On the Parents and Carers Portal, your school can choose to let you see an overview of your child's module mastery across the whole curriculum. This can be displayed as either level bars or the Curriculum Grid.
The Curriculum Grid
The Australian maths curriculum is broken up into three broad 'strands' of maths: 'Number and Algebra', 'Measurement and Geometry', and 'Statistics and Probability'. Each of these strands is made up of a number of Substrands. There is a certain amount of content in each substrand at each year level of the curriculum.
The Curriculum Grid displays each Strand at the very top, and underneath, displays each Substrand as a column heading, grouped into their parent strands.
Within each box, a percentage of it will be filled with certain colours:
- The solid orange refers to modules that have been mastered this year
- The solid gold refers to modules that have been mastered in previous years
- The striped gold refers to modules that have been mastered via diagnostic tests
- The light grey refers to modules that are not yet mastered
- The dark grey refers to modules that are not yet mastered because we're not yet sure of your child's ability to master them (more diagnostics are required)
If you click on any box, you can get a breakdown of each module within it, as well as those modules' prerequisite modules, and what your child's status is with them.
Why does my child have mastery in a higher level, but they're consistently working at a lower level?
Most of the modules your child accesses include differing degrees of difficulty across multiple levels. An example of this would be the module 'Rational and Irrational Numbers'. The intention of this module is to recognise that the real number system includes the rational numbers and the irrational numbers, and solve problems involving real numbers using digital tools. This module sits at level 9 in Indices and Scientific Notation, however it does touch on level 8 Indices and Rational Numbers, so it sits in there too. By mastering this module, a student would have both of those areas of maths (or boxes) show partially as gold on their Curriculum Grid. And if you clicked into those boxes, the same module will be gold in both spots.
How can I interpret that data to benefit my child?
If you're after a clearer view of where your child is up to on their Curriculum Grid, you're much better off simply looking at the horizontal row for the year level your child is in. If your child is in year 7, look at the level 7 row. Year 8, level 8 etc. Using this, you can see, at the year level your child is in, where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and help them to focus on the areas of maths they might need to spend more time in.