Free school head without any teaching qualifications plans to ignore curriculum

[mrz]

m.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/mar/10/free-school-head-no-qualification

Confesses we use the NC to assess not APP.

Since the thread has moved from the appointment of an unqualified teacher to the post of headteacher to the proposed National Curriculum I will throw in this quote from a headteacher in my area
I?m not going to worry about the new draft primary curriculum as it will be presented as a skeleton document that will act as an outline. How and what we tailor to meet our children?s learning needs will be over to us ? what an opportunity!!!

Maybe I'm just feeling pessimistic, but isn't it the case that, however skeletal the curriculum, it will be the way that school performance is measured that determines how much freedom there is. If SATs are replaced by something equally high stakes, isn't it likely that timetables will continue to be dominated by those subjects that are tested? Btw, I am not saying that maths and English should not be the bedrock of what we teach at primary, but that teaching to the test happens whenever HTs'/schools' futures are at stake.

Ipad you were arguing that our current curriculum is knowledge based the following is my attempt to explain why it is most emphatically not. First it is not knowledge based in the sense that Hirsch or Gove would want or the successful Massachusetts curriculum is, or they would not be critical of it. However, I think you are arguing that it has sufficient knowledge in it to support the skills we aim to develop ? which is a slightly different issue.
First, any curriculum which assesses generic skill levels rather than knowledge contradicts the premise of cognitive psychology, that skills flow from fluency of knowledge. So as a history teacher I am expected to assess student?s growing understanding of ?causation? with levels that describe an ever more sophisticated understanding of causation, when in fact it is the material the student studies and the depth they study the material in that creates the difficulty. This is the same flawed assumption that has created havoc with my A level Politics teaching as previously outlined. Of course our current curriculum contains knowledge ? the issue is that it is written with the assumption that skills can be taught directly with the content little more than a vehicle to teach the skill. Now if as a teacher or a school you don?t necessarily have those assumptions you can still use our current curriculum without realising you are subverting the spirit of it!
Secondly, education discussion and inset are awash with arguments that education is to develop skills as knowledge can be googled. The argument is generally that the twenty first century will require different knowledge and so schooling should focus on skills. You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to have come across these arguments. They are very beguiling but one of the many arguments against this view is that it is not supported by cognitive psychology as skills flow from fluency of knowledge. You have only to look at Chris Quigley?s skills curriculum and many other popular ideas in primary education to come across these assumptions. They are pervasive within in our education system currently and that fact they stand on dodgy premises makes no difference. Anne Swift an NUT leader headlined with these arguments this Easter:
Anne Swift, from the union?s ruling executive, said action was needed to protect children from the ?grad-grind of a pub quiz curriculum?, saying children could use Google to access facts. ?I fear this proposed curriculum will mean teaching children to learn facts by rote, with inspectors turning up to test the children?s knowledge of the continents, chronological order in history and the times tables,? she said.
They are countered by Daisy Christodoulou here:
www.thecurriculumcentre.org/blog/2012/01/08/why-21st-century-skills-are-not-that-21st-century/
Ultimately the Gradgrind pub quiz view of a knowledge curriculum is a parody. As I said before no one in education denies the need for children to understand what they learn, really not even that devil Gove. A knowledge curriculum rejects the idea that ?twenty first century skills? can be taught and generally applied. A knowledge curriculum also aims at skills but is based on the idea that fluency of knowledge is required to demonstrate those skills which means content, its quality range and difficulty is important. That is in direct contradiction to the current curriculum as evidence in the way I am expected to assess.

Yes, the new curriculum is conscioulsy designed so you can teach it the way you want to. The belief is that it should not be role of the curriculum to define how you teach.

as was the current curriculum

very eloquent explanation beezmum

Are you talking about the Common Core State Standards beezmum?

MRZ perhaps I could explain that better. The current curriculum goes beyond giving all pupils access to a common body of essential content. For example the secondary science curriculum 'contexts' have become dominant displacing key knowledge and concepts. Contexts such as environment, specific industrial processes and atomic power can provide motivation to study and show relevance of conceptual material but they should not be listed in the curriculum because they can be systematically misleading and distracting, preventing the effective acquisition of underlying concepts. Wiliam and Black make this point, attending to the superficial aspects of pupil's work rather than the underlying conceptual development makes a poor curriculum. The teacher should be free to make the material relevant as they see fit. These argumetns are from Oates in his great article Could do Better. He poits out that our current curriculum is too context, rather than knowledge and concept led. Teachers should be free to make the material relevant as they choose.
BTW I didn't say in my last long post that a knowledge curriculum also focuses on knowledge to provide 'cultural literacy' and so its History, Geography and Science elements would be very clearly different from the current skills emphasis very clear in the current primary curriculums.

MRZ Not sure what you mean by the question. I was talking about a knowledge curriculum in general terms - the common core could be an example.

I can't really comment on the current secondary curriculum I'm afraid as it isn't something that I have experience of teaching but as far as the primary curriculum goes it provides a great deal of freedom to teach how and to a certain extent what you want as long as you cover the minimum requirements, which are just that "minimum".

You mentioned the Massachusetts curriculum and I wondered if you were referring to the Common Core Standards

The Common Core state standards look very similar to the progression through APP.

Looking at the grades 6+ history, the objectives look skills based. As they standards are supported by the Core Knowledge Foundation, it would appear that skills are taught alongside the 'knowledge' curriculum.

It seems to me that all primary age history is covered under 'reading of informational text' (which would give the opportunity for historical topic work) and that actual learning of history starts in high school.

It looks like something has been lost in translation in the new draft.

My knowledge of the Common Core is limited - I have read reaction to it but not enough. I do know that although Massachusetts has agreed to the Common Core this means watering down their current, very successful curriculum. So no, they are not the same.

And cheers Counting Clouds!

MRZ up thread posted a link with a really good explanation of the Massachusetts curriculum's implementation.

Didn't Massachusetts formally adopt the CCSS?

Yes, thats what I said - see my last. Common Core is not the successful knowledge curriculum that has led to Massachusetts current success.

so Massachusetts has abandoned a successful curriculum to adopt the CCSS?

But the Core Knowledge Schools (in MA and elsewhere) are using the CCSS?
...supported by Hirsch

That's what I thought but from your previous post I thought I must be mistaken

The CCSS sets out a bare minimum that children across the US should know. States can sign up to it and add further standards as they wish. Which Mass and other states have done. They also produce 'curiculum frameworks' which will go further than the CCSS and in the case of Massachusetts this would pretty much be their previous curriculum so signing up to CCSS wouldn't involve abandoning their curriculum or watering it down.

Thanks

Taking stock, it would appear that Annaliese et al have done a pretty poor job of telling Michael how things are going stateside (or else he hasn't listened to them).

It looks like the Hirsch Core Knowledge schools are using a knowledge-based curriculum, supported by the CCSS, much of which is skills based.
This doesn't fit in with Gove's sentiments about teaching 'skills'.

I feel now, that I should be more sympathetic of Pimlico going down the Core Knowledge route, as it seems to embrace both knowledge and skills.

Has Gove chosen to misinterpret the Massachusetts model in favour of nationalism?

I think it might be like Singapore maths. Something Gove has sad he likes but has never shown that he has any understanding of what it actually involves.