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Children starting school in 2027 will be the first cohort to go from foundation to year 10 under the state’s Victorian Curriculum 2.0, with emerging technology set to dramatically change the way students learn in the coming decade.
As schools prepare for a full rollout of a revamped educational blueprint next year, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) chief executive Andrews Smith said it is designed to continue to evolve in response to a changing world.
The curriculum, which will be implemented across government schools from term 1 next year, is intended to teach students according to their ability rather than to a grade or age.
Speaking ahead of The Age Schools Summit in Melbourne on Wednesday, Smith described how this was playing out in specialist schools where, after the latest tweaks to the curriculum, students in prep can be taught at four different foundational levels, with educators matching the teaching material to the child’s ability.
“What we know about young people’s learning is that it’s often not linear. That’s the point of having a continuum; they can enter at the point that they’re ready for,” Smith said.
“Year 10 doesn’t look the same in all schools today as it did several years ago. It’s not a linear progression where year 10 has stopped, and now you’re in VCE. That’s what we’re trying to accommodate.”
The same curriculum aims to challenge students who are outperforming their classmate to tackle material beyond their year level expectations, Smith said. It then dovetails into the multiple pathways students can take from year 10, including VCE and VCE VM.
The approach differs from NSW, where students are taught to syllabuses that state clear expectations for students to meet at stages of learning.
Smith said the curriculum was a “continuum” rather than a static document, and that emerging technology would be an important factor in how it develops over time.
“You might change your emphasis in response to the emergence of AI in a subject like social sciences because you’re talking about ethical capabilities, and you’re thinking about those sorts of skills, the same in English,” he said.
“In geography, you might think about and have a contemporary conversation about the impact on climate, but you might have it through the lens of AI data centres because that’s quite topical for young people at the moment.”
But Smith does not see a prospect of AI replacing human teachers.
“Like most ed-tech, there are large promises, and the evidence is not really in as to how effective [AI] is,” he said.
“It’s quite mixed there, but the one thing we do know intuitively and from the evidence is that teaching is a fundamentally human endeavour,” he said.
The curriculum has won approval from international education expert Geoff Masters, who said the plan is moving the state past the “standardised industrial model” of schooling, but warned students still face structural hurdles to receiving a personalised education.
Masters, an international adviser on curriculum and assessment reform, who will also appear at Wednesday’s summit, said governments and school systems around the world too often put in place curricular and assessment and requirements that work against differentiation.
“Victoria has moved in the right direction, away from a very standardised industrial model,” he said. “I think progress has been made, but we need to keep looking at the extent to which some students are being left behind,” he said.
“We need to recognise that students of the same age and in the same year of school are not all at the same point. They [can] differ by five, six, or more years of learning in areas like mathematics and reading,” Masters said.
“Every child is capable of further progress if we can get the conditions right, if we can meet them at their point of need, and give them the time. I think there will be more students who eventually reach the high standards that we expect.”
The Age Schools Summit 2026 is at Crown Conference Centre on June 10.
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