Mumsnet Talk

Yesterday the new proposed National Curriculum was revealed. It is a draft document that is open to consultation. I am horrified at some of the changes that are proposed and it would seem on some teaching forums others are too. Yet the story doesn't seem to be covered elsewhere. Why is this?

Details? Link? Is it a secret?

media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/n/national%20curriculum%20consultation%20-%20framework%20document.pdf

hope that works!

Ok - help me out - that document is over 200 pages long and I'm not a teacher - broadly what are the big issues?

Okay, the reason no one is commenting is because it is 221 pages. Also, it's for England.

Not everyone lives in England.

Can you sum up what worries you?

Will read it but it might take a while lol. What I want to know is WHY, when we're a country so in need of saving money, more of that money is being spent on overhauling something like this? Surely the one we had was good enough for now??!!!

Yes - you have a point. I guess it is too long and perhaps it is just my subject that has been affected.
Will read through the other subjects to see if IABU or if I am just looking at this in too narrow a perspective.

I reckon they made it that long on purpose so no one can feasibly read it & it will get passed without opposition. Without even reading it i can imagine the kind of crap Gove is going to force us to deliver in schools. What are the issues that concern you? X

I was linked to it before but at 200 odd pages didn't have time to go through it.

Why change it?

Because it's education. Politicians always have to fiddle in education. I have lost count of the initiatives and changes I have seen in education since I qualified in 2001.

And so many of them have gone. Been found to be pointless. But they were introduced with a fanfare and then lots of consultants did INSET training to tell us what the changes were.

It seems to be more fact based than skills based. Which I don't think is a good thing. Skills are essential - as well as facts and understanding.

OP please tell us why - even if it's just your subject - if people don't know YOU need to explain

There is a big big emphasis on England in KS3 History which will make us neglect some other stuff, thank God my subject is not included in the NC and is planned on a regional basis.

Read primary curriculum, seems to change us to a knowledge based curriculum which is what we were asked to move away from! Much more chalk and talk. To me it feels like Gove wants his own school days back. It is much more prescriptive in terms of topics for Science, Hist etc as to what must be taught each year. Not a fan but then anyone who changes schools into academies and says you don't need to be a teacher to teach is an ass!

a quick glance suggests my subject is still in there, even if we don't have a section of our own, so i'm happy. still got a job, until monday at least.

This is the KS2 History curriculum

early Britons and settlers, including:
the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages
Celtic culture and patterns of settlement
Roman conquest and rule, including:
Caesar, Augustus, and Claudius
Britain as part of the Roman Empire
the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire
Anglo-Saxon and Viking settlement, including:
the Heptarchy
the spread of Christianity
key developments in the reigns of Alfred, Athelstan, Cnut and Edward the Confessor
the Norman Conquest and Norman rule, including:
the Domesday Book
feudalism
Norman culture
the Crusades
Plantagenet rule in the 12th and 13th centuries, including:
key developments in the reign of Henry II, including the murder of Thomas Becket
Magna Carta
de Montfort's Parliament
relations between England, Wales, Scotland and France, including:
William Wallace
Robert the Bruce
Llywelyn and Dafydd ap Gruffydd
the Hundred Years War

life in 14th-century England, including:
chivalry
the Black Death
the Peasants’ Revolt
the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, including:
Chaucer and the revival of learning
Wycliffe’s Bible
Caxton and the introduction of the printing press
the Wars of the Roses
Warwick the Kingmaker
the Tudor period, including religious strife and Reformation in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary
Elizabeth I's reign and English expansion, including:
colonisation of the New World
plantation of Ireland
conflict with Spain
the Renaissance in England, including the lives and works of individuals such as Shakespeare and Marlowe
the Stuart period, including:
the Union of the Crowns
King versus Parliament
Cromwell's commonwealth, the Levellers and the Diggers
the restoration of the monarchy
the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London
Samuel Pepys and the establishment of the Royal Navy
the Glorious Revolution, constitutional monarchy and the Union of the Parliaments.

How do you cover all that content? Where are the skills? How do you make that relevant to primary school children?

That's a bit bigger than the current one.

How do you make it relevant?

The little begger's will love all the death and plague and wars 'n' stuff.

I'd love it, myself.

Soverylucky I was about to post the same - it's completely bonkers. I'd also point out that I went to a private prep school and we didn't cover a fraction of this (and nor do any private schools that I have come across recently).

Some topics could be quite interesting if taught well, e.g. Normans and the Civil War which aren't on the curriculum at the moment. However I really don't fancy having to interest 9 year olds in de Montfort's parliament.

What is also missing is the lives of everyday people, which is what children find most fascinating as they are able to compare and contrast with their own (particularly any gross/disgusting facts ala horrible histories).

It's also going to mean dropping ww2 which I find interests children the most as it is touchable - the people who were alive then are still here or only a generation away making it so much more interesting.

I loathe this government more than the words can say. ....But I teach dt, and I'm quite looking forward to teaching horticulture...I love gardening!

I utterly loathe and despise everything else this government and Gove have done.

We managed to cover all that when I was at primary school and more.

Mind you what was a 2 year O level syllabus (industrial revolution) is now just a 6 week module for GCSE

Things evolve.

Interesting. The History list seems v smilar to what my children are being taught in prep schools. Though their schools seem more interested in teaching stuff, rather than making it "fun", "interactive" etc. I know that all the fun stuff has its place, but my DC are at least well informed.

I think they'd be better off watching Horrible Histories through KS2.

Crikey - that's a lot of history to cover in KS2 Some fabulous history, but some quite boring fact based stuff that will not interest the average 10 year old at all. How to put off children at a young age IMHO.

Sounds interesting to me. The only history we did in primary was WW2

I read the History Curriculum as Greek and Roman history compulsory at KS2 and the rest should follow chronologically through KS2 and KS3.