ACARA English and Science: What the Australian Curriculum Requires

English and Science are the two learning areas that state registration authorities scrutinise most carefully. English because literacy is the foundation of everything else; Science because it is the area most home educators underestimate the breadth of. Both are more structured than families often expect when they first look at the ACARA documents, and both have specific assessment frameworks — the Literacy Progressions and the EAL/D Learning Progression for English, and the Science Inquiry Skills strand for Science — that are worth understanding before you commit to a curriculum approach.

The Australian Curriculum: English

ACARA's English curriculum has three strands that are meant to be taught in an integrated way, not as isolated units:

Language

The Language strand covers how English works as a system — grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and the way meaning is constructed in different contexts. From Foundation, students develop understanding of:

• How sentences are structured (simple, compound, complex)
• How texts are organised for different purposes (narrative, informative, persuasive, procedural)
• Vocabulary including technical terms in subject areas
• Punctuation and its role in meaning

By Year 7, ACARA expects students to analyse language choices and explain why particular structures serve particular purposes — not just to produce correct sentences, but to understand the relationship between form and meaning.

Literature

The Literature strand focuses on reading, viewing, and responding to literary texts. ACARA deliberately includes a broad definition of text — written, visual, and multimodal. Students at different year levels are expected to:

• Read and respond to Australian literature, including First Nations literature and stories
• Analyse characters, themes, and narrative structures
• Make personal interpretations and justify them with textual evidence
• By Year 7-8: analyse how authors use literary techniques to create effects

ACARA V9 strengthened the requirement to include Australian and First Nations texts. If your English curriculum is primarily British or American literature, you will likely need to supplement with Australian titles to satisfy this requirement — particularly for registration authorities that check curriculum documentation carefully.

Literacy

The Literacy strand is about applying language and literature knowledge across all contexts. This includes:

• Reading comprehension strategies (activating prior knowledge, predicting, inferring, summarising)
• Multimodal literacy — understanding images, infographics, and digital texts alongside written text
• Writing for different purposes and audiences
• Presenting and speaking with purpose

Important for home educators: The Literacy strand bridges English into all other learning areas. Literacy in Science (reading scientific texts, writing reports), in HASS (reading historical documents, writing arguments), and in the Arts (reading performance scripts, writing critical responses) all count toward this strand. Home educators who document literacy development across subjects, not just in English lessons, demonstrate more thorough curriculum coverage.

The ACARA Literacy Progressions

The Literacy Progressions are a separate ACARA resource (not part of the curriculum itself, but widely used by schools and referenced by some state authorities). They describe how literacy skills develop in fine-grained steps across eight learning processes:

1. Listening to and reading literary texts
2. Listening to and reading informative texts
3. Speaking and writing using literary texts
4. Speaking and writing to create informative texts
5. Comprehension
6. Composing texts
7. Understanding grammar
8. Understanding and using word knowledge

Each learning process has a series of indicators organised by developmental level (not year level). This is particularly useful for home educators with children who are not on a standard year-level progression in literacy — you can identify exactly where your child is developmentally and what the next steps are, independent of their chronological age.

The Progressions are available free on the ACARA website. They are more detailed than the curriculum achievement standards and more practically useful for planning and assessment.

ACARA EAL/D Learning Progression

The English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) Learning Progression is for students whose home language is not Standard Australian English. This is more significant for home-educating families than it might initially appear, because:

• Families where a non-English language is spoken at home, families with recent migration backgrounds, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families whose home language is an Aboriginal English variety or language other than English all fall within the EAL/D scope
• Some children educated in bilingual home environments have sophisticated receptive vocabulary but less developed Standard Australian English writing conventions — the EAL/D Progression helps identify where they actually are

The EAL/D Progression has four phases — Beginning, Emerging, Developing, Consolidating — each with indicators across speaking and listening, reading, and writing. It operates parallel to the Literacy Progressions and helps home educators with multilingual children plan in a way that recognises both their English development and their existing language strengths.

For registration purposes: if your child is an EAL/D learner, noting this in your programme application and referencing the EAL/D Progression in your documentation is both legally appropriate and practically protective. It contextualises any difference between your child's English development and the age-equivalent achievement standard.

