In this post, NAEE’s Chair of Trustees, William Scott, explores Lorna Smith’s recent The Conversation post in which she argues for a local element to the national curriculum [NC]. As ever with our blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily those of the Association.
This is how Lorna’s article begins:
Despite only being introduced in 1989, England’s national curriculum has the feel of an institution: solid and inevitable. So it might come as a surprise that the majority of secondary schools in the country – over 80% – aren’t required to teach it. Academies and free schools have independence from the curriculum, which is what enticed many schools to convert to academies to begin with. Instead, there’s a de facto curriculum based on the specifications of the all-important GCSE exams: a secondary system built on teaching to the test.
Labour has promised a review of the curriculum – and to make following it compulsory for academies – should they win the next general election. But perhaps a better option would be to embrace the decline of the curriculum and discard it altogether. Together with a reform of exams, this could allow schools to teach their students a “local curriculum”. This can have more relevance for young people by drawing from and responding to the needs and interests of the communities around them
This idea of a part-local curriculum is not new and how acceptable this will be will depend on how “part” it is. 80% local looks like a risky free-for all; 20% local, much less so. I have some sympathies with the idea especially as I did something like this in the mid-1970s for a science GCSE I organised. It obviously makes a lot of sense if we want to study a local environment and the issues it faces.
In the article, she goes on to argue:
“If the national curriculum is to survive, it requires revision. To have a positive impact on learning, that revision should involve a spectrum of educational experts and be open to national debate. And academies should be required to teach it. It is hardly worth revising for a small and dwindling number of schools. More radically, it could be dropped altogether. Finland and New Zealand have successfully introduced a part-local curriculum, allowing teachers opportunities to cover topics that respond to the issues and needs of their communities.”
The fundamental curriculum question in any society is: [i] what shall be taught? A closely related question is: [ii] who is to decide this?There are, however, prior questions: [iii] what criteria and principles shall be used to determine what is to be taught? and [iv] how and by whom are these to be determined?And this leads to perhaps the most fundamental issues of all: [v] who is to determine the answers to [ii] and [iv]?
When the NC was being implemented all these questions were in play and answered one way or another, although not always transparently. Ultimately, parliament decided [i] but it was panels of subject experts convened by the DfE that proposed [ii].
A local curriculum would have to involve all these processes.In the good old (pre-NC) days [iii] was in part determined by curriculum theorists in university education departments where curriculum was itself an academic study. HMI (before Ofsted gobbled it up it) worked on [iii] and [iv]. All this led to consensus which pervaded schools, although there was disputation and experimentation at the margins (for example, Nuffield sciences).
It’s worth remembering that, prior to the NC, the only compulsory school subject was RE; everything else was convention – shaped in secondary schools by exam boards and the universities that influenced them, and by that now rarest of things: teacher interest exercised locally.
These days, the direct influence of university academics is rare, though universities as a collective whole do exert influence on A levels, and hence on GCSE. It’s also undoubtedly true that GCSEs influence the preceding years of secondary schooling, and not for the better. But whether this influence results in every teacher everywhere and all the time “teaching to the test’, as is sometimes implied, is another matter – but that’s for another day.