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Issue 6 is Out Now
The Summer 2009 issue reports on why today’s kids grow up faster – and how to handle it, ‘My summer with Obama’, a gap year on the campaign trail, hints on how to find work in a recession, asks is the fashion world a suitable place for school kids to make money, and much more. |
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| READING BETWEEN THE LINES - THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM |
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The national curriculum is about to change again, raising a fury of debate amongst headteachers. Sian Griffiths looks at how this will affect teaching and whether parents should be concerned.
The letter pages of national newspapers are filled with irate heads responding to next year's intended lessons shake-up. The changes will leave private schools relatively unaffected. “Independent schools already have the freedom to create a curriculum that suits all pupils in their schools,” says Peter Mason, Principal of the Stanford Endowed schools in Lincolnshire. Controversially he sees the planned changes as aimed at “closing the gap in performance between private and state schools - the problem is that the gap is down to many factors, including anti-social behaviour, especially in inner-city schools, as well as the quality of some of the teachers recruited to state schools.”
Independent schools use the national curriculum as a framework onto which subjects like Greek, Latin and triple science are bolted, adding art, music, drama and sport far beyond what the government requires as a minimum. They cover the ground faster too. At Eton College pupils can bypass some GCSEs and move straight to A levels, if they can cope with the accelerated pace.This hasn't stopped heads getting steamed up about what they call a further “dumbing down” of education. “I have changed my mind about the national curriculum,” says Chris Woodhead, who as head of Ofsted was architect of the last set of changes. “The emphasis on knowledge in the curriculum has been eroded and replaced by an emphasis on skills. Geography has become a political pamphlet for Greenpeace; history has become more concerned with empathy and learning how to be a historian than with study of the British Empire. Noxious quasi-subjects like citizenship have been introduced, squeezing out time for more traditional subjects.”
The shake-up promises a “sexy” new time-table for the 21st century in an attempt to engage and inspire youngsters. Exams watchdog the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), seems now to have accepted that teachers as well as children are being switched off by the current rigidly dictated curriculum. Compulsory subjects will remain but the number of facts crammed into pupils in the first three years of secondary school will be reduced. Up to a quarter of the school day will be freed up to allow teachers to teach content which they have chosen. This might stop pupils, especially boys, being switched off learning in their droves. Too many end up at the age of 14 knowing less than they did at 11. This summer, more than half of state-school children failed to get five good GCSEs including Maths and English. Employers now complain of illiterate, innumerate recruits while the school drop-out rate at 16 is the despair of ministers.
The new curriculum will also mean that bright kids will be given the chance to study physics, chemistry and biology as three separate sciences at GCSE - once the preserve of the private sector. For universities this is welcome news. In addition a few new subjects like personal finance lessons are planned. Pupils will have the right to ask for cookery lessons (this last a bid to counter the rising tide of teenage obesity). There will also be greater focus on phenomena such as climate change (in geography) and slavery (in history).
Controversially, topic teaching, fashionable in the 1970s, will make a comeback. For example, the history and science of the making of chocolate could be taught. The hope is that this will mean more creative, interesting lessons - but many are opposed to a teaching technique widely regarded as “trendy” and discredited.
One of the most outspoken critics of the government's plans is Barnaby Lenon, head of Harrow school, whose career has spanned a stint at Holland Park comprehensive. “By the late 1980s, topic teaching was abandoned in most state schools. I think the gap in performance between state and private schools at A level will increase as a result of these changes. The government should ask itself why topic work was abandoned in the 1980s as an experiment that failed,” he remarks. More importantly the changes may accelerate top schools' abandoning GCSE and A level exams infavour of “harder” more challenging qualifications such as the IGCSE and the International Baccalaureate. There is also interest in a brand new qualification for sixth formers: the Pre-U, which is being developed in Cambridge and has been hailed enthusiastically by heads such as Graham Able, at Dulwich College. Although it is too early to say what the uptake will be, Martin Stephen, Head Master of St Paul's boys' school, agrees with Lenon. He has seen how fee-paying schools have stepped into the breach to rescue children failed by the inadequacies of the state curriculum. Pupils from nearby state schools have been offered top-up lessons in subjects such as classics and some modern languages, which their own schools have abandoned.
Children, Schools and Families Secretary Ed Balls puts the best possible spin on these changes. “By cutting waste and duplication in the curriculum, I am giving teachers the time to concentrate on what is really vital,” he said. “I have protected the classic elements of the curriculum that have stood the test of time such as Shakespeare, algebra, historic dates and the World Wars. And I want these to be taught even better in a lively, exciting way which enthuses and motivates. We cannot afford to let teenagers fall by the wayside.”
Will it work? The Conservatives are sceptical. As Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary Michael Gove pointed out, the government may have tweaked the curriculum, but without excellent teachers to deliver it, the outlook is bleak. According to Sheila Lawlor, of think tank Politeia, some nine per cent of teachers quit state schools every year. Tinkering with the curriculum will not change this.
For Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington, it is clear that “the government has to give up the idea that education or anything else flourishes with an over-imposition of central control.” He prophesies that independent schools “will eventually do away with the national curriculum completely. Parents will be more attracted to that.”
Let the final word be with a QCA spokesman who said that, whatever happens to the curriculum, “Anne Boleyn will still be beheaded, the Pennines will remain the backbone of England and Romeo will still fall in love with Juliet.”
Sian Griffiths is education editor of the Sunday Times.
If you want to share your thoughts on the future of education write to us.
editor@elevenmagazine.co.uk |
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