Jonathan Savage

What’s in store for education over the next fifteen to twenty years? We were asked to consider this question – albeit put across in a more eloquent way – during our Division day at the Institute of Education yesterday.

As usual, it made me wonder about the nature of individual subjects, curriculum development and various recent political announcements. It prompted me to write the following which I shared on our Division wiki and repeat here for any of you out there who may be interested.
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If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, I would strongly recommend that you have a look at this week’s front page in the TES. You can view it here. I won’t comment extensively on this today, but I don’t think this article is too far off the mark. There is a rough time ahead for ‘small’ subjects in the school curriculum. For many, the UK leads the world in music education. This may not be the case for much longer. Be prepared for a fight.

Following on from the previous post, here’s the quote from Michael Gove’s speech about the slimming down of the National Curriculum:

I want to ensure our national curriculum is a properly international curriculum – that it reflects the best collective wisdom we have about how children learn, what they should know and how quickly they can grow in knowledge. I want to use the evidence from those jurisdictions with the best-structured and most successful curricula – from Massachusetts to the Pacific Rim – to inform our curriculum development here. I want to remove everything unnecessary from a curriculum that has been bent out of shape by the weight of material dumped there for political purposes. I want to prune the curriculum of over-prescriptive notions of how to teach and how to timetable. Instead I want to arrive at a simple core, informed by the best international practice, which can act as a benchmark against which schools can measure themselves and parents ask meaningful and informed questions about progress.

There was also a lot of stuff about academies and accountability, etc, which I’m just too depressed to write about again.

What future does the National Curriculum have under this Government? It is obviously going to be have a major review. Alongside their hasty work on academies, the DfE even have a separate section of materials about it on their website.

At the primary level, the decision to scrap the Rose Review has been announced, but alternative plans to return to ‘basics’ are still to be unveiled.

At Key Stage 3, the end of Key Stage assessment changes are now scrapped. This is what the website has to say about it: Read the rest of this entry »

Estelle Morris has written an excellent piece in today’s Guardian which I would highly recommend to all readers with an interest in the UK education system and, more generally, in curriculum development within educational policy.

She highlights a number of weaknesses in the Conservative party ‘policy’ (or should that be lack of policy, as we really are having to guess what precisely they are wanting to do) in respect to their policy on curriculum development and implementation. Her belief is that the QCDA may be the shortest lived quango of all time should the Tories come to power. But, worryingly given her political status and position in the educational world, she seems none the wiser than the rest of us about who might take responsibility for shaping future iterations of  curriculum frameworks.

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As you may be aware following Secretary of State Ed Balls’ letter to schools in July, The Department for Children, Schools and Families are announcing the academic year 09/10 as a national year of celebrating music and the developmental benefits it can provide. The year is called Tune In, and several exciting launch events are happening across England between 10th-15th September to capture the imagination of a broad spectrum of children and young people.

The first part of the launch, taking place 12.30pm-1.00pm on Thursday, 10th September, is a live music lesson tailored for a Year 7 to Year 9 audience, featuring a host of well-known expert faces from the music industry. Get involved with your KS3 pupils by gathering to watch the lesson via your interactive whiteboards. First Class: The Ultimate Music Lesson will feature a mix of live and pre-recorded appearances by N-Dubz, guitarist Slash, The English National Ballet, The Hoosiers, Katherine Jenkins, Jamie Cullum, DJ Yoda, Vanessa Mae, Girls Can’t Catch, VV Brown, Amanda Holden, Killa Kela and the casts of West End shows Wicked and Billy Elliot. These figures will share advice to inspire and educate pupils about the power of music, whether a young person chooses to perform, produce, create or write music, or help behind the scenes.

The 30-minute live broadcast will be streamed live from a London school at which Secretary of State Ed Balls will be present. Lesson content will be available for download afterwards at www.dcsf.gov.uk/tunein. The broadcast is scheduled over the lunch break to minimise disruption of lessons, but it would be excellent if pupils have had chance to eat and take a short break before First Class: The Ultimate Music Lesson begins.

If you are able to take part, please contact Elizabeth.Bentley@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk or Hannah.Pawlby@freud.com for more information, including how to access the lesson via the interactive whiteboard.

We had some interesting discussions today about the Creative and Media diploma. One of our subject mentors came to the university to share his work with us. It was excellent. Part of the discussion centred on how universities would perceive students who have undertaken diploma study (particulary at Levels 2 and 3). It was interesting to find this article by the BBC which provides some useful views from certain universities. Reading between the lines, it seems that many admission tutors will be looking very closely at the subject specific skills and knowledge that students have studied in their diploma to ensure that they provide a suitable basis for undergraduate study. It will be interesting to see how this debate continues once the first cohort of students with Level 3 diplomas make their applications to universities or colleges.

Just found the link to the Guardian’s report on the same research.

It was interesting to read about apparent ‘problems’ in the Key Stage 3 curriculum on the BBC website today. Ofsted are reporting that certain elements of subject content or skills are being lost in schools’ responses to the opportunities of the new National Curriculum. As you read the report, just remember that Ofsted only visited 37 schools. So it’s probably a case of more research being needed before jumping to any conclusions.

It was interesting to read about the launch of a new body – the Curriculum Foundation – on the BBC website yesterday. The Curriculum Foundation aims to share and develop cutting edge thinking about the school curriculum and excellent classroom practices. It is based on the idea that a good curriculum allows children to grow with the ability, confidence and desire to make the world a better place.

Lord Puttnam is the chair of this new foundation, but I was interested to read some of the comments from one of the founding members, a head teacher of a primary school in Nottingham. He reiterated the key point that the National Curriculum is not in place to constrain and limit curriculum development but rather to facilitate and promote creative approaches to teaching and learning, particularly in response to the local contexts within which schools operate. He said the following:

“The freedom is there but school leaders feel under enormous pressure, bombarded by the latest changes. Being a school leader can be quite isolating and the profession has become very reactive. We want to help schools become more pro-active and to generate curriculum policy. There are some phenomenal schools doing outstanding work out there. We want to harness that and help schools to share their practices.”

I hope the Curriculum Foundation succeeds. It seems grounded on some excellent principles. Do visit their site and see what you think. I’d like to be able to recommend that you register and join, but I noticed it costs money! I think they’ve potentially shot themselves in the foot there.