Teachers and others have until 19 July – the last day of the current academic year – to give feedback on the new national curriculum for Wales, all 400+ pages of it.
Cabinet Secretary Kirsty Williams AM and her officials should be congratulated on how they have created opportunities for school leaders and teachers to engage with the new curriculum thus far.
And yet, the big issues have not been put centre stage. They are photobombing the set piece PR.
Officials will be pleased with the numbers who have attended official events and briefings, and how many have responded to this and that. More noteworthy is the mushrooming of unofficial gatherings and unmoderated online discussions where teachers themselves are meeting and talking curriculum.
Discussion is lively. We see doctrinal schisms among teachers and pedagogical academics about ‘skills-led or knowledge-led’ curricula and ‘direct instruction or inquiry learning’. Maybe more profound is a growing interest in cognitive science and how it might apply to learning.
Research and evidence-led practice is being shared. Professional knowledge is being moved about.
Of course, you can lead a horse to a trough but you can’t make him drink. Unless you make him thirsty beforehand.
The new curriculum is at the core of a grand programme of change which the Minister calls the National Mission. The purpose of the mission is to raise standards, close the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils, and secure public confidence in the system.
Teacher training, professional standards for teaching, professional development through ‘middle tier’ consortia, inspections by inspectorate Estyn and national assessments are all being aligned to the new curriculum.
This intent to align various aspects of the system reflects what key officials in Welsh Government and the lead creator of the curriculum, Scot Prof Graham Donaldson, have learnt from the Scottish experience. Or what they have deemed to be the most important takeaway, at least.
The remarkably similar new curriculum there, Curriculum for Excellence, has had a tricky time – like a plane hitting turbulence when it comes back to earth from where the air is thin and the sky is always blue. Hit by the realities of implementation and delivery, the CfE rocked and efforts to steady it led to the production of vast amounts of official guidance. More post hoc than ad hoc.
This systems-minded approach emboldens the pragmatist. Many practitioners believe that the best option for them at this stage of the curriculum’s development is to do little and hang on as best one can until it becomes clearer what’s expected. Expected of them by the system.
And there will be an expectation. Official expectation will emerge: the first top-drawer school inspection outcomes, model curricula designed by designated and funded trailblazers, and dummy curricula prepared by consortia or Government or both for approved Inset days.
Those most responsible for the new curriculum talk of it as being teacher-led, and say the space for teacher agency is built-in, hard-wired into its fabric. They will talk of the opportunity to build local curricula, consistent with the principles and framework of the national curriculum but being local in that there’s real encouragement to have the school’s locality reflected in what’s taking place in its classrooms.
It is not clear why some people think that more young people will be engaged better and succeed more by having their immediate locality and known experiences feature prominently in their learning. Where’s the evidence? Why isn’t it just as right to think that young people will respond more to something that isn’t part of their experience already? And if there’s no hard evidence either way, does the principle of ‘teacher agency’ allow for either to be pursued, dependent on what the teacher chooses to believe?
Being poor tends to mean an impoverished range of experience already, and school is a place where one can and should do something to better that.
Generally, only just over 30% of pupils on free school meals achieve 5 A*-C GCSEs including English/Welsh and Maths in Wales, compared to over 60% of their peers. Yet, in some schools, as many as 50% of eFSM pupils achieve this threshold whilst in others less than 20% do. These schools use the same prescriptive curriculum.
What is it about the old curriculum, specifically, that dampens attainment by our poorest pupils and what, specifically, will the new curriculum provide that betters their chances? And if it is really all about the curriculum, why the huge variation in outcomes?
We haven’t had a compelling argument from the proponents of the new curriculum, thus far. This is odd, given that we have a Minister who can be justifiably proud of championing the Pupil Deprivation Grant over several years.
We are told that a robust scheme of moderation will ensure that the emphasis on the local does not translate into a post code lottery in what’s on offer to our young people.
The proponents of the new curriculum insist that the old curriculum was overly prescriptive. Yet variable outcomes and standards, between and within schools, was consistently identified as a weakness under the old. Why wasn’t moderation the answer then, and if it was, why didn’t it work? What will be the arrangements under the new curriculum if the opportunity to be variable is increased – indeed, when this high variability is celebrated as a good thing.
Accountability arrangements for the emerging system will be critical to ensuring the public has confidence in it. Little of substance has been said, only that something robust will be there. Meanwhile, we do know that the inspectorate will take a year off, mediating agencies are being aligned to the curriculum, performance measures are being changed (again), and external assessments are reducing (with outcomes to stay undisclosed).
That’s a lot to take on trust.
Asgo 