Examination of Witnesses (Questions 110-119)
JOHN BANGS,
MICK BROOKES,
MARTIN JOHNSON
AND DARREN
NORTHCOTT
11 JUNE 2008
Q110 Chairman: I welcome our first group
of witnesses this morning to our sitting on the National Curriculum.
We have John Bangs, Mick Brookes, Martin Johnson and Darren Northcott.
Mick, I was worried for a moment; I thought that we had lost you,
but you have now reappeared so everything is fine. We are really
getting into our look at the National Curriculum—there is
always a point, which can be dangerous, when you feel that you
know something, but we are getting there. However, we need your
help and it is very good of you all to give your time this morning.
I do not want you to repeat your CVs. We all know you extremely
well, but if you want to, you may put in a nutshell what you consider
to be the main issues that you want to impart to the Committee
about the National Curriculum and tell us a little about the right
balance that you want to be achieved, because I am not sure that
I got that from some of your written submissions.
John Bangs: Thank you. The National
Union of Teachers welcomes the inquiry. It is good that it is
running parallel with the Government's review of the primary curriculum,
which is an important connection. I was thinking about what to
say, and that took me back to the days when we used to travel
to the National Curriculum Council in York to fight over the curriculum.
Michael Barber, my ex-boss, represented the teacher organisations,
and Chris Woodhead, on behalf of the National Curriculum Council,
represented the Government's thinking on the Curriculum.
Chairman: Happy days.
John Bangs: They were amazing
days actually. In 1990, we produced a document, A Strategy
for the Curriculum, which we have appended to our evidence.[7]
If you do not have it, we shall send it to you. I find it extraordinary
that some of the themes we are arguing about now appeared in that
document. In fact, some of the Government's priorities, such as
concentration on children from socially deprived backgrounds,
appear in it and were picked up in the Government's policy in
1997. There was an effective review of the primary national curriculum
10 years ago, and it was hardly noticed. When the literacy and
numeracy strategies were introduced, we persuaded Estelle Morris
to institute a temporary order that said to primary schools that
they need only have regard to the foundation subjects. That led
to great anxiety from representatives of the arts, and the National
Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education produced
a report about the role of the arts in the curriculum. However,
the intended effect—that teachers had greater flexibility
and freedom in the use of the curriculum in primary schools—did
not really happen. The reason for that is worth remembering today
in that, in the context of high stakes assessment, we will get
very little movement in relation to the curriculum. The assessment
will set the agenda rather than the curriculum itself. Incidentally,
our General Secretary, Christine Blower, has written to all the
general secretaries of the other teacher organisations to ask
for a summit on where we go with testing and assessment. We welcomed
your report on that; it has provided a really helpful background.
Finally, as for where we want to go in the curriculum, we have
done a lot of international evaluation. I can send you a paper
electronically on the National Curriculum in six countries, including
Finland, South Africa, Sweden and New Zealand.[8]
What came out very strongly is that countries get the National
Curriculum that they want and deserve. But there is a split. The
New Zealand national curriculum is about values and broad aims,
and assumes that those aims and values are in the context of a
highly trained, highly motivated and professionally autonomous
teaching profession. There are national curricula that are very
instrumental. In South Africa's national curriculum, for instance,
the detail of the mathematics curriculum is about the same size
as the whole Swedish national curriculum. Therefore, you can see
the anxieties about the training of teachers coming through. Interestingly,
the Finnish and English national curricula are very similar in
approach, although different in terms of reputation. We will send
you that paper—it is very interesting. What we want is a
national curriculum that will encourage innovation and creativity.
We should go very much on the outcome, the aims and values that
you want in a national curriculum. There is a big issue—you
raised this—about whether or not it should be an assessment
curriculum as well, and have the current levels within it.
