The Complete Guide to the Western Australian Curriculum (2026): Every Year Level, Subject and Code Explained

If you teach in Western Australia, you work with a curriculum that is almost — but not quite — the same as the one used over east. That “not quite” trips up graduate teachers, teachers moving from interstate, relief teachers juggling schools, and anyone trying to make sense of why a Year 3 HASS code starts with WA in one document and AC9 in another.

This guide is the long version. It covers what the WA Curriculum actually is, who sets it, how the eight learning areas fit together from Pre-primary to Year 10, how to decode any curriculum code you come across, how achievement standards and Judging Standards work, and the practical business of planning a WA school year. It’s written for teachers, but it’s also written to be a reliable reference — the kind of thing you can point a new staff member at in week one. (It’s also the foundation we built Bindi on, because you can’t generate a properly aligned WA lesson plan without getting all of this right first.)

What the WA Curriculum is — and who sets it

The Western Australian Curriculum is the mandated curriculum for every school in WA — government, Catholic and independent — from Pre-primary to Year 10. It lives inside a broader document called the WA Curriculum and Assessment Outline (teachers usually just say “the Outline”), which also sets out the principles for teaching, assessing and reporting in WA schools.

The body responsible is the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA) — a WA statutory authority, independent of the Department of Education. SCSA’s remit runs from Kindergarten to Year 12: it sets the K–10 curriculum, the senior secondary (WACE) courses, and the standards against which student achievement is judged. When teachers say “check SCSA”, they mean the authority’s published syllabuses, achievement standards and support materials — those documents are the source of truth in WA, not the ACARA website.

One boundary worth knowing: Kindergarten is not part of the mandated WA Curriculum. Kindy programs are guided by the Kindergarten Curriculum Guidelines, which draw on the national Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) and focus on play-based learning and developmental outcomes. The mandated, year-by-year curriculum starts at Pre-primary.

WA vs ACARA: the “adopt and adapt” model

Australia has a national curriculum — the Australian Curriculum, developed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), currently at version 9. But curriculum is constitutionally a state responsibility, so each state decides how to implement it.

Western Australia’s approach is usually described as adopt and adapt:

• Adopt: the WA Curriculum is built on the Australian Curriculum. The learning areas, the broad content progression, the idea of achievement standards — all of that comes from the national framework.
• Adapt: SCSA reviews the national content and adjusts it for WA schools — rewording, restructuring, re-sequencing or supplementing where it judges the national version doesn’t suit WA classrooms. SCSA also sets its own implementation timelines, which means WA can be teaching from its established syllabuses while other states have already moved fully onto ACARA’s version 9.

The practical consequences for a WA teacher:

1. Plan from SCSA documents. A unit pulled from a NSW or Victorian website, or written directly against ACARA v9 codes, may not line up with the WA syllabus for your year level.
2. Expect two code systems. You’ll see WA-style codes (like WA3HAKUH2) in SCSA syllabuses and WA planning tools, and AC9-style codes (like AC9HS3K01) in nationally produced resources. They describe related content but they are not interchangeable labels.
3. Check the implementation status of your learning area. SCSA rolls out syllabus updates learning area by learning area, with familiarisation years before mandated teaching. Your school or sector will tell you which version applies in a given year — and when in doubt, check SCSA directly.

This is genuinely different from, say, Queensland (which teaches the Australian Curriculum closer to as-published) or NSW (which writes its own syllabuses through NESA). WA sits in the middle: nationally aligned, locally controlled. For a deeper side-by-side — who sets what, how the codes diverge, and what it means for the resources you buy or borrow — see our companion piece, WA Curriculum vs Australian Curriculum: what’s actually different?

The 8 learning areas

The WA Curriculum is organised into eight learning areas. Every student from Pre-primary to Year 10 is entitled to teaching and learning across all of them (Languages becoming an expectation from Year 3).

