Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
LESLEY JAMES,
MICK WATERS,
ROBERT WHELAN
AND DR
BEN WILLIAMSON
4 JUNE 2008
Q1 Chairman: I welcome our witnesses
this morning: Lesley James, Mick Waters, Robert Whelan and Ben
Williamson. We are grateful for their help in launching our inquiry
into the National Curriculum. We will benefit a great deal from
looking at the history of our National Curriculum, going back
to 1870. It is interesting to trace it through its various manifestations.
I was at a seminar recently on social mobility, and one of the
presentations was on the Curriculum. A very distinguished researcher
talked about how embedded in the Curriculum these days is the
numeracy and literacy hour, only to be told by a senior representative
of the Department that that ceased to be part of the Curriculum
six years ago. I thought that that was quite interesting. That
was just a slight variation. We tend to slip to first names, not
titles. Is it all right, Ben, if we do not call you Dr Williamson?
Dr Williamson: Yes.
Q2 Chairman: It adds to the informality
of our proceedings and makes them formal, but informal. Everything
is on webcam today and, of course, is recorded by Hansard.
I shall start with you, Lesley. Do we need a curriculum?
Lesley James: Yes, we do need
a curriculum. Teachers appreciate having a framework that they
can fill in with what they think should be covered and say how
it should be covered. A framework is a very helpful start.
Q3 Chairman: The independent sector
does not have to stick to a National Curriculum, and it seems
to manage all right.
Lesley James: Yes. During the
past 10 or 15 years working at the Royal Society for the Encouragement
of the Arts, I have learnt from my discussions with teachers that,
although they may have felt at one stage that there was too much
prescription in the National Curriculum when it started, they
now feel that there is value in a framework. It shows the breadth
that students should expect to receive when they are at school
and how they can work as they like within that framework.
Q4 Chairman: Do you think that most
children in our schools get a fair bite at the National Curriculum?
Lesley James: I think that they
get a fair bite, but whether they can take best advantage of it
is another matter. There are issues around that, but one would
hope that they get a fair bite at it.
Q5 Chairman: So you are in favour
of a National Curriculum. Is it perfect or would you like to see
some fundamental changes in it?
Lesley James: It is clear, although
some schools choose not to take advantage of it. However, I would
like to see it made even clearer that schools have quite a lot
of freedom in how they teach the National Curriculum. I should
like to see that developed further in discussion with schools,
and their thinking becoming more imaginative so that they look
at where their school is, what their student population is and
so on. They can then teach in the most appropriate way rather
than feeling that there is a set way of teaching that may, or
may not, be appropriate for their students.
Chairman: Thank you Lesley. We
will drill down on a lot of those things in a minute. Mick, I
know that you have a vested interest, even more of a vested interest
than I have as a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Several other members of the
Committee also have such a vested interest. However, you have
more of a vested interest in the Curriculum than most of us.
Mick Waters: Yes.
Q6 Chairman: So, you are going to
say that we need it, are you not?
Mick Waters: I am going to say
that our role at the QCA is to offer authoritative advice to the
Secretary of State on the future of the Curriculum, and information
about where the Curriculum should go next. Our work at the QCA
over the past few years has focused on helping the Government
to achieve their intention of creating a world-class education
system, and on demonstrating how a curriculum can make a difference
to children's outcomes and schools' performance. We have tried
to develop a conversation that encourages schools to think about
how the Curriculum is the entire planned learning experience for
children, bringing together lessons, subjects, events that children
take part in, routines, out-of-school life, and the work that
children do beyond and outside school. It is the entirety of that
experience that creates the opportunity for the future. Our work
has shown us that there is consensus about the need for a curriculum
of the nation. That consensus tells us that a good curriculum
is built around clear aims and goals for children, bringing together
knowledge, skills and understanding, and personal development
in a coherent pathway for learners, and fulfilling the five outcomes
of the Every Child Matters agenda within the Children's Plan.
There is a growing consensus that the centre should outline the
map of learning and the opportunities to which young people should
have an entitlement; and that locally, according to diversity
and need, schools should be able to determine how that curriculum
is designed. We therefore set about helping schools and communities,
working through stakeholders, to think about how the Curriculum
should be designed. We have worked with governors, local authorities,
parents, communities, the higher and further education fraternities
and schools themselves, in thinking through innovative ways to
design a curriculum by looking at innovation in a disciplined
sense and demonstrating impact. We have built up evidence that
shows the different ways in which the Curriculum can be approached.
