A major shake-up is coming to the NSW education curriculum, with an overhaul focusing on grammar, punctuation and mathematics for primary school students.
Young students are lacking skills across English and mathematics, with hopes a draft NSW English syllabus for years 3 to 10 will focus on these subjects and stop the decline in writing and maths standards.
Only 52 per cent of students are reaching national mathematics standards, with results dropping the equivalent of a full year of learning.
Under the draft plan, students in year 4 will be expected to recall their two, four, five and 10 times tables off the top of their head while topics such as long division will become optional.
NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham questioned the focus on mathematics.
“What happened to the three times tables, or the six or the seven? What have those numbers ever done wrong in the system to not have attention in the classroom?” he said to 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
“Why would long division ever be optional?”
There are also fears the decades-long approach of sharing the job of grammar among teachers from all subjects has contributed to a decline in writing standards, with students left with little ability to form clear sentences and express concise ideas.
The plan will also focus on literacy skills with the responsibility falling to English departments who will have to teach grammar, sentence structure and punctuation.
However, the English Teachers Association (ETA) has said the changes would be difficult to teach as literacy skills differ between subjects.
“Returning sentence structure and all of that kind of stuff purely to English I think is unfortunate,” ETA executive officer Eva Gold told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Mr Latham said the retxjmtzywurn to phonics in the classroom is an “excellent move”.
“The emphasis now on grammar … you know grammar somehow disappeared from the English curriculum and to bring it back is absolutely essential,” he said.
“It’s moving in the right direction in English.”
Among the reforms, students will be taught ways to interpret unfamiliar words and use grammar to clarify complex ideas.
