The English National Curriculum is being reviewed: why?

As the National Curriculum for England is under review, our Global Advisory Board Member, Professor Mick Waters, former Head of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA), shares his thoughts on why the new curriculum should ensure children are ready to face their futures and become confident, enthusiastic, responsible, ethical people. 

Mick is a renowned educator, author and researcher; former Chief Education Officer for Manchester and current President of the Curriculcum Foundation. 

The new government in UK has set up a review of the English national curriculum. It is ten years since the last review and it will be another two years at least before any changes are made to what children are expected to learn in school.

Many parents will wonder why a review is needed. Surely maths is maths and science is science. That’s true in that most of the big ideas and concepts stay the same but our world evolves at such a pace and of course we want our children to be ready to face their futures.

A decade ago, Artificial Intelligence was not the phenomena it is now. Our understanding of climate change wasn’t as great as it is today, and we hadn’t had the experience of a global pandemic for nearly a century. We don’t necessarily need these sorts of issue in the school curriculum but we do need to recognise that each of these developments and others helps to inform what society needs to ensure people become experts. So, degree courses in universities need to be amended and the learning the young people do in school has to be adapted. Digital technology, microbiology, astro-physics and earth science have their roots in the school curriculum.

Much of the school curriculum drops down from university degrees with routes to examinations being planned out in the courses children follow in school. With many international schools using the English A level courses, they need to be sure that the curriculum planned for their children is tracked through in terms of progression in learning through the schooling years.

Events that develop skills and knowledge

The curriculum isn’t all about getting to the examination. Parents with children in Globeducate schools will know of the range of opportunities that are available in the wider curriculum. Globeducate runs many inter-school activities ranging from debating to Olympiads to Music Festivals and Model United Nations conferences; events designed to develop skills including critical thinking and communication, and to encourage creativity and collaboration. Many of these events also help students to comprehend some of the issues the world faces at local, national and global levels. Globeducate´s events around the group´s Global Agenda align with knowledge about sustainability and partnering with WWF-UK and Eco-Schools helps to reinforce the curriculum.

Most schools offer a full programme of experiences that give children an understanding of what it is like to take part, compete, contribute and adventure. It is in these sorts of experiences that children see the point of much of the learning they do in their classrooms. Indeed, the school curriculum is more than lessons; it shows itself in the events that schools organise and in the routines of the school itself as children learn to manage themselves, take responsibility and make a difference to their community and their world.

When children cook, they are using their science and mathematics in context. When they make a working model, technology comes alive. When they follow a guided walk or visit a museum, their history and geography make sense.

Foundations in play

Our youngest children see the world not in subjects but in terms of ‘things to do’. It is why teachers of young children use play to get children to meet new challenges and try new experiences, gradually structuring more formal learning as children become more adept and more secure in formal teaching situations. Threading beads, weaving, painting, playing with sand or water, building with bricks are all the foundations, well used, of the more formal subjects later on, developing children’s co-ordination, insight, spatial awareness, language and ability to communicate.

The curriculum is a complex beast, serving so many agendas. That’s why it takes a long while to review and get as right as we can for this generation of children. We want them to grow up as confident, enthusiastic, responsible, ethical people. They are the next generation of geographers, historians, mathematicians, technologists and linguists. They are also future scientists, inventors, health officials, designers, astronauts, sports stars, entertainers and politicians. Our new curriculum will need to give them every opportunity. Our schools will have to take the opportunity presented.

To read more about the Curriculum Review, click here

To read Mick´s blog "Mathematics for everyone... every day", click here 

To read more about the National Curriculum for England on our Globeducate website, click here