Mick Brookes: Thank you very much
for inviting us to be here. I think that plumbing the professional
capital that we have in schools, in terms of shaping where we
go from here, is absolutely vital. This inquiry is absolutely
timely, particularly after yesterday's announcement about the
638 schools that are failing to make progress in one way or another,
combined with the stalling of the rise in attainment at Key Stages
2 and 3. We, too, welcome your report on testing and assessment.
Given the disconnection from learning by a distressingly large
number of young people, because of the system and, as John said,
the effect of assessment of the curriculum, we must do things
differently if we are to get better at having a curriculum that
not only educates but enlivens and enthuses our young people to
want to stay on in education and training to a later stage. The
whole thing is connected, and it is a very interesting moment.
I also agree with John about the effect that we have at the minute.
I was working in school when the whole curriculum change came
about and welcomed it. In other reports, such as the Task Group
on Assessment and Testing report, which some of you might remember,
the inspector would come along to the school and say, "Very
nice school, but the curriculum is too narrow. You are doing reading,
writing and arithmetic, but not a lot else." The National
Curriculum was born from that. Many of us welcomed the description
of a broad and balanced curriculum, which is how—research
tells us—young people are engaged in learning. We believe
that the testing regime has narrowed the curriculum to, in some
cases, disastrous effect—it is having an effect on creativity
and innovation in our schools. On that broad continuum between
having a laissez-faire curriculum, as it was before the National
Curriculum came in, and prescription, (the laissez-faire one was
described as the Julie Andrews curriculum, because teachers would
choose a few of their favourite things to teach). At the other
end was absolute prescription, and I think that we are too far
down that line at the moment. Finding that balance is what we
should be about.
Martin Johnson: Good morning.
I would like to identify three distinctive contributions that
the Association of Teachers and Lecturers makes to this debate.
First, although we are perhaps not unique in this, we consider
that the National Curriculum should be a broad framework, which
defines what we aspire for our school leavers to be—the
kind of people that they are, the values that they hold and what
they can do—at least as much as what we aspire for them
to know. Secondly, we identify skills as an important organiser
of those things. Perhaps you thought that our evidence was not
clear, Chair, but if you look at page 6, paragraph 16[9]
of our evidence, there is a list—it is not intended to be
inclusive—of some of the kinds of things that we are talking
about. If I may just remind you, we are talking about physical
skills—co-ordination, control, manipulation and movement—creative
skills, communication skills, information management skills, learning
and thinking skills, interpersonal skills and skills of citizenship.
The distinctive thing that we are saying is that in most schools
current practice is such that there is not a proper balance between
those different kinds of skills. Human beings are, of course,
intellectual beings, but they are also physical, emotional and
ethical beings. All those aspects of humanity need to be given
greater prominence in the activities that young people take part
in during school hours. Rebalancing is what is important. Thirdly,
particularly in the light of your recent report on assessment,
we recognise that if a national curriculum is defined in terms
of skills, we need a very different system of assessment to go
with that. On the whole, you cannot really assess skills with
pencil and paper tests, although you can in some cases. To refer
to the discussion last week, clearly, if you look at history for
example, you can test some of the skills of the historian in a
written exam. That is absolutely true. But many others of the
skills we are talking about cannot be tested in that way.
Darren Northcott: Thank you, Chair.
On behalf of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of
Women Teachers, I welcome this opportunity to give evidence. The
point of view of the NASUWT is that the starting point is a national
entitlement for all young people, regardless of where they live
and which school they go to, to a common core of skills, knowledge
and experience to which they can have access. That is a national
base entitlement and a key principle. We support a national curriculum
constituted on that basis. However, we think that it is important
that in that framework teachers have the ability to use, to an
appropriate degree, their professional skills and their autonomy
to ensure that that national framework makes sense for each individual
child based on their circumstances. So, it is that balance between
individual autonomy and judgment, and a national framework, that
we think is absolutely critical. We feel that over time that balance
has been getting better, but there is still a lot of work to do.
