May

28

Primary curriculum reform

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

We live in interesting times.
I have no privileged information, but have been following the primary curriculum developments with some interest. My (personal) reading is that we’ll see something close to the Lib Dem manifesto commitment to ‘CurriculumLite’, ie a minimum core entitlement, with a degree of autonomy devolved to all schools in terms of how this is taught and, perhaps, on how it might be supplemented. The Secretary of State certainly seemed to be indicating this on the Today programme on Wednesday (http://goo.gl/D2Ut).
Gove maintained that the National Curriculum is “”too crowded and cluttered and too prescriptive”, whilst the first two may be the case, I think he may be confusing the statutory curriculum with the plethora of non-statutory ‘guidance’, such as QCDA schemes of work and numeracy and literacy frameworks in regard to the latter.
As to what the core contains, Gove indicated an entitlement to English, maths, with  British history and MFL being ‘encouraged’, although the latter may be restricted to Swedish ;-) There was, unsurprisingly, no reference to ICT.
My reading of the Academies Bill (http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/academieshl.html) is that the new primary academies and won’t be required to follow the National Curriculum, merely to provide a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum as with registered independent schools. I would expect the same provisions to apply to the new Free Schools.
There’s are perceived contradictions over such things as his views on systematic synthetic phonics and the promised freedoms over how to teach, but from what he’s said elsewhere, my guess is that advice will be offered, but that schools who do well in SATs and impress Ofsted won’t be required to conform.
The announcement yesterday (http://education.gov.uk/news/letters/gove-qcda-270510) that QCDA is to be wound down rather confirms this – is that the SATs are here to stay but that Gove wants QCDA ‘to withdraw as soon and as far as is practicable’ from the curriculum.
Where then does this leave us?
I think we’ll see some specification of a minimum core curriculum for LA schools, and a requirement for ‘breadth and balance’ for other (ie academies, free and independent) schools. How this is taught and supplemented will be down to governing bodies and headteachers, although I’d expect to see a number of organisations (including local authorities, publishers and other groups) developing their own curricula, covering the common core but providing their own particular approaches and extensions to this: the Rose recommendations might be one such approach, as might the Alexander model (http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/), IBO Primary Years Programme (http://www.ibo.org/pyp/), a primary version of Futurelab’s Enquiring Minds approach (http://www.enquiringminds.org.uk/), materials developed through the RSA’s Whole Education project (http://www.wholeeducation.org/), or the commercial Dore creative curriculum (http://www.doretolearning.co.uk/).
The maintenance of core entitlement and robust accountability measures would, I think, open up many interesting possibilities, and indeed the responsibility, for schools to offer distinctive, challenging and relevant curricula reflecting their unique character. I don’t doubt that many schools will be eager to ensure that their curriculum makes the best possible use of technology to enhance learning and teaching.

We live in interesting times.

I have no privileged information, but have been following the primary curriculum developments with some interest. My (personal) reading is that the Education and Children bill promised for the autumn will have something close to the Lib Dem manifesto commitment to ‘CurriculumLite’, ie a minimum core entitlement, with a degree of autonomy devolved to all schools in terms of how this is taught and, perhaps, on how it might be supplemented. The Secretary of State certainly seemed to be indicating this on the Today programme on Wednesday. Read more

May

24

On Becta’s closure

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Originally posted at Open Source Schools. Declaration of interest: the Open Source Schools project, for which I have the honour to act as community manager, is funded by Becta, although I’ve written the following in a purely personal capacity.

The Treasury announced this morning that Becta is to close as part of a package of some £670M education savings.

I, for one, would like to record my gratitude for all Becta have done to lead the adoption of technology in education over the last few years. Their interest in, and support for, open source software pre-dates my own: I have fond memories of attending an excellent ‘expert technology seminar’ chaired by Dr Malcolm Herbert, then one of the Becta team, now at RedHat, back in 2000 when I was head of maths and IT at a school in Oxford, just starting to experiment with Linux and setting up a Samba server. Despite others’ comments on Twitter and in response to Rory Cellan-Jones’ article, Becta have done much to encourage schools to explore open source, albeit in a way which maintained the level playing field that was part of Cabinet Office guidance, and subsequently the Conservative manifesto and the Coalition’s Programme for Government. Read more