Learning area	What it covers	Notes for planning
English	Language, literature and literacy — reading, viewing, writing, speaking and listening	Strands run across all year levels; the backbone of the literacy block
Mathematics	Number, algebra, measurement, space/geometry, statistics and probability	Strongly sequential — gaps compound, so the year-level progression matters
Science	Biological, chemical, earth and space, and physical sciences, plus science inquiry and science as a human endeavour	Three interwoven strands; inquiry skills sit alongside content
Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS)	History, geography, civics and citizenship, economics and business	Sub-strands phase in across primary (civics from Year 3, economics from Year 5)
Health and Physical Education	Personal, social and community health; movement and physical activity	Two strands; includes protective behaviours and respectful relationships content
Technologies	Design and technologies; digital technologies	Two distinct subjects under one learning area — don’t conflate them when reporting
The Arts	Dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts	Five subjects; schools typically timetable two or more per year in primary
Languages	A language other than English (commonly Italian, French, Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese or Auslan in WA schools)	Expected provision from Year 3 in WA primary schools

Threaded through all eight learning areas are the general capabilities (literacy, numeracy, ICT capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical understanding, intercultural understanding) and the cross-curriculum priorities, covered later in this guide.

Year-by-year: how PP–10 is structured

The WA Curriculum is written year by year — each year level in each subject has its own content descriptions and its own achievement standard. Here’s the shape of the journey.

Pre-primary (the foundation year)

Pre-primary is the first year of the mandated curriculum and the first year of full-time school in WA. The curriculum focus is early literacy and numeracy — phonological awareness, letter–sound knowledge, counting and number sense — alongside the beginnings of science, HASS and the arts, usually taught through structured play and short explicit-teaching bursts. Assessment is observational; the On-entry Assessment Program (literacy and numeracy) typically runs early in the year in public schools.

Years 1–2 (early primary)

The early years consolidate the foundations: systematic synthetic phonics and reading fluency in English, place value and additive thinking in mathematics, and wonder-driven science and HASS (families, local places, living things, materials). Most schools run a dedicated literacy block and numeracy block daily. By the end of Year 2, the curriculum expects students to be reading and writing independently at a basic level and working confidently with numbers to at least 1,000.

Years 3–6 (middle and upper primary)

This is where the curriculum widens noticeably:

• HASS grows from two sub-strands to four — history and geography are joined by civics and citizenship from Year 3 and economics and business from Year 5. (Our Year 3 HASS guide unpacks that first expansion year in detail — codes, units and a term of lesson ideas.)
• NAPLAN is sat in Years 3 and 5 (and 7 and 9), in March.
• Languages provision is expected from Year 3.
• Content gets meatier everywhere: multiplicative thinking and fractions in maths, informative and persuasive writing in English, states of matter and energy in science, and Australian history (First Nations histories, colonisation, Federation, migration) building across Years 4–6 HASS.

Upper primary (5–6) is also where many schools introduce formal study skills, one-to-one or shared devices, and more structured project work, in preparation for secondary school.

Years 7–10 (secondary)

In WA, secondary school starts at Year 7 (it moved from Year 8 back in 2015, so all current cohorts are settled in this structure). Students move to subject-specialist teachers and the curriculum splits accordingly:

• Years 7–8: all eight learning areas continue, generally as compulsory study. HASS is usually taught as an integrated subject with history, geography, civics and economics units across the year.
• Years 9–10: the core (English, mathematics, science, HASS, HPE) continues, while electives open up in technologies, the arts and languages. Year 10 doubles as the on-ramp to senior secondary — students select WACE courses, and schools use Year 10 achievement (alongside OLNA, the Online Literacy and Numeracy Assessment, for students who haven’t pre-qualified through NAPLAN Year 9) to guide course counselling.

After Year 10, students move into the WACE (Western Australian Certificate of Education) years — a different system with its own SCSA course syllabuses, beyond the scope of this guide.

The journey at a glance

Stage	Years	Curriculum focus	Key assessments
Kindergarten	K	Kindergarten Curriculum Guidelines (EYLF-based, play-led)	Observational
Foundation	PP	First mandated year; early literacy and numeracy	On-entry (public schools)
Early primary	1–2	Phonics, reading fluency, number foundations	School-based; On-entry continues
Middle/upper primary	3–6	All sub-strands phase in; deeper content across 8 areas	NAPLAN (Yrs 3, 5); semester reports
Lower secondary	7–8	Subject specialists; all learning areas compulsory	NAPLAN (Yr 7); school-based
Upper secondary (pre-WACE)	9–10	Core continues; electives open; WACE counselling	NAPLAN (Yr 9), OLNA, Year 10 grades

