining to Aboriginal Education in NSW require greater representation.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 8: ACARA Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages advisory group
I have received news recently that, in addition to the Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages Advisory Group, ACARA will be forming an Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages Panel. This will increase the input of Aboriginal community members ‘to ensure that Aboriginal cultural knowledge’ from this state is represented. This has responded to the representations I have received and acted upon from the Board’s Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee. ACARA has communicated directly with the Board on this issue.
The Board’s commitment to Aboriginal Languages will be evident in the Board’s management of feedback to ACARA from NSW stakeholders in relation to the draft Australian Curriculum: Framework for Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages.
The Board’s commitment to Aboriginal education stakeholders will be evident in the Board’s management of feedback to ACARA from NSW stakeholders in relation to the current draft Australian Curriculum in Languages, Technologies, Health and Physical Education. This will also be the case for other draft Australian Curriculum still to be released.
The Board’s position on Phase 2 and 3 of the Australian Curriculum is that we will:
(BOS Memorandum to Principals, 31 July 2012)
I move on now to the curriculum work of the Board of Studies that has been generated independently of the Australian Curriculum.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 9: The Review of Languages Education Policy in NSW
The Board is currently taking responsibility for The Review of Languages Education Policy in NSW. Presented in these slides are draft recommendations emerging from an investigation of the place of Aboriginal Languages …
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 10
… within the broader Languages education environment of NSW.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 11
The Review of Languages Education Policy in NSW will be available for consultation in the near future.
The Board in 2013 will, in partnership with the NSW AECG, the Centre for Aboriginal Languages Coordination and Development, the Aboriginal Education and Community Engagement Unit within the Department of Education and Communities and with Aboriginal Affairs, extend its curriculum base through the development of targeted curriculum support for particular language sites and groups in NSW as well as through its investigations of options for a senior Aboriginal Languages curriculum in NSW.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 12: Resource – Aboriginal English and Teaching the School Curriculum
In 2013, you will see two new online Aboriginal Languages resources appearing on the Board’s website. One is titled ‘Aboriginal English and Teaching the School Curriculum’.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 13: Resource – A Practical Guide to Teaching Aboriginal languages
The other resource is titled, ‘A Practical Guide to Teaching Aboriginal languages’.
Finally, the Board of Studies has identified future Geography curriculum renewal, in conjunction with the Australian Curriculum: Geography response, as an opportunity for finding new ways to encourage all NSW students to gain greater proficiency in recognising Aboriginal Country/language groups as a part of their studies.
Refer to PowerPoint Slide 14: Power point title slide
Two more points before I conclude my presentation:
Firstly, each year the Board of Studies and the NSWAECG reaffirm our partnership by jointly recognising the accomplishments of HSC students completing Aboriginal Studies. The Board of Studies President’s Award goes to an accomplished Aboriginal student who achieved the highest result in the preceding year’s HSC Aboriginal Studies. The NSW AECG President’s Award is conferred upon the non-Aboriginal student gaining the highest result in the HSC Aboriginal studies subject. Tomorrow evening at the Conference Dinner you will have an opportunity to hear about the accomplishments of those remarkable young people who, supported by inspiring teachers, make the decision to choose Aboriginal Studies among their HSC subjects and indeed, excel in that endeavour.
Secondly, and in closing, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the important contribution that Kevin Lowe has made over a period of ten years as Chief Education Officer/Inspector at the Board of Studies. During that time Kevin has worked with many Aboriginal community members and teachers to develop syllabuses and support material that have continued the work of the Board in moving Aboriginal Education forward. Chris Evans, a member of the Guringai Local AECG, joined the Board late last year from UTS and a twelve-month period at ACARA and will, I’m sure, continue to build on the work of Kevin and those before him. Kevin, thank you. We wish you well in the current work that you are undertaking.
Thank you.
References
ACARA 2012, ACARA Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages Advisory Group, viewed 27 March 2013.
Board of Studies NSW 2012, BOS Memorandum to Principals: Update on the implementation of Australian Curriculum in NSW, 31 July 2012 Board of Studies NSW, Sydney.
Board of Studies NSW 2012, NSW syllabuses for the Australian curriculum. viewed 27 March 2013.
Board of Studies NSW 2012, NSW syllabuses for the Australian curriculum: History K-10. viewed 27 March 2013.
Green, B 2010, Rethinking the representation problem in curriculum inquiry. Journal of curriculum studies vol 42, no 4, pp 451–46.
NSW Government