It’s time to become curriculum planners again! by Whole Education Chair, John Dunford
The announcement of the Government’s curriculum review offers a rare opportunity for those who have children’s interests at heart to engage in a serious debate about what they should learn during their years of compulsory schooling. The prospect of a slimmer national curriculum promised in last week’s white paper also creates space for schools to plan what they want to do. Ministers lead us to believe that there will be plenty of gaps to allow teachers to use their creativity in their pupils’ interests.
Of course, ministers still make pronouncements about what history they think should be taught or how young children should learn to read, but politicians have never been able to resist the temptation to indulge their preferences and share their views on what should be in the curriculum.
Notwithstanding these flights of ministerial fancy, however, after 20 years of a top-down detailed national curriculum, we can surely look forward to becoming curriculum planners again. It is a role that older teachers will remember with a rosy glow: the CSE mode 3 syllabuses that they designed, set and marked themselves, awarding certificated grades after due external moderation.
This is an extract from an article written by John Dunford, Chair of Whole Education. Read the full article at : http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6064862
