Every WA teacher eventually hits this moment: you find a brilliant unit online, the codes all start with AC9, and you’re left wondering whether it “counts” for your program. The answer needs a little history and one organising idea — adopt and adapt — and then the differences fall into place. (This piece zooms in on the differences; for the full picture of how the WA Curriculum works, start with our complete guide to the WA Curriculum.)
Two bodies, two documents
ACARA (the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) writes the Australian Curriculum — the national framework, currently version 9, published at australiancurriculum.edu.au. ACARA also runs NAPLAN and the My School site.
SCSA (the School Curriculum and Standards Authority) is Western Australia’s statutory authority for curriculum, assessment and standards, Kindergarten to Year 12. SCSA publishes the Western Australian Curriculum inside the WA Curriculum and Assessment Outline — and that is the document WA schools are mandated to teach, in all three sectors, from Pre-primary to Year 10.
So the honest one-liner: WA teachers teach SCSA’s curriculum, which is built from ACARA’s. Education is a state responsibility under the Constitution; the national curriculum is an agreement, not an imposition, and each state implements it its own way. NSW rewrites it into NESA syllabuses. Queensland teaches it close to as-published. WA adopted the framework and adapted the content.
What ‘adopt and adapt’ means in practice
Adopted — the architecture. Both systems share:
- the 8 learning areas (English, Mathematics, Science, HASS, HPE, Technologies, The Arts, Languages);
- the 7 general capabilities and 3 cross-curriculum priorities;
- year-by-year content descriptions paired with achievement standards;
- the same broad progression of content from Foundation/Pre-primary to Year 10.
Adapted — the detail. SCSA reviews national content and adjusts where it judges WA classrooms need it:
- Wording and structure of content descriptions can differ — some are reworded, some re-sequenced, some split or merged relative to the national version.
- Syllabus presentation differs: WA publishes its own syllabus documents, scope-and-sequence charts and support materials rather than pointing teachers at the national site.
- Assessment apparatus is WA-specific: SCSA’s Judging Standards (A–E grade descriptions and annotated work samples) and WA reporting policy sit alongside the curriculum.
- Timelines are WA’s own. SCSA reviews ACARA’s version 9 learning area by learning area, with familiarisation years before mandated teaching — so at any moment, WA’s alignment to v9 varies by learning area. The current status of each is published by SCSA, and it’s worth checking at the start of each year rather than assuming.
The visible difference: the codes
The fastest way to tell which system a resource was written for is the code format.
| WA code | Australian Curriculum v9 code | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | WA3HAKUH2 |
AC9HS3K01 |
| Prefix | WA — Western Australian Curriculum |
AC9 — Australian Curriculum v9 |
| Year level | Digit after the prefix (3) |
Digit after the subject (3) |
| Learning area | Letter pair (HA = HASS) |
Letter pair after AC9 (HS = HASS) |
| Strand | Letter cluster (KUH = Knowledge and Understanding, History) |
Single letter (K = Knowledge and Understanding) |
| Sequence | Final digit (2) |
Final two digits (01) |
Both decode the same way — prefix, year, subject, strand, number — but the mapping between them is not one-to-one. A WA description may correspond to one AC9 description, parts of two, or a WA-specific rewording with no exact national twin. That’s the adapt in adopt-and-adapt, and it’s why “find and replace AC9 with WA” is not an alignment strategy. To see a full set of WA codes decoded in the wild — knowledge and skills strands side by side — our Year 3 HASS guide walks through a real year’s worth.
What stays the same for students
It’s worth keeping perspective: a Year 4 student moving from Perth to Brisbane mid-year will find the same learning areas, broadly the same content at broadly the same time, NAPLAN in the same years, and A–E style reporting. The national framework did its job — the differences are real for teachers and planners, but they’re refinements, not different educations.
The things that genuinely don’t change across the border:
- NAPLAN — national test, identical everywhere, Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
- The general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities — same seven, same three.
- The shape of the school journey — foundation year, primary, secondary from Year 7, senior certificate years after Year 10 (though the certificate itself, WACE in WA, is state-specific).
The practical playbook for WA teachers
- Program against WA codes. Your coverage audits, reports and moderation all happen in SCSA’s language. AC9 codes can ride along as a cross-reference, but the WA code is the one that counts.
- Use national resources as raw material. Decode the AC9 code → open the WA syllabus for that year and strand → confirm the matching WA description → adjust the resource where the wording differs. Five minutes per unit, and now it genuinely aligns.
- Check your learning area’s implementation status annually. A February glance at SCSA’s advice on which syllabuses are current, familiarising or mandated saves a semester of planning against the wrong version.
- Be politely sceptical of interstate units. “Australian Curriculum aligned” on a marketplace resource means aligned to ACARA — which is necessary but not sufficient for WA. The same goes in reverse for anything NESA-coded from NSW.
That cross-referencing step is tedious, which is precisely why we baked it into Bindi — it plans from the WA Curriculum natively, so WA teachers get lessons coded in SCSA’s language rather than a national approximation. However you handle it, the principle is the one to keep: nationally inspired, locally authoritative. When the two documents disagree, the one with WA on the cover wins.