So has anyone else heard the rumour about the govt's plans for the National Curriculum

interesting isn't it. Will we go back to the days where schools cater for the community they are in, so primarily secondary moderns teaching hairdressing and mechanics to the poorer kids and academic schools catering for future IT consultants or accountants in the richer areas. how will kids be able to move outside of their social setting. It's a little worrying especially with the Academies idea where schools are supported by local partners, who will further influence the direction of the curriculum to suit their own local needs. Whilst clearly not all children need to learn German or art history, there is a richness in allowing kids the chance to glimpse a subject that they might have no other access to and which could spark a whole new direction for them. we need to go back to the fundamentals of why we put children in schools at all, is it prepare them as a future work force, open their minds to the possibilities within the world, or simply keep them entertained enough that they don't want to hang around the streets. It all relies in the quality of the head teachers

Less prescription will be a good thing, I think. Scotland has no national curriculum and IMO the system there is stronger, having taught in both countries. I haven't properly delivered Curriculum for Excellence, mind you, though I was trained in it and (barring administration and other issues) it always seemed like a very positive move to me.

However, no levels is a bit odd and schools will probably still use the old ones anyway. What a waste of money on APP, eh? I was just getting used to it, too.

gaelic, yes I am in scotland.

The Curriculum for Excellence isn't even a curriculum. Mike Russell admitted it recently when he said iy should have been called a 'methodology' not a 'curriculum'.

It is purely about money. Successive govts haven't funded a decent education system for a very long time (if ever in some areas/schools).

The thing that gets me is that they always quote Sweden as a shining example of these wonderful new free schools. Yet Sweden has gone shooting down the international league tables since the free schools were introduced and every Swedish parent or teacher I have spoken too is devastated at the way the education system has been wrecked. And the newspapers are full of stories of disaffected young people and disruption at school. I am reading the same kind of stories there that you read about English sink schools in the 70s.

The country that has stayed at the top of the league tables is Finland where they have a more traditional standardised system of teaching.

But the Tories don't tell you this, do they?

Pointydog - are you in Scotland? The CfE sounds like utter madness to me and I'm fuming that my son is going to be subjected to it. The English govt (so far as education goes) would be crazy to follow suit.

Independent schools also do well without the strictures because, in the case of independent schools, market forces apply the strictures.

As cory says, there are no such forces in place for not-so-great state schools. Someone has to go there. There is very limited "choice", and voting with your feet is not a real option for many.

Are free schools going to step in and fill the gap of pressure? Some yet-to-materialise body of altruists willing to put in masses of effort in a not-for-profit venture? Or vast bodies (as opposed to a few hundred) of energetic, determined, and qualified/suitably-skilled parents going to leap into the gap?

Somehow I doubt it. I think I share cory's worries.

Certainly independent schools appear to do very well without its strictures.

No, Independent schools do well because they select by academic ability and commitment to parental involvement (to the tune of over £10k per year)
If you put Eton's teachers and systems in charge of Yob Central down the road from me, they'd not last five minutes.

I think you presume wrongly, cammelia. No prescriptive curriculum here. I wish.

Presumably there will still have to be a prescriptive curriculim but not a national curriculum. The nat curr was to ensure that all children were learning same stuff at same time so if you moved schools you wouldn't repeat or miss out .

When I was moving schools every 2 years as RAF brat I would have to do same stuff sometimes and prob missed out on some stuff.I still passed 11+ (the real deal old stylee one) and went to grammar school and got a good degree.

Surely the change is not about a change of standards as such except to allow them to improve ?

What teachers do best is teach, not write a curriculum.

Hmmmmm...I'm not a fan of the NC or the stranglehold the state seems to want over the curriculum. I feel it hampers excellent teachers and bores many kids.

Certainly independent schools appear to do very well without its strictures.

So in theory I will be glad for somehting far less prescriptive, and to allow teachers to do what they do best.

However, as Cory says, bad teachers will now have little to keep them in check.

Being in the catchment for a secondary whose management is already very anti-academic and whose GCSE results are appalling, I am not happy about this. It will just give them free hands, since they clearly don't care about what happens to the students after KS3. I went to their Open Evening when the new regime took over and it was all about making school less threatening for parents and pupils who do not enjoy academic subjects. Not a hint that academic subjects might actually be good for anything. It was clearly their attitude that going to university is not something people from our area should be doing.

It is easy to say, choose another school- but that depends on there being spaces at other schools. Ds tells me not a single pupil in his year has put the catchment school on their application form, even as a third choice- but of course the vast majority of them will end up having to go there, because it's the only catchment school and all the neighbouring schools are ridiculously oversubscribed.

It's pointless saying that they will have to change their ways when things go tits up: pupils still have to go to the school because there is no alternative, the other schools do not have spaces. If there is nothing to be measured against, who is going to tell them they are failing? (until everybody fails to get into university because they only have hairdressing and media studies in their GCSEs and no maths and English- by which time it will be too late for those students).

The only thing that has been keeping some sort of order in our local school has been the National Curriculum and the fear of Ofsted. Remove that, and children from our ward will simply not be going to university.

It is the first time I am glad my children are disabled, because it is their only chance of escaping this place.

SEF is navel gazing
SIP is box ticking
OFSTED worry more about "safeguarding children" (but nobody knows what from) than dealing with poor teaching.
NC means that teachers C&P lesson plans off the net.
All children pass every exam with 50% of students getting A grades in some subjects (A level Chemistry last year)

A bit of deregulation and open competition will allow teachers to teach rather than churn and will highlight the good teachers.

BUT
I'd still like the basic results and VA figures to be published as it keeps everybody on their toes

the interesting missing statistic is how the top 50 kids at every school did
THEN you would see a leveling between comps / grammars and private

Whilst I want to allow schools to move forward without being hindered with red tape, there is a major problem here. That is that the assumption is being made that all heads and SMT are wonderful and are good leaders. That is plainly not always true.

The very schools that are forced to do a SEF and a SIP by the current regs etc and do it poorly and under sufferance are exactly the schools that will not do them at all in the future. That will not make them a better school it will make them a worse school.

Now if someone (Ofsted if they have also not been abolished) comes along and says this is a rubbish school you are failing and the head / SMT / Governing Body is sacked in its entirety then that is OK but I am not convinced that is going to happen.

fgs

I was on a Dept for Education inset last Friday and we were told pretty much this....deconstruction of the NC - freedom from prescription in that regard, gone is the SEF, haven't heard anything about the SIP, loss of league tables (unless the media take the published information and create their own)...

Yes, all responsibility goes on to the school. And as there is no curriculum, the teachers have to write that in their spare time. Very inefficient, of course, due to the repetition of the same work going on in every school.

A thought has just occured to me.

This clears the decks for the Govt to take on the teaching unions?

No SATs to disrupt so no leverage for the strikers and the threat of unqualified teachers and TAs can be brought in without PGCEs and who do not have to know the national curriculum to replace any strikers.