Our view is that young people should be able to fulfil their potential,
according to their diversity and their needs, through a curriculum
that makes learning absolutely irresistible.
Q7 Chairman: Mick, when was the Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority invented?
Mick Waters: In its various forms,
the QCA has existed since 1988.
Q8 Chairman: That was with the Education
Reform Act 1988?
Mick Waters: Yes, that Act brought
about, through the National Curriculum Council, the original National
Curriculum. Since then my organisation has had various names,
and 10 years ago, it became the QCA.
Q9 Chairman: Now that we have the
history, the reform in 1988, then the founding of your organisation,
and then quite major curriculum changes in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005—it goes on—are
those changes your fault, or do the Government keep changing their
mind?
Mick Waters: The change that is
needed is the gradual development of a curriculum that evolves
to meet the needs of society, while maintaining the traditional
benefits of a strong curriculum basis. When we began the Curriculum
in the 1980s, there was widespread disagreement, first about whether
we needed it, but then about what should be in it. Since everybody
decided that they knew what should be in it, we ended up with
something that was fuller than could possibly be achieved. Successive
reviews have tried to make sense of that early beginning, and
we are now at the point where—through the latest review
of the secondary curriculum and the ongoing work in the primary
curriculum—there is recognition that broad parameters need
to be established, but that there needs to be work that looks
at helping schools and other institutions to make sense of the
Curriculum for their youngsters, through clever and careful design
that has the necessary impact. The gradual change to the Curriculum
has come about, because there is a need to prepare young people
for a changing world—for a future that is different. If
you compare the society in which we live with that of 20 years
ago, you will see massive marked changes in the diversity of the
population, in the approach to technology and in the economic
situation of this country, which means that the Curriculum needs
to keep shifting to help youngsters to be prepared for their future.
While we are preparing them for the future, we need to offer them
the best possible present. Children need the best childhood and
the best chances to establish the joy in learning, the love of
learning and an understanding of the opportunities of learning
to carry them through to that future. That balance between the
future and the present must be considered in creating the Curriculum.
It should therefore keep changing and shifting. One of the decisions
that we have to make is whether we should regularly have these
major overhauls or whether the Curriculum should be reviewed and
evolve gradually as we go along. That is why many would argue
that a big map is more important than a small detail.
Q10 Chairman: Thank you for that,
Mick. Robert, you take an opposing view of the National Curriculum.
Is that because you do not like the idea of a national curriculum
or because you do not want it to be enforced on every child in
the state sector?
Robert Whelan: I do not like the
idea of a national curriculum as it is currently established.
As you said in your introduction, there has been a sort of national
curriculum since 1870, when the Government became involved with
education. When spending taxpayers' money there has to be some
accountability. For example, nobody would want to think that children
are going to schools where no maths is taught. However, the current
National Curriculum, which has been the subject of controversy
for some years, is quite different from the old system of goals
and inspections under which schools used to work. The Curriculum
has become highly prescriptive and subject to political interference,
hence the constant changes. Staff are demoralised by all those
changes and by the prescriptive nature of a curriculum that often
prevents them from teaching in the way that they feel, as professionals,
is best for the children. The sort of National Curriculum that
we have is undermining the professional status of teachers and
governors and treating them as if they cannot be left to decide
what is best for the children in their care. I would rather go
back to the old system under which the governors are in charge
of the school. If something outrageous happens, there should be
powers for the state to intervene, but such things are very rare.
On the whole, I think that boards of governors, heads and staff
are the best people to decide what the children in their school
need to know.
Q11 Chairman: Thank you. Ben Williamson,
all I know about Futurelab is that you are innovative, that you
have hesitations about the traditional curriculum, but that you
would still like a curriculum. Is that correct?
Dr Williamson: Yes, I certainly
think that there should be a national curriculum of some sort.
The National Curriculum allows children to learn a variety of
perspectives and ways of looking at the world, comprehending it,
understanding it and making sense of it as they grow up. Those
become important ways of negotiating the world in adulthood. Recently,
we have been exploring the lack of context that comes with a national
curriculum and centralised prescription. What is often noted and
argued by teachers is that a national curriculum takes no account
of the sensitivities of local communities and areas. Often, it
does not change in line with changes in society. We end up with
a curriculum that is essentially decontextualised and which perhaps
seems increasingly irrelevant to children as they experience it
and to teachers as they attempt to deliver it. The other issue
is delivery. Schools under pressure are often doing good work.
