Meeting the social and cultural needs of learners

My initial opinion of this general description for the Literature - English Curriculum in the senior years, sees a narrowing focus with students 'analysing' and responding to the 'historical genres and literary traditions of Australian literature and world literature and contemporary texts'. There is not the central focus on 'creating' nor on multiple/ multimodal 'texts'  (although these are evident in other sections of the English curriculum). I would imagine that this 'narrowing' of the curriculum is to prepare students for university, as it notes in the last sentence: "With this in mind, specialised literature courses in the senior secondary years will connect more directly with literary studies at the university level for those students aiming to pursue such studies". The general description is exactly that - general! It could have been a description that I would have been part of the curriculum in  the 1970's.

However, I assume that as the curriculum is a 'spiral curriculum' that within the above description, senior students will show their critical understandings about:
the social, historical and cultural contexts of texts
a text's formal, creative and aesthetic qualities
ways in which argument and viewpoint are presented and supported through a text
how a text's features reflect the perspectives from which it can be interpreted
how different perspectives are associated with different uses of language
(Descriptor 5.3.1)

The document does note that in the senior years students will be given a 'range of choice of more specialised courses to meet students' needs and interests".  The curriculum does allow students to 'produce a growing range of creative expository, persuasive and other texts under various circumstances with a variety of stimuli' in order to 'demonstrate an ability to create written, spoken and multimodal texts'. But does it meet the social and cultural needs of all of our students....I don't know.

Based on the readings from this course depicting how the curriculum is being taught, including the video scenarios, I believe that teachers are certainly endeavouring to address the social and cultural needs of learners in the Senior Years.