Before we begin this article, let’s congratulate three students who have studied at our school for many years and achieved the highest Band 6 scores in the HSC exam in 2022. We hope that they, as well as all students who have studied at Starry Arts, will have a successful future. We have had students achieve Band 6 scores every year, and this year, four students who have studied with us for many years took part in the exams, with three achieving the highest scores in the HSC exam and one achieving the highest score in the IB exam. Two of these students ranked first in Visual Arts and Design and Technology in the whole school. We hope they will achieve even better results in university.

After more than a decade of art teaching and curriculum design, Starry Arts has developed a unique and effective teaching approach. In this article, let me briefly share our teaching philosophy and provide a simple overview of the curriculum for the second semester of 2023.

Many parents of students who have been with us for some time should know that Starry Arts places great emphasis on innovation and imagination in art education. Our courses do not provide students with templates to create identical works step by step, but rather provide a theme and rich materials for students to learn abundant knowledge and skills within the theme while also exercising their own creativity and imagination to create their own artworks.

Integration of STEAM teaching concepts, and the rapid development of AI in recent years, as well as our prediction of the talent required in future society, Starry Arts now has its own innovative teaching concept called HEALS (History, Ecology, Arts, and Learning Skills). Under this teaching philosophy, we incorporate historical, cultural, and ecological knowledge education relevant to the theme into art education and place greater emphasis on improving children’s learning skills, making it easier for them to adapt and learn new knowledge in future society.

Of course, our teaching is not based solely on our own imagination. In addition to our experience, the K-10 Curriculum Framework in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, is also a very important reference for us. Below, I will briefly introduce it to you.

Term Definition: K-10 Curriculum Framework
The K-10 Curriculum Framework refers to the education system for primary and secondary school students in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, including from Kindergarten to Year 10. “K” stands for Kindergarten, which is the abbreviation for early childhood education, and “10” stands for Year 10, which is the abbreviation for tenth grade in Australian high school. Therefore, the K-10 Curriculum Framework refers to a comprehensive education system from early childhood to tenth grade. Reference link:

https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/understanding-the-curriculum/curriculum-development/syllabus-development-process/curriculum-framework

1. In our teaching, each student’s artwork is created around a theme. During the teaching process, our teachers provide background knowledge related to art, history, humanities, science, and technology based on various children’s encyclopedias and other reading materials, which is also a key point of our HEALS education.
2. Children will use painting as a foundation to express their own ideas under the guidance of the teacher. During this process, we not only educate children on various painting techniques but also hope to stimulate their imagination to create their unique works. Children will use traditional drawing, sketching, and descriptive writing to express themselves.
3. We will use handicrafts, sculpture, clay, and other composite materials to enable children to create works of art beyond the two-dimensional world and bring their ideas to reality.
4. We encourage children to organize their thoughts after completing most of the works in a semester and create their stories and express them in the form of animated dramas. We will have one-on-one online animation drama classes in the future to teach children how to integrate their works into animation and showcase them to the world.

Throughout this process, we focus on cultivating creativity and ultimately try to edit the story characters created by children’s artworks into the “I Love Plant Earth” movie. We hope to inspire children’s desire to create and provide a platform to showcase their works.

Definition: Syllabus
In the K-10 Curriculum Framework, Syllabus is a crucial component. For each major category, the NSW government provides Syllabus references. Syllabus refers to the knowledge, skills, and values that students need to acquire, which are the core objectives of school education and are used to guide curriculum design and teaching implementation. Therefore, the Syllabus in the NSW curriculum is not a specific knowledge point but a comprehensive description of a set of abilities that includes knowledge, skills, and values.

As mentioned earlier, Starry Arts has its own teaching characteristics while also closely following the K-10 Curriculum Framework in NSW. The most important thing is to comply with the Syllabus provided by the K-10 Curriculum Framework. Below are some important Syllabus references:

Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus and Visual Arts 7-10 Syllabus: As an art school, these two are naturally our most important reference materials. NSW provides many Syllabus references for school art education guidance, and our curriculum design will involve as many of these Syllabus categories as possible. Reference links:
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/creative-arts/creative-arts-k-6-syllabus
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/creative-arts/visual-arts-7-10

Visual Design 7-10 Syllabus: Design and art are closely related but not entirely the same. NSW has a separate set of guidelines for visual design. Starry Arts will incorporate visual design content into the curriculum design to expand children’s abilities. Reference link:
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/creative-arts/visual-design-7-10

History K-10 Syllabus, Science and Technology K-6 Syllabus, and Science Years 7-10 Syllabus: As mentioned above, our works are based on themes. When introducing each theme, our teachers will introduce the history, science, technology, and other knowledge related to the design of the theme. This will broaden the children’s knowledge and learn other aspects of knowledge while studying art. After all, various knowledge is also a very important material for art. Reference links:
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/hsie/history-k-10
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/science/science-and-technology-k-6-new-syllabus
https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/science/science-7-10-2018

Based on the K–10 Curriculum Framework and Syllabus mentioned above, some of our course themes in the next semester will integrate various aspects of content to enhance children’s abilities in drawing, making, planning and design, and provide relevant knowledge points.

• Mother’s Day necklace gift pendants design. Covering knowledge: jewelry history.
• Painting and crafting a floating city and designing a city map. Covering knowledge: map history.
• Painting one of the buildings inside the floating city (drama with a robot). Covering knowledge: interior design history. Bonus: use the scene to make a short animation drama.
• Watercolor to draw two animals (drama for animals chatting about their dream environment). Covering knowledge: Australian animals.

Recently, Starry Arts compiled and analyzed the honour data for the 2022 HSC from https://www.hscninja.com/honour/roll/year/2022. We hope this information will be useful or interesting to you.

We found that in popular subjects such as Mathematics and English, the number of students from public and private schools who achieved honours was similar. However, in the areas of Art and History, private schools had significantly more students achieving honours than public schools. Of course, many people may find this result unsurprising, but seeing this phenomenon in the final HSC data may trigger some reflection.

We all know how powerful artificial intelligence is becoming. Some well-known financial institutions even predict that 300 million people will soon lose their jobs due to AI replacing them. AI seems to have a high ability to process text, and even produce images, paintings, and videos based on text. We used to think that AI would first replace simple and repetitive labor, but after the emergence of ChatGPT, people discovered that many technical jobs in offices that involve working with computers may actually be replaced more quickly. We have to consider the future of our children.

Which industries are difficult to replace? There is currently no clear answer, or the answer from two years ago has been completely overturned by the recent release of ChatGPT. But one thing is certain: in the future, many professions that require human involvement will require more creativity, communication, and the ability to constantly learn and adapt. Some jobs that require fixed knowledge are very easy to be replaced. Private schools tend to cultivate more diverse abilities, and this is also reflected in the HSC data. Although it is well known that this is mainly due to the wealthy families whose children attend elite private schools, we also have to pay attention to the fact that these students may need these skills because of the people they are exposed to in their families. Of course, we do not deny the importance of learning subjects such as Mathematics and English, but on top of this, in the face of the trend of AI in the future, cultivating more knowledge and skills in art, history and humanities may lead to better opportunities in society.

Below is a screenshot of the database that our programmer collected from the HSC NINJA website. If you would like to know more, please feel free to contact us. We have basically collected all the data for 2022.