The Australian Curriculum: Science

ACARA's Science curriculum has three integrated strands:

Science Understanding

The knowledge content, organised into four sub-strands:

• Biological sciences — living things, life cycles, ecosystems, genetics and evolution (upper secondary)
• Chemical sciences — materials and their properties, particle theory, chemical reactions
• Earth and space sciences — Earth's resources, weather and climate, geological processes, astronomy
• Physical sciences — forces, energy, electricity and magnetism, waves and radiation

ACARA V9 retained all four sub-strands but refined the sequencing. The Earth and Space Sciences sub-strand was strengthened, with clearer connections between climate systems and human impact on the environment.

Science as a Human Endeavour

This strand is often underweighted by home educators and then shows up as a gap in registration reviews. Science as a Human Endeavour covers:

• How science knowledge changes over time
• The influence of society and culture on science
• How science is applied in technology and the real world
• The ethical dimensions of scientific research

Home educators can address this strand through discussions of scientific controversies, biographies of scientists, the history of scientific discoveries, or by connecting current science topics to real-world applications. It does not require laboratory work — it requires contextualising science as a human activity, not just a body of facts.

Science Inquiry Skills

This is the practical strand — the processes of scientific investigation:

• Questioning and predicting
• Planning and conducting investigations
• Processing and analysing data
• Evaluating results
• Communicating findings

ACARA expects Science Inquiry Skills to be developed across all year levels through practical investigation. For home educators, this does not mean you need elaborate laboratory equipment. Simple, documented investigations — measuring plant growth, testing materials, conducting kitchen chemistry, observing weather patterns, tracking astronomical events — all develop genuine inquiry skills if they include all stages (question, method, data, analysis, conclusion, communication).

Documentation note: Science Inquiry Skills is where many home educators have undocumented gaps. They do plenty of science-adjacent activities but do not record them as investigations. Getting into the habit of writing a brief hypothesis and conclusion for even simple experiments — a single paragraph each — creates the documentary evidence that registration authorities look for.

What Year Level Looks Like in Practice

Foundation to Year 2: English: Phonics and word recognition, simple sentences, retelling stories, rhyme and sound patterns. ACARA V9 strengthened the phonics requirements significantly, consistent with evidence-based reading research. Science: Basic properties of objects, daily and seasonal changes, needs of living things. Investigation skills focus on observation and simple sorting.

Years 3-4: English: Paragraphs and multi-sentence texts, reading independently for comprehension, understanding text types for specific purposes. Science: Body systems, physical changes, Earth's resources, simple circuit investigation.

Years 5-6: English: Persuasive texts, analysing author techniques, synthesising information from multiple sources, formal written communication. Science: Ecosystems and food webs, chemical change (physical vs chemical), weather and climate systems, introduction to electricity.

Years 7-8: English: Close textual analysis, extended argument writing, research skills, presentation of complex information. Science: Cells and organisms, atomic structure (introduced at Year 8), plate tectonics, forces and motion, energy transformations.

Years 9-10: English: Critical analysis of media and literary texts, advanced argument and persuasion, formal essay writing, independent research. Science: Genetics and evolution, chemical reactions and stoichiometry (Year 10), global systems, physics (waves, electricity, nuclear).

Aligning Your Curriculum Choices

Many home educators use literature-based English programmes from US publishers (Brave Writer, Institute for Excellence in Writing, Writing with Ease, Sonlight). These are often excellent at developing writing craft and literary appreciation. The gaps are typically:

• Australian and First Nations literature
• Media literacy and multimodal texts
• Formal persuasive writing conventions
• Grammar terminology in line with ACARA's metalanguage requirements

For Science, US curricula like Apologia are popular but primarily written from a biological sciences perspective. Chemistry and Physics strands in upper primary and lower secondary often need supplementing. The Earth and Space sciences and Science as a Human Endeavour strands are particularly likely to be undertreated.

The Australia Curriculum Matching Matrix maps these gaps systematically — showing which ACARA V9.0 content descriptions are covered by popular curriculum choices, which are absent, and what targeted resources fill the gaps. The documentation it generates is formatted to match what state registration authorities ask for in applications and annual reviews.

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