However, the standard model that operates though a large number
of schools is that teachers are under pressure to deliver a body
of content to a certain number of children in a certain amount
of time. There is a process of squeezing that in and delivering
it. It is assumed that children can receive that content and repeat
it at some later point under examination. Those are some of the
problems with the curriculum.
Q12 Chairman: What do you think of
the people who say that having a whole range of subjects that
must be counted in a national curriculum is far less important
than delivering skills in different ways of learning and in opening
up subjects, such as conducting an analysis? Whether they are
modern skills or traditional, they are more important than the
subject matter of the curriculum.
Dr Williamson: I do not think
that they are more important. The two have to be seen together.
If we are talking about thinking skills and so on, we cannot think
without thinking about something. There must be something to think
about. An inquiry cannot be carried out without there being something
to inquire into. We need to look at what skills and processes
children might need to acquire to equip them both now, as young
people growing up, being educated and thriving in a social world,
and later for adult life. What sort of skills might equip them
for the workplace? We need to put that alongside questions about
content and what sorts of knowledge are being taught in schools.
Those things cannot be taught separately. If we focus simply on
skills, that becomes another body of content which all children
have to acquire. That is not an adequate response to the overloading
of knowledge.
Q13 Chairman: The week before last,
the Committee looked at the foundation stage. There are a whole
set of skills in those early years; pre-school, pre-kindergarten
and kindergarten—that is very important for ages up to five.
Central to that is a whole range of skills, including working
with one another and teamwork. There are many very important issues
around children developing and testing their abilities. Is that
not as important post-five and post-11 as it is in the early years?
Dr Williamson: I think that it
is. I work mainly with secondary schools, and most of the teachers
to whom I talk are very conscious that those skills of working
together continue to require rebuilding and modelling from a teacher's
perspective. Those skills are essential. You are talking about
what are often perceived as the softer skills—I do not like
that term, as it implies that they are not particularly important.
They are crucial skills, but I do not think that they can be taught
entirely in isolation from some sort of knowledge content, whether
that is prescribed from one of the subjects or comes from a wider
realm of social experience.
Q14 Chairman: But Lesley, you are
more discontent about the subject matter. You are more interested
in skills, are you not?
Lesley James: With the Opening
Minds project, we wanted to ensure that for at least part of the
time during which the students were at school, there was space
for those skills to be developed so that students were aware of
what was happening. When we first started talking to schools about
Opening Minds and competencies, they said, "We are doing
that already—we already teach students those skills".
We then asked them whether the students knew that they were developing
those skills, and whether they knew that they were important.
The response that we received was largely, "No, because they
are done if we have time; they are squeezed in at the margins".
Beginning with Key Stage 3, we wanted to ensure that there was
a clear focus within the classroom on students developing skills
such as team-working, knowing how to communicate with different
people, and working to deadlines—either self-imposed or
imposed by others. They were doing that within a body of knowledge,
and our experience has shown that both can be done. When students
start secondary school there may be more emphasis on developing
those skills, but over time that emphasis shifts. However, the
body of knowledge is always needed to develop those skills. It
is not an either/or situation, and we have tried to stress that
during all the time that we have worked on this. It is possible
to do both.
Chairman: Right. Well, thank you for
that. We will ask the same questions in different modes for the
whole morning, but now we are going to drill down on many of those
issues. Douglas, you are going to open up the questioning.
Q15 Mr Carswell: You seem quite clear
that we should have a state-defined curriculum. Those who favour
that argue that it would improve educational outcomes. However,
we know that independent schools that are not forced to teach
the National Curriculum—regardless of whether, de facto,
they end up doing so because they choose to—do better than
those that are forced to. There seems to be a clear correlation
between less state prescription as to how and what people should
teach, and their achieving more. Surely we should therefore look
to give every school the sort of freedom and flexibility that
today, only schools for rich people have?
