Whilst on my NPQH residential last week I was listening attentively to a Headteacher talk about why it is so important to build a curriculum that strikes the fire in the stomach of young people, in particular ones from a disadvantaged background. He started off by saying . . . . .
Now this got me thinking ....... in the current educational climate where we are forced to chase Progress 8 and pupils are guided down a restrictive EBacc pathway, we must not lose sight of the young people that are being disenfranchised by the process.
Now we all know that curriculum will be a focus from Ofsted and Amanda Spielman mentioned in October 2017 that:
"School leaders need to recognise how easy it is to focus on the performance of the school and to lose sight of the whole child"
"Few schools are thinking really clearly about what should be taught in each subject, and how that content is best sequenced together"
"The concerns are based on inspection evidence. Primary schools were found that give up teaching most other subjects in year 6 to focus intensively on SATs prep, rather than meaningful broader curriculum'
"The widespread shortening of Key Stage 3 to 2 years, when this means that many pupils lose a whole year of study of the Humanities, Languages or the Arts"
I suppose as leaders of schools we must ask ourselves does the curriculum we offer really equip the young people with a varied skills set that will help improve society. Does your curriculum offer maximise the potential and dreams of your pupils? Does the experiences that go on inside the classroom and beyond really ignite that fire? If not why not?
In my own school we have moved to a 3 year KS4. The justification for this is that we felt pupils would benefit from an additional year with the more content heavy reformed specs at GCSE. This decision was made so that the pupils had the best shot which would increase their life chances and opportunities in the future. What we have also done is made as stance against being forced down the 75-90% Ebacc route. Instead we leave the decision up to the pupils that is guided by their passions and interests (all do have the option to study Ebacc regardless of ability). We of course have a comprehensive and supportive CIAG programme that feeds into this process but ultimately the decision is the pupils.
When considering the options process for disadvantaged pupils Sir John Dunford offers his thoughts in his book 'The School Leadership Journey'. I must say that this book is an essential read for anyone interested in or leading Pupil Premium.
How can you test the validity of your curriculum?
Hold a curriculum review and invite other headteachers into your school to test the robustness of your offer. As a school we did this and the process was very informative and gave us a set of next steps. You may also want to consider using the 'World Class Curriculum Audit'. A summary of questions to consider are below:
Have we developed with stakeholders a set of values, aims and principles that underpin curriculum development?
Do we evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum against these?
Do we have a system for ensuring that they impact on curriculum planning?
Does the curriculum develop learners’ understanding of global citizenship, and respect them as present and future citizens?
Do we consider the level of excitement in the learning experiences that we plan in the long-term and at lesson level?
To what extent are our learners excited by the curriculum they experience?
Are there particular elements of the curriculum for each class that contribute to excitement?
Do we have an effective approach to developing learners’ imagination, and to encouraging curiosity and creativity?
Is this approach built into our curriculum and evident in learning experiences?
Is this happening in all classes and across the curriculum and year?
Are we taking steps to monitor the development of these qualities?
Is our curriculum broad and balanced?
Do we know how it compares to the best in the world?
Do we have ways of ensuring that learners are challenged to develop deep, lasting knowledge and understanding supported by associated skills?
Have we identified those associated skills and built them into the curriculum?
Do we distinguish between surface learning and deep understanding?
Has our curriculum been co-constructed with the community?
Have we built learning related to our local context across the curriculum?
Have we built in a national and international dimension?
3 year KS4? Why?
When designing your curriculum it is also very important to consider local context and labour market information (LMI). Our school is in Greater Manchester and we have designed our curriculum to feed into the growth sectors in the area. In greater Manchester there are 10 growth sectors but 6 are described as thriving:
Our Key stage 4 and Key stage 5 curriculum is heavily influenced by Engineering, Construction, Sciences, Business and Computing as these are the sectors in which our young people are likely to be employed in the future. We tap into this network and have 135 external delegates who come into our school and inspire and guide our pupils. This area of curricular design then has allowed us to achieve extremely low NEET figures (way below national) for the last 6 years and ALL our DP went onto employment and/or education in 2017. At KS5 more of our legacy DP go onto Russell Group universities than our non-DP. Linking your curriculum to future life prospects and the real world will give pupils an emotional buy into school and help foster a positive culture of success. Also with the statutory changes to CIAG from January 2018 and the Gatsby Standards, we all need to think how we can be more inclusive and strategic within our curricular offer.
What about the hidden curriculum? ......
One of the major shifts we have made this year is that we have implemented a Pupil Premium promise which is essentially a life experience programme for our disadvantaged pupils. This runs along side the academic curriculum and is based on moral compass and developing the whole child. Statistically DPs have less life experiences than the non-DP so as school leaders we should provide equity here. Remember when you look back at your education all these years later it is not page 6 of the text book that you remember, it is the experiences that your teachers gave you. It is very often the ones that spanned outside of the classroom and made your learning come alive. Your hidden curriculum is equally as important.
Now the parting statement from the Headteacher talking about creating a Disney curriculum offer finished off with this question.
"What makes your curriculum offer so compelling that your school (colleagues and pupils) will sing it even when you are not there?"
In that question sits the biggest challenge!