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NSW Curriculum
NSW Education Standards Authority

7–10Drama 7–10 Syllabus

Record of changes
Implementation from 2026
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Rationale

The study of drama is founded on distinct ways of understanding the world through exploring, enacting and interpreting real and imagined people, worlds and experiences. All cultures engage in drama and theatre to develop and communicate artistic, critical, sensory and affective meanings.

The Drama 7–10 Syllabus is the study of making, performing and appreciating drama and theatre. Students learn as practitioners, challenging themselves and others to consider new perspectives on familiar and unfamiliar experiences.

Students learn how artistic, cultural, social and personal contexts shape knowledge, protocols and intentions, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. These contexts influence conventions, forms, styles, works, practices and practitioners across time and place. Through contextual study students explore, express and understand individual and collective identities, values and perspectives.

Students use imaginative and embodied play as a learning and artistic process to create dramatic works and experiences. They consider ways of working safely and ethically with collaborators and communities. They collaboratively investigate how creative choices are shaped through spontaneous and planned exploration. Students learn how to use drama to ignite discussion and create meaning that can be challenged and reconsidered through critical reflection.

In Drama 7–10, students explore dramatic elements through the creation and interpretation of their own works and the works of others. Students are encouraged to work inventively with the elements of drama, performance and production to imagine, reimagine and extend their understanding of how drama practitioners use these elements to shape and communicate meaning.