Mick Waters: That is an interesting
point. The correlation between the independent school and the
outcome might be around curriculum, but it might equally be around
a whole series of other factors. We need to think carefully about
the extent to which schools have flexibility within the current
expectations of a National Curriculum. As Lesley and Ben said,
there is considerable confusion at times within schools about
what is expected, what is demanded and is what is in their choice.
A lot of schools talk about needing permission to move on and
develop. Our work over the last three years has shown that where
schools really understand the expectation, demands and opportunities
within the Curriculum, they can exploit it fundamentally. We are
seeing quite a groundswell of activity in schools around constructing
a curriculum. It brings together those various facets: lessons,
events, routines and what children do outside and beyond lessons.
Just as in the independent sector, these facets are being exploited
by schools across the state system. A good curriculum is something
that we as a nation should treasure. We should applaud the efforts
made to help young people experience a commonality of enjoyment
in education, and we should balance skills with subject knowledge
and with personal development in a way that creates coherence
for learners, whoever they are.
Q16 Mr Carswell: Robert, how do New
Model School Company schools organise their curriculum?
Robert Whelan: When we set up
the New Model School four years ago, one of the reasons why we
decided to make it a completely independent school, with no state
funding, was that we felt passionately that the curriculum was
key to everything. The two principles on which we operate are
low fees and good curriculum. Actually, the good curriculum is
more important than the low fees, although the parents are more
interested in the low fees. But we chose to be independent because
we felt that what you teach and how you teach it are critical
to the success of a school. We decided to start the school by
building up year by year, just with reception in the first year,
then reception and year 1, and now we have year 2. Next year we
will have year 3.We wanted to find out what is available in each
area of the Curriculum and what is the best material available.
If there is a gap, then as publishers—Civitas is a publisher—we
could bring out our own materials. We felt really passionately
about retaining control of what we are teaching. We do not see
ourselves as Mr Gradgrind, with fact, fact, fact. They have to
understand the culture and all the values of a humane liberal
education.
Q17 Mr Carswell: Do you think that
teaching without reference to the National Curriculum allows for
the local circumstances and the particularities of a demographic
who attend the school to be better catered for than if it were
a National Curriculum?
Robert Whelan: Yes, I think that
that is true of every school. We have only one full-time school
at the moment, which is in Kensal Town in north-west London, but
we have a dozen supplementary schools that operate in different
parts of the country for children from deprived areas. So our
experience of the Curriculum is not just middle-class children
from homes where the parents are highly educated themselves. We
are teaching 320 children at the moment from quite deprived backgrounds
who have English as a second language. You do have to be able
to focus on what they need to know to progress. For example, most
of the children when they come to us cannot read. We are dealing
with seven, eight and nine-year-olds who cannot read and we take
the view that until they can read, they cannot access any area
of the curriculum. So the first few months, it might be reading
all the time, but once you have cracked that problem you can move
on to other things like history and science.
Q18 Mr Carswell: You said that the
New Model School Company runs supplementary schools for pupils
whose needs are not met by the maintained schools that they attend.
Do you think that the National Curriculum is a factor in why these
children are struggling in the first place in the state sector?
Robert Whelan: It must be a factor,
because I do not understand how a child can get to seven, eight
or nine and be unable to read or do their two-times table, having
been in full-time education for several years, which we often
come across. Something is going wrong. We operate in different
parts of the country and not just in London, but when we started
we looked at a school in Hammersmith. I thought that we had perhaps
just hit a group of children who have exceptional problems and
that there must be something wrong with the local school, but
we then found that there is always the same problem wherever we
open—whether that is in Bradford, Keighley, Birmingham or
Great Yarmouth. They do not have the core education that they
need to access the Curriculum properly, so the children are sitting
at the back, dropping out, messing about or getting into trouble
because they cannot read.
Q19 Mr Carswell: If you imagine that
you were in charge of education policy and we had a reformist
programme that did the things that need to be done—changed
public policy, made it decentralist and localist and got rid of
the state prescription—what would it look like in five or
10 years' time? If you were to get rid of the National Curriculum,
how would it work, what would it look like and how would it be
better?
Robert Whelan: We should go back
to the system that we used to have for maintained schools, where
the Government said that children were expected to learn certain
core subject areas and reach certain goals by a certain age. At
some stage an inspector would come in and ask the first child,
"When was the battle of Hastings and the Glorious Revolution?",
but we leave it to the teachers to decide how we get there.
|
