Some National Curriculum questions as the pre-announcements abound

It has been another one of those weekends. Whilst trying to relax fully in the lovely sunshine, teachers and school leaders have had to put up with yet another set of pre-announcements and heavily biased reporting about the proposed National Curriculum before being able to see any of the detail that the media  have been told will be published  on Monday. And the current curriculum has been derided again in order to justify the changes. So, we read that ‘history will be taught properly’ from now on and that it was ‘left wing academics’  who were critical of the proposed draft, that tests will be harder and the brightest children will be identified and placed on a trajectory to university at the age of 5.

Now I must have taught in some very unusual schools. In all five state comprehensives schools I worked in, students were taught about the chronology of history, they read whole books – including Shakespeare plays – and they certainly learnt their times tables, fractions and all of the other aspects of Maths which the press reports – obviously informed by government sources –  hailed as innovations. And like the vast majority of teachers I agree that these should be part of the curriculum. Why wouldn’t we?

Don’t get me wrong. I am really pleased to hear that the design technology curriculum has been rewritten as a result of the widespread concerns expressed by experts in that field. What is allegedly now in that curriculum looks remarkably like what I have seen being covered in design technology lessons in recent years so I look forward to reading the detail.

ASCL has been asking numerous questions about the curriculum proposals throughout the consultation period especially as  representatives of the teaching profession and school leaders were not involved nor consulted during  the drafting process. These are immensely important for the future of our education service and  young people if they are not to be guinea pigs for the next ten years.  Those questions remain unanswered so are now urgent. Here are some of them:

1.       Has the government thought about the implications of implementing the whole curriculum at once?
2.       If the curriculum is introduced in secondary schools in 2014 how will this serve incoming students who will have been taught the existing curriculum throughout their primary schooling? For example, they will have no access to any history pre 1066. Wouldn’t it be better to introduce the curriculum in stages, starting with Key Stage 1, so that students do not lose out?
3.       How will the Key Stage 1-3 curriculum link up with the KS4 one and the new qualifications and how will schools prepare students approaching the new GCSEs when they have not followed the previous curriculum in KS1-3 which, one assumes might have some relevance to these examinations?
4.       What will guarantee access to all of the content which the government deems important for children who attend academies and free schools which decide not to adopt the NC?
5.       Where programmes of study list topics, how will schools decide what to teach and at what level to pitch it? For example what exactly should schools teach about Winston Churchill or the Stone Age.  We don’t need every detail to be prescribed but some notion of progression needs to be incorporated.
6.       As National Curriculum Levels are being abandoned how will progress be measured across all subjects between KS1 and 3 and most importantly benchmarked against what other schools are doing?
7.       Will schools be allowed to have some additional training days to plan for these enormous changes?
8.       Will the DFE provide any kind of support in the form of access to training programmes or guidance or just leave this to schools?

Finally, was the current National Curriculum all bad or is there anything in it that ministers believe worth retaining?

Until these questions have been answered I cannot imagine (in spite of extensive experience as a curriculum planner and manager)  how any school can do anything other than carry on teaching the current curriculum and looking to see whether any of this content might usefully be worked into it.

Therefore I leave you with one final question: Why on earth didn’t the government avoid all of this grief and upheaval and amend the professionally written curriculum we already had?

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Note:
In its response to the National Curriculum consultation, ASCL recommended nine changes to the proposals. For the full consultation response see http://www.ascl.org.uk/News_views/consultation_responses/reform_the_national_curriculum_england

Recommendation 1

Extend the consultation period, (ideally until July 2013) and engage the profession more extensively in a debate about the philosophy and aims of a national curriculum, with a view to clearly articulating a vision for our national curriculum, its aims and its scope.

Recommendation 2

Revisit the balance in the proposed curriculum between knowledge and other dimensions of the curriculum, in particular: the application of knowledge, the cyclical revisiting of central concepts in progressively more challenging forms, critical and creative aspects of learning, and cognitive development.

Recommendation 3

Retain levels and sublevels at least for core subjects in KS3, with appropriate definitions, or develop and pilot an alternative framework for measuring progress within key stages before moving away from the existing system.

Recommendation 4
Propose an implementation plan and timescale which is manageable, has regard to other major curriculum changes, and which builds through incrementally from KS1 to KS4.

Recommendation 5

Implement a nationally sponsored, properly resourced, and strategically planned retraining programme to build the capacity for schools and teachers to deliver computing rather than ICT.

Recommendation 6

This programme of study (DT) should be significantly rethought in order to give sufficient emphasis to the application of new technologies to product design.

Recommendation 7

Engage with the full range of opinion amongst history teaching specialists and develop an approach to the content and teaching of history across all four key stages which responds to their grave concerns.

Recommendation 8

A nationally sponsored, properly resourced and strategically planned retraining programme will be needed to build the capacity for schools and teachers to deliver the languages programmes of study.

Recommendation 9

A long-term development plan to ensure that all young people have access to high-quality sports facilities should be prepared to underpin this programme of study (PE). This will need to include arrangements for all KS2 children to access swimming facilities.