Our curriculums are too full, says Dylan Wiliam

[Piggywaspushed]

I love this article:

www.tes.com/news/dylan-wiliam-immoral-teach-too-full-curriculum

With all this concern (verging on panic), especially at year 10 end, about students missing out and needing to catch up when/if they return to school and dissatisfaction about remote learningand widening gaps, , and Amanda Spielman's frankly not that helpful comments yesterday , maybe it is time to think about the UK approach to learning and testing, and how much content we feel the need to stuff in to kids.

The bit that resonates is his comment about feedback.

Maybe there are some subjects which feel there is not an overload of GCSE content but the ones I teach have certainly overdone things to please Gove Ofqual.

Totally agree. We need to slow it down as well. Everything is such a rush which doesn't encourage understanding at all. I'm in the process of reviewing our Key Stage 3 curriculum. Fewer units of work with better understanding and writing for purpose not exam at that level as well.

And the push to start early and finish early and ram it all in because revision!

Agree completely - to cover our double award content ( science) for the less academic pupils involves new material EVERY lesson- and scrabbling around for opportunity to also reflect and consolidate. This is despite the fact they start their gcse in yr 9. It’s hugely frustrating , exhausting for everyone and the cause of behaviour issues because it’s so damaging to self confidence. I’m busy trying to pare down our KS3 curriculum at the moment to give us some breathing space so we can get the key skill stuff into the kids earlier and give ourselves a head start.

The MFL content is definitely skewed towards highly academic pupils. We need to be doing it properly in primary schools like they do in other countries for the average child to be this good. I feel like I am on a runaway train at times. Never mind fighting the attitude that no-one needs to be able to speak a language.

I teach primary, not secondary, but yes to there being too much stuffed in and the expectation that every lesson will contain new learning. I'd love it if they overhauled the curriculum, even though it would mean all change AGAIN, because despite all the rigour, some children are still leaving year 6 well below where they should be and there are some who leave feeling they've achieved little, just because their skills lie in something that's not really taught in schools or the time/budget isn't there to do it justice, like woodwork or embroidery or song writing.

Totally agree. I really enjoy the time I'm in school now (primary) as we can take something the children are interested in and go with it rather than constantly saying there is no time. History, science and geography should also be taught each week and not alternate terms because they are squeezed out by maths and English and teachers should be free to choose the topics from a suggested list with no requirement to cover all of them.

Is it really necessary to spend all morning every day doing Maths and English ?

tad: sadly, I can only see that attitude strengthening now it looks like no one will be travelling anywhere for a while. My DS, who is brilliant at Spanish, is already rethinking his degree choice.

piggy nooo! When we are let out, think of all those fabulous South and Central American countries he can visit. Not to mention all those linguists we need to negotiate for all that PPE.

What a lot of people struggle to get their heads around is that hardly anyone finishes the maths curriculum. Instead of having to rush to squeeze everything in, we concentrate on making sure they can do what is within their reach well. So I’d have to explain to my set 7 that although trig would be appearing on the foundation paper, I had decided not to teach them it as it would take too long, they’d struggle with it anyway and the time would be better spent improving their understanding of ratio.

Obviously in maths you also get kids at the top end. In the pre-Gove days they usually did an extra GCSE, now that’s all in the normal GCSE, which puts pressure on everyone else.

What if in English you said to some kids ‘we are going to study one text really well instead of two texts badly? I suppose that’s the reasoning behind double and triple science?

I don’t know how it is with maths - do you know which topics will always come up? In science we have no idea what factual content will come up so to some extent there is always a fear if you drastically cherry pick you could get really caught out. Within one topic that is about essentially hormones for instance , they could get 12 marks based around sugar control or 12 marks on the kidney or on the menstrual cycle . It’s possible to leave out the harder calculations, but to leave out whole sections of topics is a leap of faith . However , that’s not to say it wouldn’t be worth sitting down with the syllabus and thinning it in a thoughtful way rather than just flinging ourselves through it doing our best which is how I feel now. I’m sure with some thought we could target the required practicals and graph skills etc around those and probably the kids would do just as well if not better. I don’t feel this way about the triple syllabus - I like the content and it is busy but doable , it’s the less academic pupils who have really ended up with the short stick and I think it’s been a contributing factor to our uptick in behaviour issues in the last couple of years.

There’s generally a good coverage of topics so bits of most things come up, but if you’re aiming for a grade 4 on Foundation you need about 60% of the marks. If trig comes up it’s going to be worth about 3% tops so it’s just not worth the weeks it would take when they still might not get it right as it’s difficult.

It’s quite hard training kids to understand that they might not be able to attempt a large proportion of the paper and still get a good grade (on higher they could not answer 3/4 of the paper and get a 4).

As a parent, I always think science especially (and RS) has so much STUFF in it. I did biology up to AS type level Scottish Highers) and some of the stuff DS did for GCSE is stuff I did aged 17. He is not a triple scientist, although I think this is the harder content.