The general capabilities: the through-lines

Alongside the learning areas sit seven general capabilities — the skills and dispositions the curriculum expects to develop through subject content rather than as separate subjects:

1. Literacy — every subject’s reading, writing and vocabulary demands, not just English’s;
2. Numeracy — interpreting data in HASS, measuring in science and design, scale on maps;
3. Information and communication technology (ICT) capability — using digital tools purposefully and safely;
4. Critical and creative thinking — inquiry, reasoning, generating and evaluating ideas;
5. Personal and social capability — self-management, collaboration, resilience;
6. Ethical understanding — reasoning about values, rights and responsibilities;
7. Intercultural understanding — engaging with diverse cultures and perspectives, starting with those in the room.

Two practical points. First, the capabilities are not separately graded — they’re embedded in how you teach and what you ask students to do, and the learning area content carries them. Second, they’re most useful as a planning lens: when a unit feels thin, asking “where’s the critical thinking? what’s the literacy demand here?” usually shows you what to deepen. Schools are increasingly naming capabilities explicitly in unit plans, and a light touch is fine — one or two genuinely developed per unit beats seven ticked boxes.

From syllabus to program: a workflow that holds up

Knowing the architecture is one thing; turning a syllabus page into a teachable unit is the actual job. Here’s a workflow that works for any learning area, and that stands up to scrutiny at audit time:

1. Start with the year’s full code list. Pull every content description for your subject and year level from the SCSA syllabus, and put the codes in a coverage table — one row per code, one column per term.
2. Cluster codes into units. Codes group naturally: the Year 3 HASS history descriptions make one community-history unit; the geography descriptions make another. Aim for three to five codes per unit — fewer and the unit’s thin, many more and nothing gets taught deeply.
3. Read the achievement standard before planning a single lesson. Highlight the sentences your unit will generate evidence for. That highlighted fragment is your assessment brief.
4. Design the assessment second, lessons third. Decide what students will produce to demonstrate the standard, then sequence the lessons that get them there — each framed with a clear learning intention and success criteria (our WALT, WILF and TIB guide covers how to write ones that actually work). Backwards design isn’t a buzzword here; it’s the only reliable way to make the assessment match the standard.
5. Write the codes on everything. Program, lesson plans, assessment outline, marking key. When someone asks “where do you teach WA3HAKUH2?”, the answer should be a document search, not an archaeology project.
6. Tick the coverage table as you go. At the end of each semester, every code for the half-year should have a tick and a piece of evidence behind it. Untaught codes get rolled deliberately into the next term’s planning — not silently dropped.

The first time through, this takes a planning day per subject. In subsequent years it’s maintenance — which is exactly why schools that document well in year one coast in year three, and schools that don’t, rebuild annually.

How curriculum codes work

Codes are the part of the curriculum most teachers use daily — they go in programs, lesson plans, assessment outlines and reports — and the part least often explained. Here is the anatomy of both systems you’ll encounter in WA.

WA codes (SCSA style)

Take a real example from Year 3 HASS: WA3HAKUH2.

Read it left to right in chunks:

Chunk	Meaning in WA3HAKUH2
WA	Western Australian Curriculum
3	Year 3
HA	HASS (the learning area)
KUH	Knowledge and Understanding — History sub-strand
2	The 2nd content description in that sub-strand for that year

So WA3HAKUH2 is the second Year 3 HASS history knowledge description — the one about days and weeks of significance, symbols and emblems. Its siblings follow the same pattern: WA3HAKUH1 (the first history description, on local community history and cultural diversity) and WA3HAKUH3 (the third).

Skills codes work identically, with the strand letters changing. WA3HASKQ1 decodes as: WA Curriculum, Year 3, HASS, Skills — Questioning, first description. You’ll also meet A for analysing, E for evaluating/communicating and so on, depending on the learning area’s skills strands.

The decoding habit to build: prefix → year → learning area → strand/sub-strand → number. Once that clicks, an unfamiliar code stops being alphabet soup and starts being an address.

