What are the Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS)?
The VELS describe what is essential for all students to achieve from Prep to Year 10 in Victorian schools. They provide a framework for planning the whole school curriculum by setting out standards for students to achieve in core areas. Schools will be able to use the VELS to plan their teaching and learning programs, including assessment and reporting of student achievement and progress.
Shaping the new VELS:
The starting point for a curriculum for essential learning is the question: what do students need to know and be able to do to succeed in the future?
Students need to develop a set of knowledge, skills and behaviours which will prepare them for success in a world which is complex, rapidly changing, rich in information and communications technology, demanding high-order knowledge and understanding, and increasingly global in its outlook and influences. To succeed in that world, students will need to create a future which:
1. Is sustainable - developing an understanding of the interaction between social, economic and environmental systems and how to manage them
2. Is innovative - developing the skills to solve new problems using a range of different approaches to create unique solutions
3. Builds strong communities - by building common purposes and values and by promoting mutual responsibility and trust in a diverse sociocultural community.
Educational principles:
The VELS are underpinned by a clear set of educational principles which reflects the community's expectations for schooling in Victoria.
Specifically, the educational principles are:
1. Learning for all - proceeding on the basis that all students can learn given sufficient time and support, and that good schools and good teaching make a positive difference to student outcomes
2. Pursuit of excellence - seeking to accomplish something noteworthy and sdmirable individually and collectively, and performing at one's best
3. Engagement and effort - acknowledging that student ability is only one factor in achievement and that if students work hard and make an effort, they improve
4. Respect for evidence - seeking understanding and truth through structured inquiry and the application of evidence to test and question beliefs
5. Openness of mind - being willing to consider a range of different views and consider different ways in which evidence is perceived and solutions can be reached.
Three strands of learning:
To succeed beyond the compulsory years of schooling, all students need to develop the capacities to:
- Manage themselves as individuals and in relation to others.
- Understand the world in which they live.
- Act effectively in that world.
To ensure that the school curriculum develops students with these capacities, the VELS are developed within three core, interrelated strands. Each strand has a number of components called domains.
The domains describe the knowledge, skills and behaviours considered essential in the education and development of students to prepare them for further education, work and life. They also include the standards by shich student achievement and progress is measured. The three strands for the new curriculum and their associated domains are:
1. Physical, Personal and Social Learning
- Health and Physical Education.
- Interpersonal Development.
2. Discipline-based Learning
- English and Languages Other Than English.
- The Humanities (Economics, Geography and History).
3. Interdisciplinary Learning
- Design, Creativity and Technology.
- Information and Communications Technology.
Stages of Learning:
While it is recognised that student learning is a continuum from Prep to Year 10, and different students develop at different rates, they broadly progress through three stages of learning from:
1. Years Prep to 4 - laying the foundations
In these years the curriculum focuses on developing the fundamental knowledge, skills and behaviours in literacy and numeracy and other areas including physical and social capacities which underpin all future learning.
2. Years 5 to 8 - Building breadth and depth
In these years students progress beyond the foundations and their literacy and numeracy becomes more developed. An expanded curriculum program provides the basis for in depth learning within all domains in the strands.
3. Years 9 to 10 - Developing pathways
In these years students develop greater independence of mind and interests. They seek deeper connections between their learning and the world around them and explore how learning might be applied in that world. They need to experience learning in work and community settings as well as the classroom. They are beginning to develop preferred areas for their learning.
Further information click here:
- Victorian Essential Learning Standards.
