What is Australian Curriculum v9.0 and What Does It Mean for Lesson Planning?
If you've been teaching in Australia for more than a few years, you've navigated at least one curriculum update. The move to Australian Curriculum v9.0 — released in 2022 and now the current national framework — was one of the more significant revisions in recent memory. For many teachers, the practical question isn't what changed in theory, but what it actually means for how you plan and document your lessons day to day.
This post explains what v9.0 is, what changed from the previous version, and how to use it practically in your lesson planning.
What is the Australian Curriculum?
The Australian Curriculum is the national framework that sets out what students should be taught across all Australian states and territories, from Foundation through Year 10. It's organised into eight learning areas — English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences, Health and Physical Education, The Arts, Technologies, and Languages — each with its own content structure covering what students learn at each year level.
Individual states and territories then adapt the national curriculum into their own syllabuses and reporting frameworks. In Queensland, for example, QCAA aligns its P–10 syllabuses to the Australian Curriculum. In New South Wales, NESA does the same. The national curriculum sets the framework; states determine how it's implemented and assessed.
What is v9.0 specifically?
Version 9.0 (also written as AC v9) is the ninth major version of the Australian Curriculum, developed by ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) and released in April 2022. Most schools began implementing it from 2023 onwards, with full implementation expected across all states and territories by 2025.
It replaced v8.4, which had been in use since 2016.
What changed from v8.4 to v9.0?
The changes in v9.0 were substantial enough that lesson plans, unit plans, and assessment tasks built around v8.4 needed updating. The main changes:
Content descriptors were rewritten and reorganised. In v8.4, content descriptors were often lengthy and covered multiple ideas in a single statement. In v9.0, descriptors were broken into more discrete, teachable units — shorter, clearer, and more specific. This makes them easier to use directly in lesson planning.
New content descriptor codes. Every content descriptor has a unique code in the Australian Curriculum. In v9.0, these codes changed completely. A descriptor that was coded one way in v8.4 has a different code in v9.0. Any documentation that referenced old codes — lesson plans, unit plans, assessment tasks, school scope and sequences — needed updating.
Achievement standards were revised. The achievement standards — which describe what students are expected to know and do by the end of each year level — were rewritten to align with the new descriptor structure.
Cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities were updated. The framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia, and Sustainability was updated. The general capabilities — Literacy, Numeracy, Digital Literacy, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Capability, Ethical Understanding, and Intercultural Understanding — were also revised.
Strands were reorganised in some learning areas. In Mathematics, for example, the strand structure changed significantly. In English, the language, literature, and literacy strands were retained but content was redistributed across year levels.
What do content descriptors actually do in lesson planning?
Content descriptors are the core building block of AC-aligned lesson planning. Each descriptor describes a specific aspect of what students should learn at a particular year level in a particular subject.
When you're planning a lesson, the descriptors serve three purposes:
They define scope. A content descriptor tells you what's in and what's out for a particular lesson or unit. It anchors your learning intention to the curriculum rather than leaving it entirely open-ended.
They inform learning intentions and success criteria. A well-written learning intention is often a teacher-friendly restatement of a content descriptor. The descriptor "explain how the features of texts from different cultures represent different perspectives" becomes the learning intention "students will explain how cultural perspective shapes the way a text is written."
They provide documentation. Most Australian schools require teachers to document curriculum alignment in lesson plans, unit overviews, and assessment tasks. Referencing the correct v9.0 descriptor code is part of that documentation.
The practical challenge is finding the right descriptors quickly. The ACARA website has a searchable curriculum, but browsing it for relevant descriptors while planning a lesson is time-consuming — particularly when you're working across multiple year levels or subjects.
How v9.0 changes what you need to do differently
If you're still working from lesson plans or unit templates built around v8.4, the main things to update are:
Descriptor codes. Any v8.4 codes in your documentation are now outdated. They need to be replaced with the corresponding v9.0 codes. This isn't always a straight substitution — in some learning areas, content was redistributed across year levels, so a descriptor that sat at Year 8 in v8.4 might sit at Year 7 or Year 9 in v9.0.
Achievement standard references. If your unit plans or assessment rubrics reference v8.4 achievement standards, these need updating to reflect the revised v9.0 standards.
Scope and sequence documents. Whole-school scope and sequence documents built around v8.4 need to be mapped to v9.0, which is a significant curriculum leadership task.
For individual teachers, the most immediate practical task is making sure new lesson plans and unit plans reference v9.0 descriptors rather than v8.4 ones.
How LessonCreator handles AC v9.0 alignment
One of the practical frustrations with curriculum alignment is the time it takes to find and select the right descriptors manually. LessonCreator addresses this directly.
When you enter your learning intention, subject, and year level, LessonCreator searches the AC v9.0 database and surfaces the most relevant content descriptors for your context. It works across all eight learning areas from Foundation through Year 10 — so whether you're teaching Year 2 Mathematics or Year 9 Civics and Citizenship, it finds the descriptors that match what you're teaching rather than requiring you to browse the curriculum yourself.
You then tick the descriptors your lesson addresses. Those selected descriptors are embedded automatically in your lesson plan — in the curriculum alignment section, woven into the learning intentions and success criteria, and used to shape the content and vocabulary of every other resource generated. Your PowerPoint, worksheet, quiz, and reading guide all reflect the curriculum focus you've selected.
This means the curriculum documentation happens as part of the resource generation process, not as a separate step after the fact.
Practical tips for AC v9.0 lesson planning
Start with the learning area, not the descriptor. Don't try to find a descriptor first and then build a lesson around it. Start with what you want students to learn — your learning intention — and then find the descriptors that match. That's the order that produces better teaching.
Select 1–3 descriptors per lesson. A single lesson can't meaningfully address 8 descriptors. One to three well-chosen descriptors that your lesson genuinely addresses is better documentation than a long list that's only tangentially relevant.
Distinguish content descriptors from achievement standards. Content descriptors describe what's taught. Achievement standards describe what proficient students can do by the end of the year. Both matter for planning, but they serve different purposes — descriptors inform lesson scope, standards inform assessment design.
Keep your documentation consistent. If your school uses a particular lesson plan template that references AC codes, use the v9.0 codes consistently across all your planning documents. Inconsistent versioning creates confusion during moderation and reporting.
Where to find more information
The Australian Curriculum is publicly accessible at australiancurriculum.edu.au. ACARA also publishes support materials for each learning area explaining the structure of v9.0 and guidance for implementation.
For teachers looking to streamline the alignment process, LessonCreator's free tier gives you 5 complete lesson packages per week with AC v9.0 alignment built in — no credit card required. Start at lessoncreator.com.au.
