 Hi, I'm Rob Randall, Chief Executive Officer of Akara. In this VODcast I'd like to present an update on the Australian Curriculum. Earlier in the year, Curriculum for Civic Citizenship, Economics and Business, Health and Physical Education and Technologies was made available on the Australian Curriculum website. In June, the Curriculum for Four Languages, French, Italian, Chinese and Indonesian will be made available online for states and territories to use in their jurisdictions. The availability of the National Languages Curriculum enhances the opportunity for all Australian students to learn a second language from Foundation to Year 10. It means that support for languages learning can be directed to the National Curriculum and be available to all young Australians wherever they go to school. With the release of the Languages Curriculum, Akara has now published all of the eight learning areas of the Foundation to Year 10 Australian Curriculum. Certainly a significant moment in Australia's education history. I now invite you to hear more from Dr Phil Lambert, Akara's General Manager Curriculum. Thank you. All states and territories have now commenced implementation of the Australian Curriculum. The development of the Australian Curriculum began six years ago when we started with a blank page for each learning area. Akara consulted widely including with organisations and individuals beyond the field of education. We also drew on our country's best expertise and talent to produce a curriculum that is high quality and the envy of other nations. The processes undertaken by Akara to develop the National Curriculum have been both rigorous and robust. Each learning area and subject has taken between two to three years to develop. Overall, Akara has received more than 17,000 submissions from individuals, groups and organisations in the development of the Foundation to Year 10 curriculum to date. We are very proud of what we've achieved. The school curriculum expresses a nation's aspirations for its next generations. The curriculum must strike a balance between developing young people's understandings of their national history and culture and preparing them for a future that is increasingly global and largely unpredictable. Curriculum is never completed and should always be a work in progress. As responsible citizens, we are obliged to provide our future generations with the best possible learning outcomes. Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. In fact, we've presented our work on the Australian Curriculum to educators around the world and other nations have turned to us to help improve their own curriculum. One of the main benefits of an Australian Curriculum is that no matter where a student lives, they now have access to the same content and their achievements will be judged by the same standards. In time, we'll be able to gauge the impact of the curriculum on student results in national and international assessments. The first national data will be available when the National Assessment Programme for Literacy and Numeracy, and that plan is aligned with the Australian Curriculum in 2016. We are yet to see the true benefits of the Australian Curriculum, but we are confident that young Australians and the nation will be better off as a result of the work done by the tens of thousands of people involved over the last six years. Encourage your friends and colleagues to join the conversation too and to sign up to the Akara Update to ensure they have the latest information on this important and exciting change.