Australian Curriculum v9 codes (ACARA style)

Nationally produced resources — textbooks, teaching websites, interstate units — increasingly use ACARA’s version 9 codes. Same idea, different anatomy. Take AC9HS3K01:

Chunk	Meaning in AC9HS3K01
AC9	Australian Curriculum, version 9
HS	HASS (learning area/subject)
3	Year 3
K	Knowledge and Understanding strand
01	1st content description

A mathematics example: AC9M3N01 is Australian Curriculum v9, Mathematics, Year 3, Number strand, first content description. An English example: AC9E3LA01 is v9, English, Year 3, Language strand, first description.

Translating between the two

There is no perfect one-to-one mapping — that’s the whole point of adopt-and-adapt. A single WA content description may correspond to one AC9 description, parts of two, or a reworded WA-specific version. When you’re using a nationally coded resource in a WA classroom:

1. Decode the AC9 code to find the year level, subject and strand.
2. Open the matching WA syllabus page for that year and strand.
3. Find the WA description that covers the same substance, and program against the WA code.

It takes a minute per code, and it’s the difference between a program that genuinely aligns with what you’re required to teach and one that just looks aligned.

Achievement standards and Judging Standards

Every subject at every year level has an achievement standard — a paragraph (or two) describing the quality of learning expected of a student by the end of that year. Content descriptions tell you what to teach; the achievement standard tells you what success looks like. When you assign a grade, you are making an on-balance judgement of a student’s work against that standard.

The obvious problem: one paragraph can’t show you the difference between a B and a C. That’s what Judging Standards is for. It’s SCSA’s companion tool for Pre-primary to Year 10, and it gives you, per subject and year level:

• Grade descriptions — what A, B, C, D and E quality actually looks like for that year’s content;
• Annotated work samples — real student work at each grade, with annotations explaining why it sits there;
• Assessment pointers — finer-grained indicators to inform your judgements.

Three habits worth stealing from schools that moderate well:

1. Plan assessments from the achievement standard, not just the content. Ask “which part of the standard will this task give me evidence for?” before you write the task.
2. Calibrate with the work samples. Before grading a major task, have the team grade two or three SCSA samples and compare. Ten minutes of calibration saves a term of inconsistent grades.
3. Treat the C grade as the standard. In WA’s A–E scheme, a C means the student has met the year-level expectation. It is a solid result, and it helps to say so plainly to parents.

Reporting itself happens formally at least twice a year, with PP–10 grades on a five-point (A–E or equivalent) scale plus teacher comments — the format varies by school and sector, the standard behind it doesn’t.

Planning a WA school year: terms, weeks and the rhythm of it

WA public schools run four terms of roughly ten weeks each, separated by two-week holidays, with a long summer break from late December to the start of February. Here are the 2026 dates for WA public schools, per the Department of Education:

Term (2026)	Dates	Length
Term 1	Monday 2 February – Thursday 2 April	9 weeks
Term 2	Monday 20 April – Friday 3 July	11 weeks
Term 3	Monday 20 July – Friday 25 September	10 weeks
Term 4	Monday 12 October – Thursday 17 December	10 weeks

Catholic and independent calendars vary slightly, and public schools add school development days around the edges of each term — future years are published at education.wa.edu.au/future-term-dates.

How that rhythm tends to play out in practice:

• Term 1 carries the start-up overhead — establishing routines, diagnostic assessment, On-entry in PP–2, swimming in many primary schools, and NAPLAN preparation creeping into March for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Plan your first unit a week shorter than you think you have.
• Term 2 is usually the cleanest teaching term, and the one that ends in Semester 1 reports. Work backwards from your school’s reporting deadline: assessments need to be marked and moderated two to three weeks before reports are due, which means your last assessable task lands around week 7.
• Term 3 is the second long run of teaching, often the term for the big cross-curricular unit, production or camp.
• Term 4 ends with Semester 2 reports, transition activities and the December wind-down. The honest planning assumption is eight teachable weeks, not ten.

A simple structure that holds up across subjects: one unit per term per subject, roughly 8 weeks of teaching plus assessment, mapped to a deliberate subset of the year’s content descriptions, with the codes recorded on the program so coverage can be audited at semester’s end. To see what those units actually look like for your class — every year level, subject and term, with its lesson sequence and codes — browse the curriculum unit-by-unit. Across four terms, the full set of codes for the year should be ticked off — that’s your evidence of curriculum coverage, and it’s exactly what a principal or reviewer will ask to see. And if you’re resourcing those units on a budget, our roundup of free WA Curriculum lesson plans covers where the genuinely free, properly aligned material lives.

