Last night, I was part of an event to be part of the #NCR11 debate about the forthcoming National Curriculum Review.
It was held in Oxford, and hosted by BrainPOP UK and Pearson, and the range and number of attendees (despite being after work on a cold, wet spring day) showed the level of interest and commitment to engaging in this important review. No doubt, others will blog more eloquently about the quality and content of the keynotes, Dawn Hallybone, Helen Wilson, Nikki Wise, and Roy Blatchford.
This post will summarise the discussion then the findings of the two table sessions I facilitated on the subject of ‘Transition‘. To fire up discussion we were given these prompts:
Transition between Key Stages is notoriously difficult to get right. This theme gives you the opportunity to discuss how best to take into account the key transition periods in schooling in developing the new National Curriculum
We were given a few further prompt questions – but I ignored those and asked both groups how we could conceive improving transition from before and after the Key Stages.
Rather than summarise the debates, I will offer bullet points of the debate – so please comment below or ask for more detail – as I want to be fair to the excellent contributors from both groups.
Current and Possible Obstacles to Effective Transition
- A knowledge based curriculum (ie EBac) will not prepare many children as it abandons the non-academic as they transition into the world of work, and does not help the transition to FE/HE because students come full of facts but not able to direct their own learning.
- Do we even need Key Stages and the strict Subject focus? Are these false constraints resulting in missed learning and failed children?
- We suffer from a disconnect between the professional profiles in teaching – as there is no trust / understanding from EYFS to HE – to see the child as progressing through in a consistent way. Each time, the new professionals ignore and devalue the work of the previous:
→FROM Child Centred (EYFS) →TO Generalist (Primary) →TO Specialist (Secondary) →TO Ultra Specialist/Academic (FE/HE) - There is a danger that with more freedom (espeically for free schools and academies) there will be huge variation and that will lead to even less trust between professionals – and again, the kids will suffer. This could even make transition worse than it is now!
- Gove is wrong to focus on parent choice – as many non-metropolitan areas only have one route for kids – from the one Infant/Junior school to the only secondary in the area. So to improve outcomes for all kids (not just those with parents with money, in London!) transition must be pushed up the agenda so that progress in KS2 is not lost at KS3 (as it is for so many now). This review is a great opportunity to build this into the new system
- Children to not have linear learning journies – and levels fixed to age groups can mean that kids can become ‘failures’ just by making transition to the next Key Stage – without having met the benchmark set for their age in a given subject at that moment.
Recommendations
- New Curriculum should build progression (into, through and out of Key Stages) through themes and skills – Not subjects. This would retain consistency of language from EYFS to FE/HE. We believe that overlaying too many curricula and courseware models is part of the problem and is one that can be readily engaged with and that there is considerable common ground to build on.
- We believe that 21Century Skills, such as collaboration and communication should be the scaffold on which the Curriculum is built – not facts.
- Facts are important, and children should be able to demonstrate this knowledge in increasingly complex ways through their school lives, not just in national, high-stakes tests.
- There must be equality of concepts, as equivelence in content (facts) are harder to demonstrate
- We need effective and rigorous Reporting/Reporting NOT Measuring/Testing
- Transition between and within settings, schools, Key Stages, (allowing for more mobile communities) should demonstrate all that is best about the education system – and should be afforded more attention than it currently receives.
- Professional trust and respect between educators at different levels must be nutured rather than undermined from within ITT, SLT, Staffroom, CPD settings and more broadly.
Thanks again to all that attended. As with all such events, it is not what happened then, but what we all do next. I have submitted to the review, both on the DfES site and on Facebook.
Have you?
Please do so NOW – here