A Comparative Study Of Mathematics Curriculum Standards For Primary And Secondary Schools In China And South Africa

In recent years, increasingly along with the elementary education curriculum reform, every country continually revises and improves its curriculum standard, in order to strengthen national competitiveness from the cultural and educational field. In our country, Ministry of Education started the eighth curriculum reform in 2001, after ten years reform practice, Ministry of Education revised and reviewed the Full-time Compulsory Education Mathematics Curriculum Standards (trial edition), and promulgated the Compulsory Education Mathematics Curriculum Standards (2011 edition) in December 2011. Because of the negative reaction about carrying out "the course of 2005", South Africa department of education issued the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement Mathematics (CAPS-M) in January 2012. Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement formally replaced the Revised National Curriculum Statement Grades R-9 promulgated in May 2002 and the National Curriculum Statement Grades 10-12 issued in May 2005.This research takes China and South Africa the newest primary school mathematics curriculum standard as the research object. It mainly adopts the documentary method, content analysis method and comparison method. First, this paper expounds the background that the two countries lay down the mathematics curriculum standards for primary school (1-6 grade), in order to understand the curriculum standard development process and analyze the similarities and differences; Secondly, this paper analyzes the text content of the mathematics curriculum standard for primary school, from the overall framework, the nature and the basic idea of the course, curriculum objectives, curriculum content and implementation recommendations and so on. It emphasis the two aspects the curriculum standards involves curriculum objectives and curriculum content. Curriculum objectives are composed of general objective and schooling stage aims. Curriculum content is based of Chinese content areas, including Number and Algebra, Shape and Geometry, Statistics and Probability, Synthesis and Practice. It adjusts content areas about South Africa, including Numbers, Operations and Relationships, Patterns, Functions and algebra, Space and Shape, Measurement, Data handing. Thereby exploring the two countries’rethink and efforts for the current mathematics curriculum reform; Finally, this paper seeks to combine with the basic national conditions, thinking of the defects in the primary school mathematics curriculum standard in our country, learning from the advantages in the primary school mathematics curriculum standard for South Africa. Then it puts forward feasible Suggestions, in order to promote and improve the primary school mathematics curriculum system in our country.