One point that I would emphasise at the start is that work on
the National Curriculum takes place in a wider context, and it
is important to bear in mind some of the key elements of that
wider context in the Committee's deliberations. The first thing
that I would look at—I think colleagues have mentioned this
already—is the accountability regime within which schools
operate, the impact of performance tables on how the Curriculum
is delivered and the emphasis that that perhaps gives to certain
areas of the Curriculum over others. That perhaps works to undermine
having a curriculum that is effective, broad and balanced. The
second point that I would raise at the outset is about reform
that is focused on the workforce, on allowing teachers and head
teachers to concentrate more on their core responsibilities for
teaching and learning. It is essential that the National Curriculum
complements that work. If the National Curriculum leads to processes
and practices that distract teachers and head teachers from that
key responsibility, any work that the National Curriculum can
do to support children's learning will be undermined. There are
two key elements there. There is obviously a broad range of issues
in respect of the content and structure of the Curriculum—the
balance between skills, knowledge and experience—that perhaps
we can explore. But, for my opening comments, those are the points
that I want to make.
Chairman: Thank you for those introductory
remarks and for the nice things that you said about our report
on testing and assessment. Let us move on.
Q111 Mr Chaytor: Mick Brookes, you
mentioned the announcement yesterday on the 638 schools. Not all
638 are struggling, are they? Some of them are doing extremely
well, but just happen to be below a particular point in their
GCSE score.
Mick Brookes: Exactly.
Q112 Mr Chaytor: I just wanted to
qualify that. Of all the factors that could be held responsible
for schools that are struggling and not making progress, which
include some of those 638, what is the influence of curriculum,
compared with that of the quality of teaching and leadership,
and the admissions policies that determine the intakes? There
are probably four factors that affect such progress: teaching,
leadership, intake and curriculum. How responsible is curriculum
for some schools not making progress with the children they have?
Mick Brookes: It has a real part
to play. It is quite right that Ofsted thinks that many of the
638 schools are doing a good job. There is an interesting debate
to be had that gets below the headlines, which are pretty shallow,
about what is happening. There is complexity and diversity in
different places and each school has a different context. There
is an interplay between different factors in those schools. Often,
young people who come into schools have already been disenfranchised
from the curriculum at a very young age because they have not
made the expected progress for whatever reason. If that is because
of poor teaching and leadership, that issue needs to be taken
seriously. However, that is all we are hearing. It seems as though
all the blame for young people failing to thrive in the educational
setting is put on teaching and leadership. Students themselves
have responsibilities to access learning. Parents and the local
government community have responsibilities in supporting that.
The curriculum is the platform on which all that stands. The curriculum
has to be relevant to young people. Although we have raised some
logistical difficulties about the advent of Diplomas, they bring
a real opportunity for young people to be engaged in a curriculum
that is meaningful to them. I think that our young people are
very pragmatic. For instance, they may not want to learn a modern
foreign language because they see no use for it, apart from some
intellectual use. We must have a curriculum that includes function
and vocation, but more than anything it must delight and enliven
young people at primary age. If the testing system has turned
a large number of children off education, and children have had
a narrow experience up to the age of 11, quite frankly, we are
sunk in trying to motivate them in the secondary sector.
Q113 Mr Chaytor: May I pose a question
to Martin and John and then ask Darren something different? What
is holding teachers back from making the National Curriculum more
relevant to the children who are hardest to teach? There is a
general consensus among the four teachers' associations that there
needs to be less prescription and more local determination. Can
you give practical examples of how it is not possible for schools
to use the existing National Curriculum in a creative and innovative
way, thus providing meaningful experiences to the children who
are the hardest to teach?
John Bangs: I think that there
is enormous variety in the response to the National Curriculum.
