THE RETURN OF CURRICULUM

THE NEW GOVERNMENT CURRICULUM REVIEW

There is no better way for an incoming Secretary of State for Education to demonstrate their zeal for energetic reform than to initiate a curriculum review and one of the new Labour Government first acts was to establish an independent review chaired by Professor Becky Francis to ‘breath new light into our outdated curriculum and assessment system’. It should be noted in passing that this outdated curriculum which ‘held children back’ was introduced less than 10 years ago to support higher standards and rigour in teaching. (We can only speculate that Ofsted will apologise for denigrating schools for not delivering a curriculum now seen as holding children back)

Since the National Curriculum was introduced in 1988 it has been the subject of multiple revisions and reforms. These changes reflected new concerns and educational priorities, emerging concerns with the existing curriculum and changing theoretical and political perspectives. There is a certain inevitability about this. What we teach about and what we choose not to teach about reflects the sort of society we think we have and the future we want and the emergence of school subjects themselves the result of struggle and negotiation. The National Curriculum by locating the question of what schools should teach firmly in the political and public arena. Furthermore the gap between the politically approved curriculum and how it is interpreted and taught and converted into learning experiences in classrooms ensures that ongoing debates and arguments about what a new curriculum may or may not demand are ensured.

The new curriculum review in its initial terms of reference and working principles has got off to a good start. There is a commitment to a wide consultation of all key stakeholders and the review panel seems to have a wider representation of educational experts with experience throughout the educational sector than the limited number of ideologically approved of ‘experts’ which characterised previous reviews. The review will start at key stage 5 and then work backwards across other key stages to ensure that their contribution towards the end point can be recognised and built into curriculum. The curriculum will be broad and balanced and reflect the issues and diversities of our society. It will consider assessment and curriculum together hopefully to ensure that what is taught does not become distorted by how it will be assessed, and it will pay attention to the practicalities of implementation to avoid unintended consequences.

This provides a useful starting point but stating what is needed is one thing being able to achieve a consensus in its recommendations and navigate the tensions inherent in the construction of a national Curriculum is another. Professor Francis shows that she is certainly aware of the tensions and has drawn attention to the diversity of views on the curriculum, the myriad of subjects and issues which stakeholders may wish the curriculum to cover, the common view that the curriculum is currently overladen and over-prescribed and the issue of teacher workload, recruitment and retention. The key issue may be that there has only been one attempt to create and construct a National Curriculum. Since 1988 successive Secretary of State for Education have attempted to revise, amend, prune and reshape this in response to educational crises and ideological trends producing an increasingly narrow and dysfunctional curriculum. The assumptions of the 1988 curriculum, that it should be a traditional subject centred one, centralised, linked to and shaped by assessment for accountability was never questioned.

Whatever the outcome of the current curriculum review will be it will an occasion for claims, counterclaims and argument as different stakeholders advance claims for which subjects should be in the curriculum, the priority they should have and what should or should not be included in those subjects. It will also be seen as an opportunity to reopen debates about skills or knowledge, the role of assessment, the level of proscription and cross curricular themes and values.

The Humanities Association throughout its existence acted as forum for discussion for the humanities about all aspects of humanities education. The principles, objectives and curriculum models and strategies of the association were developed through decades discussion and debate and of working with schools and teachers in the delivery of humanities subjects. It may, therefore, be worth revisiting some of these to inform thinking on a review of the curriculum.

• The humanities provide essential knowledge, concepts and skills that learners need to understand our world. As such the humanities must not be marginalised in the school curriculum in terms of available time and resources.
• A number of subjects contribute to the humanities these have their own concepts and perspectives. Across key stages pupils need to have access to a variety of these subjects and the opportunity examine how they help us understand human society in all its complexity.
• The curriculum needs to be sufficiently flexible to allow for a range of curriculum models to be developed which reflect the aims, values and context of the school.
• Curriculum design should enable connections to be made between curriculum subjects and with cross-curricular themes. Making links between subjects strengthens the coherence of the curriculum for pupils and deepens understanding of the subject matter. Making connections with cross-curricular themes helps to establish the relevance of the curriculum in preparing pupils for life in the local, national and global society.
• The curriculum should enable pupils to be involved in enquiry and to explore issues. Enquiry helps to promote independent learning and the application of subject knowledge and concepts to develop an understanding of key issues.
• The curriculum should allow scope for teachers to control, shape and develop what and how they teach. Past experience demonstrated that where humanities courses, including courses at GCSE level were teacher controlled and assessed teacher, involvement, commitment and enthusiasm was maximised.
• Assessment should not be allowed to determine the curriculum. Assessment should be primarily to support learning and learning objectives and not to distort learning and reduce it to teaching for tests.
• It is important that the curriculum builds in progression in subjects and subject areas across key stages but it is also important to recognise that the primary phase of education is distinct from the secondary phase. Learning within the primary phase takes place within a specific context and the organisation, resources and aims of primary schools need to be taken into consideration when planning the curriculum.
• In practice how the curriculum is interpreted and realised by schools and teachers is influenced by wider political forces directing educational change. Education has undergone its own form of privatisation. Schools and chains of schools spanning the public and private sectors have become semi-autonomous institutions with Ofsted providing centralised regulatory function. Locating schools within a form of market economy accelerated a discourse of management in education with an emphasis on transparent and quantifiable outputs, compliance, and accountability. In this context the curriculum and assessment became important primarily as a means of advertising and demonstrating the superiority of individual schools rather than a means of designing worthwhile learning experiences. An effective curriculum must be one which concentrates on the quality and meaningfulness of learning and frees itself from its role as an instrument of a competitive market.