What the resource is
This report by the House of Commons Select Committee for Children Schools and Families considered the National Curriculum after twenty years, utilising evidence from a wide range of sources in order to answer the question "do we now have the National Curriculum that we need and, if not, what should be done?". A response by the Government has been recently published and is also considered.
The aims of the resource
The report aimed to address the questions: "do we now have the National Curriculum that we need and, if not, what should be done?"
The report addressed these issues using the following headings:
- Trusting schools
- Curriculum Coherence
- Empowering teachers
- Scaling down the NC
Key findings or focus
Trusting Schools
The Committee concluded that the implementation of the National Curriculum and the guidance from the strategies have "turned schooling into "a franchise operation more dependent on a recipe handed down by Government rather than the exercise of professional expertise by teachers".
The Committee made 32 recommendations including the following:
- the National Curriculum should be slimmed down and a cap placed on the amount of teaching time that it can account for
- the National Strategies should be discontinued in their current form
- the freedoms that Academies enjoy in relation to the National Curriculum - being only required to follow the curriculum for the core subjects of English, maths, science and ICT - should be extended to all schools
- the independence of the QCDA (Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency) should be guaranteed by a requirement to report to Parliament through the Select Committee.
Curriculum Coherence
The Committee was unconvinced by the Programmes of Study that Sir Jim Rose had proposed for the primary curriculum in his interim report, finding them to be unnecessarily complex. They also rejected his recommendation that children should to move to reception class at age four as "due to their low practitioner-to-child ratios, these settings cannot cater for the needs of very young children".
The report also criticised the poor level of continuity and coherence both within the National Curriculum itself and throughout the learning journey from 0 to 19.
The government response (see the link below) stated that the Children's Plan and the Review of the Children's Plan One Year on had helped to develop better coherence across the stages. "We have accepted and are consulting on Sir Jim Rose's recommendation that ‘The aims for a revised primary curriculum derived from the 2006 Education Act, the Children's Plan and ‘Every Child Matters' should be underpinned by a unified statement of values which is fit for all stages of statutory education". (p15)
Empowering Teachers: implications for Initial Teacher Education:
The Chairman of the Select Committee, Barry Sheerman MP, said: "We need to trust schools and teachers more and empower teachers to do what they do best".
The report stated that the Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) standard for professionalism in relation to curriculum implementation (Q15) needed to be enhanced. It suggested that some teachers may have become deskilled, due to the large amount of guidance and prescription provided by Government in recent years, rather than a trusting and enabling professional discretion. The Select Committee suggested that a generation of teachers may have become adept at implementing externally imposed curriculum, rather than being able to design and develop curriculum independently. This finding appears to be at odds with the ‘personalisation' and ‘Working Together' agendas as emphasised within the Children's Plan, in which customisation to local circumstances are emphasised.
The Select Committee stated that the QTS standard 15 should reflect an increased agency on the part of teachers. This would chime with demands from the teaching profession for more creativity in teaching:
(Q15) Know and understand the relevant statutory and non-statutory curricula and frameworks, including those provided through the National Strategies, for their subjects/curriculum areas, and other relevant initiatives applicable to the age and ability range for which they are trained.
They also noted that, whilst "teacher training does not end with ITT", standard 15 "appears particularly inadequate for the purpose of developing trainee teachers' understanding of curriculum design and their confidence to take ownership of central curriculum frameworks and guidance, let alone design their own curriculum independently". (Section 96)
They therefore provide the following recommendation:
Section 97. We recommend that both the theory and practice of curriculum design is given a much higher profile within the standards for Qualified Teacher Status.
The committee was aware of the pressures on ITT to inflate its curriculum promise in response to reports and interest groups, and so they will consider the whole range of QTS standards in their forthcoming inquiry into Teacher Education.
The government response stated that "Jim Rose's proposals will lead to a primary curriculum that is less prescriptive and allows schools to exercise greater professional judgement over curriculum content". They also noted that "research indicated that around one in seven respondents agreed that the revised programmes of study for key stages 3 and 4 give more flexibility to schools in the way they manage their curriculum".
In relation to Initial Teacher Education, the government response emphasises the intended flexibility of the standards:
"The Qualified Teacher Status standards are dynamic - they reflect the changing needs of schools and the changing approach to the curriculum as it evolves. That means that the approach to the curriculum in the standards will reflect changing practice.
It is the Department's view, supported by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, that the current standards are already sufficiently flexible to enable providers to give the additional time to both the ‘theory and practice' of curriculum design."
Evidence informed practice
The committee recognised the need for enhanced support for teachers if this proposed enhancement of professionalism in education is to be realised. The development of web based resources like the TTRB that attempt to enable teachers to harness evidence in order to inform the development of teaching and learning was noted. The government response to this states that some mediation has been needed rather than presenting decontextualised research reports to teachers.
The quality, authority and credibility of the resource
This is a report by an all-party committee of the House of Commons which has taken evidence from a wide range of sources, including researchers and unions. It has high credibility and will have a great deal of influence. Robin Alexander (Guardian, 2009), who directs the Cambridge Primary Review, supports the broad thrust of this report in registering "the groundswell of concern about the weight and complexity of current requirements", but is critical of it in that it proposes a ‘minimum entitlement', which may mean that non-core subjects are in jeopardy, and that children from mobile families are again subject to a lack of continuity. Alexander states that the report claims no detailed suggestions for what an entitlement curriculum may include were submitted; despite clear presentations from the Rose and the Cambridge Reviews which are heavily referenced later in the report.
The government response has accepted some of its findings has challenged some of the other recommendations.
The implications for ITE tutors/mentors
This document provides a critical commentary on the development of the curriculum in English schools, and the section on historical perspectives is a useful resource in itself. With two high profile reviews of the primary curriculum published or currently underway, the inclusion of a comparison table of the Rose and Cambridge Reviews plus international comparisons, produced by the Cambridge Review, is welcome. Users may wish to consider this in light of a historical comparison with previous reports by Plowden (1967) and Haddow (1933).
The government response to the recommendations provides readers with an alternative perspective in some cases, modelling how policy may be defended or challenged. In some cases where an aim is agreed, it is the emphasis or means that are subject to debate. The Select Committee and the government response both appear to see this criticality as being central to the professionalism of teachers.
The relevance to ITE students
A critical awareness of the curriculum design and not just implementation is being stressed again in education. The very large documents that form this report are worth dipping into, particularly for the evidence presented by the various experts and organisations. A consideration of the government response to the report may help new teachers to understand debates and evidence informing policy formation.
Related Resources
National Curriculum - Fourth Report of Session 2008-09 Volume 1
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/344/344i.pdf
National Curriculum - Fourth Report Volume 2
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/344/34402.htm
Report Calls for National Curriculum Reform
http://news.parliament.uk/2009/04/report-calls-for-national-curriculum-reform/
House of Commons - Children, Schools and Family Select Committee
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmchilsch.htm
What is the primary curriculum for? Robin Alexander. Guardian article - Tuesday 7 April 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/apr/07/crib-sheet-april
National Curriculum: Government Response to the Committee's Fourth Report of Session 2008-09
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/645/645.pdf