/ THE FRAMEWORK FOR
THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM –
A REPORT BY THE EXPERT PANEL OF
THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM REVIEW:
THE NUT’S RESPONSE
MARCH 2012

INTRODUCTION

  1. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Report of the Expert Panel on the National Curriculum Review. This response has been prepared following consultation with NUT members.
  1. The NUT regrets that practitioners with substantial current experience of teaching and learningwerenot engaged directly in the review process.
  1. The NUTregretsalso that the consultation on the Programmes of Study was not part of the Expert Panel’s report. This lack of detail on what might be taught in the National Curriculum limits the report.
  1. The NUT welcomesthe recognition by the Expert Panel that the risks associated with the introduction of a revised National Curriculum include inspection, assessment, links to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), links to teacher standards and the impact on primary workforce capacity.
  1. The Review of the National Curriculum afforded the Expert Panel a unique opportunity to evaluate the concept of extending the EYFS into Key Stages one and two. The Foundation Phase model in Wales should have been used as an example of an extended early years phase.
  1. The NUT would urge the Government to consider more closely the recommendations of the Tickell Review of the EYFS and use this opportunity to really make a difference to early years and primary education.
  1. The Government should also consider the implications for Initial Teacher Training of the introduction of a revised National Curriculum.
  1. Many serving teachers have little experience of curriculum design, as they have been used to planning delivery of the National Curriculum Programmes of Study and National Strategies, often using centrally produced materials. Until relatively recently, teachers have been actively discouraged from using Programmes of Study on which to construct programmes which meet the needs of their pupils.
  1. The introduction of the new Programmes of Study in schools from September 2014 is, therefore, unrealistic. Schools will need more time to effectively plan for and implement the new proposals. Consultation with staff must take place on the local curricular element of the curriculum in order for the implementation to be meaningful.
  1. There is a further concern that schools may be penalised by Ofsted at the early stages of implementation. It has been suggested by the NUT directly to officials at the DfE that there bea year’s moratorium on Ofsted inspections in order to ensure that all schools have a good understanding of the subject areas and expected targets before being inspected.
  1. The NUT has further serious concerns that the introduction of the core National Curriculum in schools which are in a category or ‘satisfactory’ and being closely monitored by Ofsted will narrow the curriculum and focus on drilling pupils in the core ‘specific learning objectives’ in order to raise the standards which matter to Ofsted. This will do nothing to increase the breadth of the curriculum or experience for pupils in those schools.
  1. Following consultation with its members, the NUT questions the Expert Panel’s failure to include references to inclusion and the curriculum in relation to pupils with special educational needs (SEN). The NUT therefore calls for an equality impact assessment to be carried out on the proposals made in the report. The omission of references and evidence pertaining to pupils with SEN, disabled and black and minority ethnic pupils is discriminatory.
  1. There is an overriding concern, however, that inclusive practice appears to have been removed from the values underpinning the National Curriculum. There is an implication throughout the Report that pupils with SEN are being regarded as separate from other pupils. The suggestion that, in order to ‘catch up’ or ‘keep up’, pupils will be regularly taken out of the mainstream class and taught in small groups is directly opposite to evidence that pupils do best when taught in the mainstream by a qualified teacher.

CHAPTER 1: KEY PRINCIPLES

  1. Currently, there is a clear tension between the Coalition Government’s stated policy of curricular freedom and the detailed, prescriptive content of the statutory core subjects’ Programmes of Study. This tension is clear in the consultation document from the use of phrases such as “embody our cultural and scientific inheritance; the best our past and present generations have to pass on to the next”. Consideration is needed about ‘whose history’ will be covered – from the comments made by the Secretary of State, this would not necessarily include or be reflective of the ethnically and socially diverse localities schools serve.
  1. Schools and teachers need freedom to tailor the teaching of history to their local communities. History teaching and learning should not just be about the memorisation of dates and facts, which is suggested, if not explicit, in the Secretary of State’s and Ministers’ speeches and media comments, but rather about the development of skills such as enquiry, investigation, analysis and evaluation.
  1. Teachers should have the freedom to inspire children through the curriculum. Children should be enabled to learn the skills associated with particular subjects, such as learning how to be a historian or a geographer.
  1. It is also essential that the agreed aims are an integral part of curriculum design. Few would disagree that the curriculum should develop, for example, ‘successful learners’, ‘confident individuals’ or ‘responsible citizens’: what is crucial is how these aims are interpreted at individual school and classroom level. For example, there may be a variety of views on what constitutes a ‘successful learner’, ranging from achieving high performance in tests to being able to work independently. Whilst mindful of the need to avoid prescription, clearer guidance is needed on what any agreed aims actually mean for schools and teachers.
  1. Whilst acknowledging the attraction of a common set of aims across the phases, the NUT believes that they should contain a distinct phase dimension. For example, for primary, perhaps through references to the contribution that the curriculum makes to ahappy childhood, which is important in its own right and in terms of the foundation it provides for children to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up. As the University of Cambridge/Esmee Fairbairn Primary Review points out:

“Although aims should be consistent from one stage to the next, there is no reason why they should be identical.”