Some primary schools turn it inside out, cherry-pick from it and
use it as a creative and flexible framework. Other schools use
it for what we call post-hoc curriculum mapping: they do the teaching,
then go back to the curriculum and tick off the attainment targets
for the bit that they have covered. That approach is entirely
deadening and not the purpose of a curriculum. The reason for
it is a genuine confusion among schools about the relationship
between Ofsted's quality assurance and quality assessment mechanisms,
and what they are looking for. One of the arguments that we have
made is that the National Curriculum should be explicitly about
encouraging innovation and creativity. I feel sorry for the 638
schools, because, as Mick said, some of the contextual value added—the
CVA—in those schools is in the stratosphere. I have never
seen a score of 1,055 for some schools that are doing really well.
Yet the 638 are going to be over-inspected, and have national
challenge advisers on their backs. Incidentally, more money is
going into academies and trusts than individual support, but that
is a separate issue. I think there ought to be some very clear
messages that at the precise point when you are up against it
and face the toughest situations, that is the time for creativity,
confidence and innovation. That is what the curriculum ought to
be doing.
Martin Johnson: Yes, I think John
has said it. You heard from Lesley James last week that there
is a tremendous amount of innovation going on in our schools and
we should celebrate those innovative teachers up and down the
country. But the one word I would use to explain that is "confidence."
It is difficult to have confidence when you are under the cosh,
if I can put it that way, from all the regulatory and accountability
mechanisms. It is very rare for schools that are struggling the
most in terms of their GCSE results to have confidence. For example,
if you look at Bishops Park College, which you have talked about—what
a brave and innovative head teacher and what a fantastic experience
for kids in Clacton at that school—yet look at the comeuppance
they have had for it .
Q114 Mr Chaytor: May I ask Darren
about entitlement, because your written submission puts great
emphasis on that. What does it mean?
Darren Northcott: What it means
for a young person, is that, wherever they go to school in the
country, there is a core of learning to which they are entitled.
It is determined nationally, and democratically, by society itself
making a decision about the elements or strands of skills, knowledge
and understanding—
Q115 Mr Chaytor: Is that not what happens
now? Is that not the whole point, because each of the four teachers'
unions is saying that that is the problem; we have too much prescription.
Darren Northcott: It is a matter
of balance. I am not saying that it does not happen; I am saying
that it is absolutely right and that it should happen. The point
is the way in which the principle is translated into practice
in the structure of the National Curriculum. As I said at the
outset, the context in which that curriculum is delivered is the
key. I think that one of the concerns is that the context—particularly
around the accountability regime—is undermining teachers'
essential ability to use their professional autonomy and judgment
to make that national entitlement real to each student, regardless
of their circumstances and taking into account their individual
needs, personal interests, aptitudes, etc.
Q116 Mr Chaytor: So, from NASUWT's
point of view, you think that there should be a national entitlement
to a second language in years 10 and 11?
Darren Northcott: The content
of the Curriculum is a matter for debate, and I think more needs
to be done around that. If you look at where we have got to at
the moment, we have a structure that allows, in principle, young
people access to that common set of skills, knowledge and understanding.
But I think that the content and overloaded nature of that structure,
and the context in which that curriculum is delivered, mean that
we have real problems in determining whether we have got that
balance right between skills, knowledge and experience, and whether
we have got a curriculum that over-emphasises content at the expense
of skills. So that is the concern. One thing that teachers tell
us is a key issue when you talk about national entitlement is
the sense that, if something is wrong—if there is a problem—all
we have to do is add something to the existing curriculum. For
example, one of the key debates has been around financial literacy,
which is absolutely right. Some argue for just adding it to the
curriculum without thinking about what you would need to take
away in order to make it meaningful and balanced—something
that teachers can make meaningful use of in classrooms with students.
Q117 Mr Chaytor: The difficulty that
I find in this balance between national prescription and local
determination is that NASUWT is saying that we should have a national
entitlement, but when you are asked specifically about what that
entitlement should be, such as languages in the last two years
of secondary school, you say that it is a matter for local determination.
