Changes to the curriculum 2025

[toohotforjeans]

There is a review underway, headed by Becky Francis. The interim report was published in March 2025. The review is currently reviewing subject matter with the final report due to be published in Autumn 2025. Initially extensive changes were mooted, to do with "inclusivity", but last time I looked no information about changes to subject matter had been made available to the public, no information since March and the information in the interim report about proposed changes to subject matter was quite vague and wishy washy.

Is clear information about proposed changes now available?

Does anyone have any concrete information about what is going on?

Thanks

(NB The interim report did however highlight some problems such as the fact that 40 percent of 16 year olds are not at the required standard in maths and literacy, and around 16 percent of 16 years olds were not at the required standard expected of 11 year olds so is worth a read generally)

Can I ask where your evidence that children educated in the 60s did better is? Did all children do better? Or just that the ones at the top did? What about children with severe SEN? My dad’s description of primary school in the early 60s was that they were streamed and the bottom stream were basically just babysat and not taught anything. My understanding is also that a large percentage dropped out at 15, and younger before that (school leave age raised to 15 in the 60s I think?). They must have been educated really skilfully to do better than children do now despite mostly choosing to leave significantly younger…I wonder why we don’t just go back to those wonderful teaching methods from then?

Do you know how the exam boards decide if questions were easier or harder from year to year? They look at how the kids did on them, and then set the grade boundaries to maintain the proportion of kids who get each grade as about the same as the previous year. This is called comparable outcomes and protects against grade inflation.

No, she said evolution not revolution. She knows that the teaching profession isn't robust enough to manage a complete curriculum change from top to bottom.

Can't parents support children at home with the basics? Wild I know to expect some level of responsibility at home as schools are expected to do everything these days.

I find your response insulting. I care deeply about children and have over 30 years primary teaching experience in both the private and state sectors.
Not all privately educated children cope with the curriculum.
But you crack on and blame teachers.
I agree re behaviour - what suggestions do you have to resolve this?
The other issue is time. The current curriculum is so overcrowded (all subjects) there isn’t sufficient time to consolidate and practice key maths knowledge and skills.

Piaget’s stages of development.

Specific source - 2014 primary curriculum.
multiplying and dividing fractions in year 5
translating shapes year 6
Imperial to metric year 6

Where’s your evidence about children in private schools managing the maths curriculum better???

Omg I’d forgotten about metric and imperial conversions 😂 SUCH a waste of time. Who here multiplies inches by 2.54 (without a calculator) to convert to cm? And who gets their phone out to do it? Yet we expect 10 year olds to do these conversions on paper.

Well my quick Google suggested 84% of English words are phonetically decodable. I believe every word in my previous message was. You know phonics goes beyond the sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet right?

That is not how it is described on the gov website, and what you say doesn't justify 40 percent failing. So not sure what your point is? The gov website is really clear (obviously hasn't gone thru a bonkers review yet)

"phonetically decodable" is something for people studying linguistics at uni, not for primary school children.

could you link your source which you found by googling though, please? i would be interested to see it

i still think in miles, feet, inches and convert to metric when i have to
miles is definitely common parlance still. many older cook books which are still used don't use metric. other parts of the world don't use metric and making dc aware of that is okay. getting dc to do it in their heads is to improve mental arith which is extremely helpful when doing more complex matters later on.

No, she said revolution and then watered it down to evolution at some point.

So evolution to what exactly? Evolution to eventual revolution? Her end game remains the same?
If you know so much about it could you link the changes she wants to make now? Ta muchly

In terms of evidence - if you google it you will find a lot sources which indicate a far higher level of literacy from that period - just as studies show that 50 and 60 year olds (the next gen on) have higher levels of literacy than the current generation - Gove sought to try to reverse that to be fair (I am not a Conservative!) - literacy levels and education standards have dropped and dropped

But at the same time, yes it was higher overall but there were groups who were written off too, as I understand it. Was your dad in the lower stream, just out of interest? It wouldn't shock me if it had been as he said, I am really interested to know more. What was the difference in terms of teaching in relation to the top, middle streams?