  1. The NUT believes that the school curriculum should be based on the following core principles.
  • The school curriculum should be explicitly described as an entitlement curriculum.
  • It should contain core descriptions of the knowledge, skills and understanding to which children and young people are entitled and the attitudes which will enable them to learn and take a full part in society.
  • Accompanying the framework curriculum should be guidance on curriculum content to which schools would be required to have regard.
  • The framework curriculum would contain curriculum signposts which would encourage creative interpretation of both the core statutory framework and the wider guidance. The framework curriculum would provide a scaffolding for encouraging teachers’ creativity and enthusiasm both for their pupils’ and their own learning.
  • Curriculum signposts would highlight the need to tailor or personalise the curriculum for children and young people, particularly for those with specific needs including those from minority ethnic groups, those with English as an additional language and those with special educational needs.
  • The curriculum should prepare all pupils to live in a diverse society and aglobalised, interdependent world.
  • A school curriculum which is part of an effective education system and which focuses on achieving equality of opportunity for all children and young people has a positive, indirect influence on standards and performance.
  • The curriculum should be a ‘window’ and a ‘mirror’. The curriculum should enable young people to identify themselves within it. At the same time the curriculum should broaden young people’s horizons.
  • The curriculum should first and foremost be underpinned by a human rights framework.
  • The school curriculum should encourage cross-curricular learning.
  1. Out-dated stereotypes persist about girls and boys, minority ethnic, disabled and LGBT pupils which lead to expectations of different outcomes, achievements and behaviours based on their characteristics. The NUT believes that these notions limit all young people. Stereotyping across the curriculum must be combated. Research shows that a whole school approach is needed for dealing with equality issues in schools which includes:
  • battling stereotypical constructions of diverse groups;
  • high expectations of all pupils regardless of which groups they belong to;
  • instigating classroom discussion and thinking about stereotyping, its manifestations and implications; and
  • employing a wide variety of approaches to literacy, including using literacy as a vehicle for deconstructing stereotypes.
  1. The proposals in the Report appear to suggest that schools will be expected to ‘fit children to’ the National Curriculum rather than considering a child’s starting point and working with them to make progress according to their individual learning styles and dispositions.

CHAPTER 2: AIMS AND PURPOSES OF THE CURRICULUM

International Evidence

  1. Most countries have some form of a National Curriculum. They are either outlined as broad expectations or are extremely detailed. Some have no National Curriculum, partly because of their federated nature. The fact that neither Canada nor the United States have National Curricula seems not to have had any impact on the overall outcomes for children and young people in either country. According to PISA, Canada’s individual states manage to achieve high outcomes for practically all of their children and young people while in contrast, the United States has one of the longest tails of pupil underachievement of any industrialised country despite its very high levels of per pupil spending on education.
  1. In New Zealand and Finland, for example, the only way to secure local curriculum development is to require it, whilst at the same time providing flexibility in terms of how this work is undertaken. Clusters of schools or local authority co-ordinated groups should work together, for example, on developments within an area.
  1. It could be argued that each country gets the National Curriculum it deserves (or not) since the National Curriculum reflects national aspirations. It could be argued also that a detailed National Curriculum is a direct driver for school standards, particularly in countries where standards are considered to be uneven. Such a view, however, is highly contested. There are countries with highly detailed curricula, such as France, which do not perform well relative to other industrialised countries.
  1. The foundations for a successful education system are not found solely in the curriculum itself but in the quality of each country’s teachers and the background factors which help and support teachers in their work. Those background factors obviously include class sizes, sufficient resources, consistent high quality professional development, a self-teaching profession and a National Curriculum which is of use to schools. A National Curriculum should be recognised by teachers as supportive of their work and supportive of school improvement.
  1. The key message from international comparisons must be, therefore, that teachers who are treated as professionals and who have the confidence and skills to make professional judgements based on research, evidence and experience are well placed to manage and influence a flexible curriculum.
  1. The NUT believes that the provision of education should not be dominated by the future economic needs of society. Education should facilitate broader learning, personal and social skills, which fulfil the dual role of empowering children and young people to become independent learners and rounded citizens who can contribute to society both nationally and internationally. The NUT would disagree that the inclusion of skills development and the promotion of generic dispositions in the National Curriculum have diluted the importance of subject knowledge. It could be argued that these elements are just as important as literacy and numeracy and may certainly be a key priority for individual children in order to move their learning forward.
  1. Such a view is shared by parents. Almost three quarters (72 per cent) of parents agree that schools should help young people to be responsible global citizens, while 71 per cent agree that schools should help young people to think globally[1]. In a recent survey by the then DCSF[2], 85 per cent believed that children should learn life skills in primary school such as teamwork, effective communication and creative thinking and 83 per cent said that life skills were as important as English and maths. Currently, however, primary teachers in particular have reported that they have had to struggle to make time to address such aspects of children’s learning, because they have been expected to focus on progressing children’s formal learning and preparing them for end of Key Stage tests.
  1. The NUT has serious concerns about the traditional and hierarchical subject based curriculum being promoted by Government ministers. Such statements contradict the assertions made in the Report, that the National Curriculum is not the whole curriculum and that it is for schools to determine how to teach the curriculum. It should be the responsibility of schools to determine whether they should use a mixture of both discrete subject teaching and cross-curricular learning, in order to maximise curriculum coverage and provide a variety of contexts for core subject teaching and learning.
  1. The Government’s confused attitude to curricular freedoms is best exposed by its proposals relating to synthetic phonics. Whilst claiming that it will free schools and teachers to choose what and how to teach, it will actually increase prescription in English or literacy teaching. The NUT has always supported the professional autonomy of teachers. The Bullock Report[3], published in 1975, was the most comprehensive enquiry into all aspects of English teaching undertaken to date. It concluded “there is no one method, medium, approach, device or philosophy that holds the key to the process of learning to read”. The NUT commends this analysis.
  1. The Government has rightly identified central control and micro-management of the curriculum as a key issue to be resolved, but its proposals do not always achieve its stated intentions. The proposed division of the National Curriculum into four core subjects and the ‘rest’, for example, is unlikely to provide a guaranteed entitlement to a broad curriculum experience for all children.
  1. The reference to English cultural values being given prominence above those of other cultures within the National Curriculum is of great concern to the NUT. There is no recognition of the multicultural environment within society in which education exists. The NUT believes that a focus on ‘British’ or ‘English’ values in the Report is imperialistic and potentially exclusionary.
  1. A new National Curriculum must make links to a range of important activities that go beyond the formal curriculum by ensuring that an entitlement to educational experiences outside school is integral to the curriculum.