The EAL/D Progress Map

A meaningful share of WA classrooms include students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) — newly arrived students, students from migrant and refugee backgrounds, and Aboriginal students for whom Standard Australian English is an additional language or dialect alongside a first language or Aboriginal English.

Grading these students against the mainstream English achievement standard from day one tells you almost nothing useful. The EAL/D Progress Map is WA’s answer: a staged framework that tracks a learner’s control of Standard Australian English across the modes — listening, speaking, reading/viewing and writing — from beginning through to consolidating levels.

What it changes in practice:

• You map the student’s current phase in each mode (a student is often further along in speaking than in academic writing — the map captures that).
• You plan language scaffolds pitched at the next phase, rather than generic “support”.
• You report progress on the map where school and sector processes provide for it, which gives parents an honest account of language growth instead of a discouraging E against a standard the student hasn’t had time to reach.

If you have EAL/D learners and haven’t used the Progress Map, your school’s EAL/D or literacy coordinator is the right first conversation — it’s a shared tool, and mapping is far more reliable when two teachers moderate it together.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures — doing the priority well

The WA Curriculum carries three cross-curriculum priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures; Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia; and sustainability. The first deserves particular care in WA, where teachers work on the Country of many Aboriginal language groups — Noongar Country across the south-west, and dozens of other nations across the state.

Some grounded guidance, reflecting what SCSA materials and Aboriginal education teams consistently advise:

• Teach it as embedded, not bolted on. The priority is designed to live inside learning areas — Year 3 HASS already asks students to learn who the Traditional Owners of their local area are; science offers seasonal calendars and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ longstanding scientific knowledge; English offers First Nations authors and storytelling. A NAIDOC Week poster on its own is not the priority.
• Be specific and local. “Aboriginal people” flattens hundreds of distinct nations. Name the Country your school stands on, use the local language group’s name, and prefer local examples over generic ones.
• Use authoritative sources and voices. Your sector’s Aboriginal education unit, locally produced resources, community Elders and cultural organisations outrank a random worksheet. If a resource doesn’t name its community or sources, be wary of it.
• Check protocols before using cultural materials. Some stories, images, songs and names (including of people who have died) carry restrictions. When unsure, ask — your school’s Aboriginal and Islander Education Officer (AIEO), if you have one, is an invaluable colleague here.
• Frame strength, not deficit. The priority is about the oldest continuous cultures on earth — knowledge systems, country management, law, art, astronomy — not only about dispossession, though the history must be taught honestly too, at the depth the year level’s curriculum sets out.

Done well, this priority is some of the most engaging teaching in the curriculum. Done as an afterthought, students notice.

Pulling it together

A working summary you can hand to anyone new to a WA classroom:

1. SCSA sets the curriculum; plan from SCSA documents, not ACARA’s website.
2. Adopt and adapt means WA content is nationally aligned but locally adjusted — and the codes differ (WA… vs AC9…).
3. Eight learning areas, year-by-year from PP to 10, each with content descriptions (what to teach) and an achievement standard (what success looks like).
4. Judging Standards turns the achievement standard into grade descriptions and work samples — use it to moderate.
5. Four ten-week terms, with reporting pinned to the end of each semester — and term dates confirmed against the official calendar, every year.
6. EAL/D learners get the Progress Map; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures get embedded, local, respectful treatment.

None of this is complicated on its own. The friction is volume: dozens of codes per subject per year, multiplied across learning areas, terms and report cycles. That’s the administrative load that eats planning time — and it’s the exact problem Bindi was built to absorb, generating lesson plans, slides and assessments that arrive already aligned to the right WA codes and achievement standards, so the hour you’d spend cross-referencing syllabuses goes back into the actual teaching. If that sounds useful, you can try it free — three lessons, no credit card.

Either way: bookmark the SCSA syllabuses, learn to read the codes, calibrate with the work samples, and check the term dates before you laminate anything.