I am not sure what you mean in relation to leaving age - there were higher standards across the board whether they left school at 15 or not? Sorry, just not catching why that is relevant as i talked about 40 percent failing at primary, and at 16 (which is only one year after 15)

Teaching methods - they were extremely strict and not creative, as I understand it. The progressives in the 60s wanted to cut out strict and only include creative. So in the 70s and 80s you saw primary schools totally cut any academic work and only concentrate on drama, art, etc. Which was disastrous and absolutely awful for most of the kids. Whereas it would be better for children to split the day, having part of the day strict and part of the day truly creative ie allowing self expression.

What they did do better was in terms of expectation and curriculum, and resources - I have grammar books from the 50s aimed at primary school children and they are amazing - more comprehensive, more interesting, more demanding, all useful

The fact that it was strict also needs careful thought. It was shaming and sometimes physical and unhealthy according to most sources, which we now consider to be so damaging it actually knocks out the benefit of literacy and maths competence. Strict is important but motivation and personal attention works a lot better than force and shaming. So that side of things was not good.

We know a lot now via research about how children's behaviour should be managed, to bring up happy but also responsible and aware children - this isn't being done in schools and there is no reason for it. We still see to much shaming. We know punishment doesn't work yet in senior school constant petty punishments are used - which stress kids out so much it affects their ability to learn.

I would be really interested to know more about what your dad said about his education at primary and then senior.

Well it would be really helpful if you would link to what you are talking about, but comparable outcomes is very much a policy.

It's this bit of the government website

"Exam boards set grade boundaries by analysing data about the students taking the qualification and comparing it with those that have taken it previously. This data is used to identify potential grade boundaries, which reflect whether students found the exam slightly harder or easier than the previous year."

How do they decide whether students found the exam slightly harder or easier than the previous year? They certainly don't poll them as they come out of the exam.

They expect a similar proportion of kids to achieve each grade each year. If they don't get the grades in the right proportions, that's the evidence that the paper is more difficult and the grade boundaries need to increase.

The scrutiny of work around the boundaries is a minor part of the process. They can use this to appeal to Ofqual if they think the grade boundary needs to be raised from the one that will give comparable outcomes, but Ofqual can say no.

E.g. Here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20664793
Or here
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/ofqual-forces-exam-board-raise-c-grade-boundary-maths-gcse
"Ofqual overruled this concern, arguing that data from individual schools and colleges was less significant than the statistical predictions, based on pupils’ attainment at age 11, which are used to set grade boundaries under the “comparable outcomes” approach."

No it isn't, not at GCSE. Because of the way grades are distributed.

Primary teacher here-I agree.

The bit you quoted is right. If you keep reading you will the bit about not affecting standards - as in, the changes do not ensure the same proportion or any set proportion of pupils will fail. Which is what the other poster said.

I think you are misunderstanding my posts and the post I was responding to.

You think a fixed proportion of students will fail each year?

@noblegiraffe Actually, I think you might be misunderstanding the principles generally. Do you think a fixed proportion each year will fail?

Yes. Because that is how it works.

Is it right? No. Is the system? Yes.

No my dad was in the top stream. He said the A and B stream were the only ones allowed to enter for the 11+ at his school - so essentially grammar school was cut off to half the kids at age 7 when they entered these streams at the start of junior school. (He then went to grammar school.) He had friends in the lower streams though including the bottom one which according to him was just playing. Obviously this information 3rd hand so I can’t guarantee how accurate it is!

I can’t be bothered doing lots of research on google in to education in the 1950s and 60s and literacy levels to be honest. Gove tried to take us back to a more traditional style of education. We’ve been doing it 11 years and I’ve never met a teacher who thinks it’s a good curriculum- the vast majority think it’s awful.

I know there is academic research (because I read it when training as a teacher) which demonstrates that phonics is the most effective method to teach reading. It works for the vast majority of children, better than sight words. Having taught hundreds of children to read using it, it really does work for most of them.

No, the proportion is not fixed, it is slightly flexible but the basic principle of comparable outcomes apply as a protection against grade inflation.

If loads of kids sitting an exam do really well, the conclusion will be that the paper was really easy.

The National reference tests let us know how relatively bright a cohort is compared to previous years and the grade boundaries are adjusted to reflect this, but you can see from the outcomes over the years that there is very little variation. (You can also see the impact of covid).