CHAPTER 3: THE STRUCTURE OF THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM (FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION)

  1. The NUT has serious concerns about the traditional and hierarchical subject-based curriculum suggested in Chapter3. Such divisions create confusion and barriers and marginalise subjects such as careers education, religious education, sex education and work-related learning. These areas are not discussed fully in the report because the authors maintain that these are in the Basic Curriculum and, therefore, ‘outside the remit’. The NUT disagrees.
  1. The NUT believes that all children and young people are entitled to quality sex and relationship education (SRE) which upholds and reflects children’s and young people’s rights to accurate information, safety, health and well-being and anti-discriminatory practice.
  1. As a part of the National Curriculum review, the Government must reconsider the need for statutory SRE within the broader framework of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) across all four key stages.
  1. It is easy to imagine that schools mostly under pressure to improve test or examination performance could limit the curriculum to the statutory National Curriculum core or, in secondary schools, to those subjects which count towards the English Baccalaureate.
  1. NUT members understand that the Expert Panel does not envisage a national statutory test being introduced in Year 4. They are concerned, however, that the splitting of Key Stage two into a lower and upper tier will lead to a form of assessment which is used in school data on RAISEonline.
  1. The data created from any such assessment would lead to increased reporting through required teacher assessment and would thus create additional workload for teachers. It would also provide additional material for inclusion in league tables, to which the NUT is opposed.

CHAPTER 4: SUBJECTS IN THE CURRICULUM THROUGH THE KEY STAGES OFSCHOOLING

  1. The NUT believes that Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) should be taught from Year 3 to Year 6 in primary schools. There is a strong argument that children from Year 1 could be taught MFL. Any offer of MFL in the primary sector, however, must be one of high quality. The majority of teachers in the primary sector currently do not have a qualification in a modern foreign language beyond GCSE level. If funding was made available for specialist teachers to be employed in primary schools to teach MFL from Year 1 the NUT would see this as a worthwhile addition to the National Curriculum.
  1. It is for this reason that the NUT is recommending that with the current funding available to schools and language competency levels of primary teachers MFL is included in the National Curriculum from Key Stage two and not Key Stage one.
  1. The use of specialist language teachers in Key Stage two will be required in this model. There should also be a requirement for local authorities or families of schools to co-ordinate the languages taught across the primary and secondary phases in order to ensure maximum pupil coverage and access.
  1. The NUT is concerned that subjectssuch as Design and Technology, ICT and Citizenshiphave been designated to the Basic Curriculum – a curriculum area that will be left to schools to determine appropriate content. Reassigning these subjects will not be sufficient to secure a genuine entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum for all. There is a danger that this could lead to unacceptable variations in practices between schools, defeating one of the fundamental reasons for introducing a National Curriculum in England.
  1. It is also important that any provision for the Arts, at KeyStage4, should be of high quality and be taught by qualified teachers. Issues concerning the capacity of teacher training institutions to train a sufficient number of teachers to deliver these programmes by 2014, must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

CHAPTER 5: THE STRUCTURE OF THE KEY STAGES