When I ask the other three unions about the effect of prescription,
they agree that many schools can thrive, survive and innovate
even within the existing prescriptive framework. I ask all of
you whether the conclusion that I draw from that is reasonable:
the problem is not the existing prescription in the Curriculum,
because many schools can use that to their advantage, but the
confidence of teachers and head teachers and how the purpose of
the National Curriculum is communicated by the Government and
the QCA. Is that a fair distinction?
Chairman: If I am going to have answers
from all four of you, please give a really quick response, otherwise
we will not get through.
John Bangs: We have made it clear
in paragraph 6 of our submission that we want a framework curriculum
and, as Darren said, a statutory framework describing a common
curriculum entitlement. Those entitlements are covered in paragraph
6 and I shall not repeat them. I mentioned the Finnish national
curriculum earlier and it is interesting that, although there
are great similarities between the Finnish and English national
curricula, the difference is that, in the Finnish national curriculum,
there is an explicit steer to schools and the local democratic
bodies—the local authority equivalents—that it is
their responsibility to develop it. That does not appear in the
English national curriculum and I think that there is something
to learn from that.
Mick Brookes: I was nodding about
the notion of confidence. Where you have confident schools, they
will shake down anything and make it work for their school community.
I am concerned that so many schools are under the cosh and are
feeling that they must do this as it is written, otherwise they
are going to be caught out. That is the effect of inspection on
the curriculum—it tends to flatten and deaden.
Martin Johnson: I have a couple
of observations. Obviously, the National Curriculum started out
as highly over-detailed and has been moving towards a broader
framework. We very much welcome the new Key Stage 3 and hope that
the Rose report will enable a new Key Stage 2 of the same kind.
Your point is absolutely right. The only caveat I would add is
that the Association of Teachers and Lecturers still thinks that
to include any degree of knowledge specification is not the best
way to go. It is a completely false distinction to ask whether
the Curriculum is about skills or about knowledge—it is
obviously about both. The point that I was trying to make in my
initial remarks, however, was that if you consider a curriculum
to be a description of the outcomes you want for school leavers,
it is much more important these days to say what skills you want.
If you define the curriculum in terms of skills, schools will
concentrate more on that. We do not have that yet in the National
Curriculum.
Darren Northcott: To follow up
on what Martin said about the reforms at Key Stages 3 and 4, we
welcome those very much. They were a real attempt to slim down
the prescription, make the curriculum more streamlined and give
teachers the opportunity to use their skills to make it meaningful
for learners. Watching that process carefully will be important
to see whether the reforms are having that impact and striking
the balance, which we have all talked about, between a national
framework and the ability of teachers to make meaningful use of
it, using their autonomy and professional judgment.
Chairman: Martin mentioned a school in
the constituency of Douglas Carswell, and Douglas wants to comment
on that.
Q118 Mr Carswell: Mr Johnson, you
made some comments about Clacton, and I presume you referred to
Bishops Park College, where there were some experiments with what
is termed a thematic curriculum. I am not in favour of there being
a national curriculum at all, so I am all in favour of schools
being able to experiment and innovate, and localism, but I am
not sure whether that experiment is one that I would wish to see
imposed or incorporated into a national policy. Would you characterise
the thematic curriculum at Bishops Park college as a success or
a failure?
Martin Johnson: It has not had
time to prove itself either way yet. I regret the local authority's
decision not to give time to that school. As was discussed last
week, there were some indicators that interesting things were
happening. On the positive side, if you looked at 16-plus outcomes
in terms of entry into further education, training and employment,
things were starting to look up for the pupils of that school.
Q119 Mr Carswell: I have two specific
questions that need two specific answers. Did the thematic curriculum
increase or decrease the number of parents wishing to send their
children to the brand new £16 million Bishops Park College?
Martin Johnson: To be frank, it
had no effect whatsoever.
7 Not printed. Back
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A Comparison of National Curricula. Not printed. Back
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