What if in English you said to some kids ‘we are going to study one text really well instead of two texts badly? : you couldn't do that. It's all skills assessed. So ,they might know a text inside out but still only maybe pick up three or four extra marks 9(e up half a band) through better practice and feedback and would lose 34 marks by missing out a text. It just needs the content slimming.
This is lit , of course. Eng Lang is not really taught in the same way and is terribly dull but doesn't really need 'cutting'.

Tis is truetad. His skills might be required via Zoom meetings!

some of the stuff DS did for GCSE is stuff I did aged 17

When the new GCSE came in they pulled some A level content down to combined science GCSE (in physics at least).

One of my child attend a specialist school and she has complex needs. They can go back over stuff which is fantastic unlike her special needs sibling who is In mainstream where it is covered once and they have to rush to cover everything.

I would love to see a return to there being coursework in GCSEs rather than so much focus on the final exam. What you learn and work you do during the first term of Year 10 should be counted towards the final grades rather than having to go over that same work again and again in order to know it for the all important final exams. Bring back modular GCSEs. Most of mine were half term modules (6 weeks) - learn something, get tested on it and move on to something else.

Doesn't surprise me ocean.

@OceanOrchid The same is true for biology- things like protein synthesis, enzyme denaturing etc used to be a-level only, now a lot more is crammed in at GCSE.

I agree with the science teachers on the thread- there is a huge amount of content in even Combined Science GCSE. The amount of new language they have to learn is equivalent to the amount of language in MFL GCSEs, which makes it really hard for lower ability students.

For example, by the time you have learnt the parts of the endocrine system and the hormones they produce, that's easily 20 new words on its own- which is fine in isolation, but you have to do this for multiple organ systems and plants as well. And that might only get you two marks on the exam, or none at all, but it might also get you 10 and you can't guess which ones will be asked about!

Obviously there is higher only content, but beyond this it is impossible to cut whole sections of the curriculum out because only about 1/3 of the curriculum is assessed on each exam paper, and you can't really know what that 1/3 will be.

There are a huge amount of random facts squashed into the curriculum as well- things like digitalis comes from foxgloves, wallace did research on mating behaviour in birds type things. I think if you want to go into that level of detail, you need to cover less stuff- or cover what we do, but accept that most students will only get a broad overview of the content.

I genuinely don’t understand why there isn’t proper consultation with actual working teachers before they do these things- or do they ask teachers and I’m just out of the loop? When they took away the physics equation sheet and asked everyone regardless of aptitude to memorise 15+ equations- why did they do that? What was the rationale? I can see in the new science exams that they are pushing broader skills like data analysis but if that’s what you think is important why also make it this insane memory test as well? Is anyone taking feedback on curriculum changes? I don’t know if it is as ad hoc and uncoordinated as it feels on the sharp end or if I am just not involved in educational conversations happening outside of the bubble of my own school.

I agree. I teach Science and I am second in faculty so massively involved in curriculum development.

I have just finished doing the KS3 one with my KS3 co-ordinator and it's huge! Even spread over 3 years there is no wiggle room

There is so much said about embedding deep knowledge, live marking and re-teaching. All of which would be great if you actually had any spare time.

The whole curriculum is geared to high ability pupils. Of course these students should absolutely be challenged but for those who are less academic it's a nightmare. Some of my bottom set this year didn't have the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy yet I was trying to get them through double Science GCSE which has so much technical vocabulary and maths plus all the Science they need to know.

@pumpkinPie2016 that’s so sad to read. My dd has autism and we can’t find a school locally that really suits her. So she’s having to go to a mainstream school. I dread the lack of flexibility within the curriculum.

Bearing in mind the cur5e5 situation,nodular GCSEs would have made our lives a darn sight easier getting GCSE grades accurate, wouldn't it.

I think there's too much content for many kids.

It's fine for the top end. But there's large numbers of children this current system is categorically failing. Aspiration is great, but some of my lads are farmers. That's what they're going to do. Why are they doing 12 GCSEs they hate and will get low grades in.

Core subjects only. Vocational training. Day release to colleges. Keep these kids engaged, help them go in the direction they want to.

Everything in schools pushes people into academic subjects, and doesn't promote the arts, trades etc. I can't help but think it's not helping lots of our kids.

How the hell we change it I have no idea though. I just feel for the "square pegs in round holes" in so many of my lessons.

I teach a very low ability set of Yr 11s. They are so used to being told they are wrong, or that they can't do something. The best lesson I ever had with them was a double lesson where we identified electrical hazards in a picture, learnt to wire a plug, and made public information films after I showed them scary ones from the 1970s. They could all do it, they had fun and they learnt why putting knives in a toaster is a bad idea.

It would have got them three marks tops in an exam.

It makes me sad when you have to choose between trying to teach high-level concepts that might come up but are beyond their grasp, or things which engage and interest them and they can understand. And it shouldn't be like this.

@guyFawkesDay fantastic post!