Australia's Digital Tech curriculum looks to be shelved for another year

For over a year, I've tracked the development of Australia's Digital Technologies curriculum, the nation's first effort to introduce a national plan for teaching computing from kindergarten to year ten. I've reported on it because industry wants the curriculum: it's thought that teaching every kid computational thinking will …

[Michael Hoffmann]

ICT in Schools

I wonder if this holds for other initiatives as well.

After much hoopla and "welcome on board, so excited to have you, speak soon" by CSIRO for joining the ICT in Schools program, there is now deafening silence.

Guess each and every cent is now being sent to fight ISIS or do unwarranted surveillance of Australians at home?

[LaeMing]

Unfortunately 'think of the children' doesn't cover their education.

[GrumpyOldBloke]

Doesn't cover the cost of their education.

Why teach kids science when you can just steal the secrets behind the stuff the science is supposed to be about. The money to teach science and technology is now in the hands of our security and policing agencies as part of the governments increased spending on industrial espionage. Go Team Australia! Of course the US will steal if from us before we have even had a chance to give it to them but for a moment there we will be on the ladder.

[CrazyLikeAFox]

A shame that El Reg hasn't got out the Orbital FOI Request Cannon and pointed it at the appropriate department/s. It may help fill things out beyond speculation.

[Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor]

we did FOI ACARA last year to learn about feedback on the curriculum. I'll use FOI again if something is being hidden. Right now I don't think that's the case. But once the report emerges I'll be all over whoever it was that reviewed the tech curriculum.

[RealFred]

Then you had best start sharpening your arrows. The last lot of curriculum changes was held up by individual state governments because no-one could accept that their curriculum wasn't the best one available. Also, the teachers didn't like the proposed changes so nothing happened.

[Diogenes]

Going by previous national curricula

It would have taken 2-3 years for implementation. The "bigger" curricula took a year rattling around the various state bodies (in NSW the Board of Studies) for them to "add" whatever "value" they do, then 1 year on pilot then 1 year full implementation.

There is an ICTENSW workshop next Monday night - hopefully we will hear something from our "trade" body (they are our official "stakeholders").

PS what is a curriculm ?

[Denarius]

hope burns eternal and futile

Since the "cloud" thingy will be used by gummint by order, Oz wont need any IT skills. Think of the savings ! Aside from that we can always import any expertise needed using coal and iron ore revenue... Oh wait..

[Diogenes]

Re: hope burns eternal and futile

Ah yes the clod.

We have been offline at school for 2 weeks (council roadworks) made a right proper mess of my term start. Even our moodle was unavailable although physically on the premises because we couldn't get out to get the dns (some misconfiguration had it trying to resolve even if we were using the direct IP addy) - but no good to most kids a the wireless network was down (round trips to dec servers)