CURRICULUM


There are five things that Martin Skelton is


hoping for from the secondary curriculum review – and one thing that worries him...


T


HE FIRST thing I hope the government does with its curriculum review is to stick to its promise to slim the thing down. As it stands, it is too unwieldy, yet at the same time does not provide teachers, students, parents and others with the clarity they need.


Has anyone ever tried to work out what the learning outcomes of the current key stage 3 curriculum actually are? Less really could be more. Second, I am hoping that the government does mean


what it says in its published documents so far – that one of the aims of a review is to find a way to “really inspire and engage” pupils. But I am not sure that it does. More on that in a moment. Third, I am hoping that the review puts curriculum


in its proper place. Governments like to think that curriculum is the star of the show. It isn’t. An effective curriculum is the well-articulated response to a series of questions that have to be answered first. What questions? Well, how about: • What kinds of people are we helping students to become?


• What learning do they need to achieve to become those people?


• What kinds of learning experiences do they need? • What kinds of teaching do we need to deliver those learning experiences?


• What kind of curriculum will support teachers to deliver learning experiences that allow children to achieve learning that is helpful to them (and us) now and in the future?


Any government trying to do a decent job of curriculum review has to bite the bullet and try to


Independent thinking Misunderstanding equality


PEOPLE SEEM to find great difficulty in understanding the difference between “equality of opportunity” and “making everything equal”. When you add to this a desire to measure everything and to fit it into a one-size-fits-all framework, it becomes almost inevitably rather a mess. I think that is where we are with education and training at the moment. The past decade or so has seen a massive push


to expand universities. Yes, it is true that a smaller proportion of the UK population used to go to university than elsewhere, but other countries’ systems also work differently to ours. In most of Europe, students go to


the university nearest their home and at least a third of those who start a degree course are rejected at the end of the first year for not reaching the standard necessary. I am not a fan of rejection, but the idea of an introductory first year at university has considerable attraction. At the moment we have a dilemma. The


government wants more young people from less privileged backgrounds and from low-achieving schools to take up places at high performing universities. I am loathe to equate less privileged background automatically with low- performing school, so will focus on the latter. If a student has attended a poorly


performing school, they may well have substantial gaps in their education. If universities accept them onto degree courses although they have low grades at GCSE and A level, those students may struggle to keep up and may drop out. This does not help anyone. A number of medical schools now run one-


year introductory courses for students who have high potential but lack the necessary prior learning. University Classics departments employ special tutors to teach Latin and Greek to students who have not had the opportunity to learn these at school but who want to take a Classics degree. Would it not be fairer to set up such a bridging system more widely in our universities – with


students on these courses receiving special bursaries and financial help? If at the end of their intensive pre- year, they were not good enough, then they would leave, possibly moving to a less demanding course. We also need to be braver about recognising


difference and valuing it. A skilled carpenter is not less valuable than a skilled doctor – we need both and each will have a genuine talent. We should never have tried to fit all qualifications into a single framework, weighted equally or unequally against one another. If I owned a golf course I


would want the best person to maintain it for me. I would not worry about whether or not they had a university degree. If I am ill in hospital, I want to be looked after well. Yes, I want my medical needs met, but I also want to be kept clean and be assisted


to eat and drink and to have my calls for help answered. The nursing assistant who does this is incredibly important and valuable. Our misunderstanding of


“equality of opportunity” has also led to a resistance to meritocracy, other than in sport. If you don’t meet the qualifying time or distance you can’t compete in international athletics events. However, in education high- achieving students fail to secure the courses for which they are best qualified


because we want to give others a chance, to compensate them for other inequalities. Meanwhile, skills are in increasingly short supply. We rely heavily on the rest of the world


for our carpenters, builders, nurses, care assistants, plumbers, teachers and doctors. But we have too many young people unable to secure the training or jobs that they would like and others who are trained as doctors, teachers, physiotherapists and such like who cannot find jobs. Something has gone badly wrong.


• Marion Gibbs is headmistress of the independent James Allen’s Girls’ School in London. Independent thinking returns in two weeks.


NASUWT The Teachers’ Union SecEd • March 1 2012 7


For more details, go to www.nasuwt.org.uk/ParalympicPost


Hopes and fears


answer this set of questions from the top. They almost certainly will not because it is such a difficult and complex task. People in the 21st century need to be a mix of the


traditional, the modern and the, as yet, unknown. We are going to have to be respectful and entrepreneurial, rule-followers and rule-breakers. We will have to be receivers of wisdom and sceptics and questioners at the same time. I would like the curriculum review to give guidance


about the learning and learning experiences students should have in order for them to achieve the above and to be armed with skills and understanding to face and tackle the, currently, unknown. It is no surprise that four or five-year governments


do not walk the talk about this and very obvious why they just want to scratch the surface of a curriculum review rather than go deeper. Some current statements from the government about


the review contain implicit clues about the kind of students it thinks we are helping to develop. Words such


as “inspire”, “engage” and “rigorous” are pregnant with meaning about what our students should be like and about what a curriculum should look like if it is going to be a useful resource and guide. But these feel more like bumper-sticker words than thought-through ideas. I live in hope, though. Fourth, I hope the review of the secondary


curriculum focuses on more than knowledge. I do not have much confidence that it will, largely because “knowledge” is the most frequently used word so far, as in: “The new national curriculum will set only the essential knowledge that all children should acquire.” Does the government really mean that? Before I go any further, let me make this clear. I


think knowledge is essential. I state that clearly because what comes next often causes the knee-jerk reaction that I am one of those people who think knowledge is somehow old-fashioned. I do not and it isn’t. It is a vital part of a revised curriculum to set out the essential knowledge that all children should acquire. But it just isn’t enough.


Why not? Because a curriculum based on knowledge


alone cannot bear the weight of expectation we should be placing on it. Remember the question: “What kinds of people are we helping students to become?” To focus only on knowledge says that the government wants people to know about music but not be musicians, to know about science but not be scientists, to know about ideas but not struggle to come up with their own. Important though a knowledge curriculum is, it represents an aspiration that is passive rather than active. The learning that helps students be scientists is skills learning. Skills are more than life-skills, important though


they are. Skills are the essence of what it is to be able to do something. And because skills are developmental over time (unlike knowledge which is learned relatively quickly), it is during good skills learning that students develop the rigour, resourcefulness and endurance that, we are rightly told, matters so much. Fifth, I hope the new curriculum stresses


international mindedness. We live in a global world, even when we live locally. Local problems begin to be solved when we have an awareness of perspectives different from our own. National problems are almost always international issues that cannot be solved by shouting only national perspectives across a table. Most of the “big picture” crises – the environment, starvation, immigration and so on – are international issues that require international understanding and co-operation. Employment for many 21st century children is as


likely to be in another country as it is in the UK whether they work with their arms, their brains, or both. And if that work is in the UK, it will likely be working alongside and communicating with colleagues and customers worldwide. A curriculum that stresses only the Britishness of everything is not one that is fit for the 21st century. And so what is my worry? Well, all of the above are


important but these things do not get a real exploration in anything we have seen so far. A country’s curriculum is a practical manual and a public statement about what we think is important for our children and students. One day a government will be brave enough to address these issues in their totality rather than taking one or two in isolation. I hope it is this one, I worry that it’s not. I hope they don’t allow their legacy to be a declaration of small-minded ambition.


SecEd


• Martin Skelton has been helping schools around the world improve learning for 25 years. He is founding director of the International Primary Curriculum and currently working on the development of the International Middle Years Curriculum.


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