Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380-399)
PROFESSOR DEREK
BELL, CLIVE
BUSH, DR
RITA GARDNER
AND PROFESSOR
GORDON STOBART
3 NOVEMBER 2008
Q380 Fiona Mactaggart: I asked
about the relationship between employment and the curriculum in
STEM subjects. Does Derek Bell want to add anything or does anyone
else want to respond?
Professor Bell: The only thing
I would add is that we have to be careful that we know why we
have the curriculum and education at all, because if you go down
the route where it has to be entirely to do with industry and
economics, you will have one thing and you are going to miss out
on a whole load of other things. Education is not simply about
producing the workers of tomorrow; it is much bigger than that
and much more important. That links with Rita's argument about
the curriculum having to be broad enough to allow students this
opportunity to experience all those different things, as well
as their being in a position where they can then go into gainful
employment in the future.
Dr Gardner: I do not have anything
particular to add to that; clearly, we are not closely linked
to the STEM subjects. I think the other subjects offer an opportunity
through which mathematics and literacy can be applied in a way
that is quite interesting, and I do not think that perhaps enough
opportunity is taken to do that in teaching, learning in school.
The applications, in a sense, to the real world do not have to
be through just the science, maths and English curricula. You
can seek applications more broadly. Why do teachers not do that?
It is not regularly done in our experience, and one reason is
that in geography and history they feel real pressure of limited
curriculum time, and they have their own curriculum to teach in
that context. A second reason is that there is perhaps not the
encouragement, exemplification and so on to do that more fully.
There are opportunities there for applications in other ways.
Clive Bush: Going back to my previous
existence as a head teacher, one of the most effective aspects
of development over the past 10 or 15 years has been the development
of specialisms in schools. I was head of two schools that became
specialist schools. Part of that specialism was exactly the kind
of engagement that you alluded to, Fiona, when we used the experience
of business industrialists to contribute directly to the experience
of young people in school. It was an enormously effective catalyst
for learning—I have absolutely no doubt about that—and
it led to some quite dramatic improvements and outcomes in schools.
I think that movement has been, at its best, effective. Where
we have a problem across the country—I know this because,
again, in one of my previous roles I was setting up education
business partnerships—is that we have difficulty in getting
employers to engage with education at that level, particularly
at secondary level. Where we see it, it is powerful and effective,
but it is not something that in these times, when companies are
struggling for existence, they will necessarily have time for.
We can do more in terms of the larger employer organisations to
support those notions, but there is a rich vein there, and it
is one that we do not tap enough.
Dr Gardner: I just want to add
that the ambassador schemes should not be forgotten. They are
run in science, and in geography under the action plan for geography.
They encourage and support, often but not necessarily, younger
employees in the workplace who are applying their knowledge and
skills directly, to go back into schools and engage with young
people. That has proved to be very effective in both science and
geography in demonstrating not only the career opportunities,
but real applications at a peer level. We have found that it works
best when young people under the age of 35 go back into the classroom
to show the relevance of their study. I think schemes such as
the ambassador scheme should continue to be supported.
Q381 Fiona Mactaggart: To be honest,
that is much more where I was heading. This is not a passion for
Fiona forcing schoolchildren to learn to work. My problem arises
from when I was a schoolchild, because I thought that French was
invented by teachers. I did not think anyone actually spoke it.
I thought it was made up so that I could learn stuff. That experience
is not unusual with young people, and it is a failure of our curriculum
that they think stuff is there for them to jump through the hoops,
to pass the test, and to do things for some abstract reason because
people like us think it is good for them.
Dr Gardner: There is also an issue
with careers, careers awareness, and careers training in schools.
We often find that geography teachers simply have no idea of the
breadth of career opportunities that geographical knowledge and
skills can lead to, whether using them directly or using transferable
skills. As many geographers work in financial services, management
and marketing as work in conservation, planning and urban development.
The problem is to get the message across about how the skills
and knowledge can be usefully applied. I recommend the ambassador
scheme.
Q382 Fiona Mactaggart: My sense
is that that is abstracted from developing the curriculum—that
that happens as well as, not as part of, curriculum development.
In considering the evidence, I have been struck by the fact that
there is not much hard data. There is good opinion based on experience,
which should not be disregarded, but very little data. We have
talked about how the national curriculum has changed. I was a
primary teacher in the days of the 13 A4 folders. If you were
preparing work at home, you could not teach more than three subjects
in one day because there was not a big enough bag to carry it
in. Therefore, I understand the changes, but I do not feel that
there has been any robust research into what has happened, and
what has worked and what has not. If there has been any robust
research, it has not come before us in this inquiry.
Clive Bush: The difficulty is
twofold. The world moves at a rapidly increasing pace, and you
cannot necessarily look into the future, research it and decide
what you have to do next. There has to be a degree of professional
anticipation of what is likely to be needed. I suspect that that
drives things more than the kind of analytical, retrospective
research to which you allude. We do that as well, though. We know
that some things work more effectively than others. The building
of the national strategy support for the national curriculum,
for example, is very much based on that kind of iterative notion
of building on what has worked well, and marrying that to what
we believe we are going to need, using our auspices, I suppose,
as professionals and "experts". If you put together
those two things and you begin to decide a procedure, which is
what happens in classrooms, then that is what you are supporting.
I cannot answer that point because I do not work for the Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority and I can only talk from the National
Strategies point of view. The Strategies are the tool to make
the curriculum work; they are not the curriculum. Knowing the
work that Nick Walters has done, I suspect that such a model is
behind the development of the curriculum, as well. It would be
nice if we could draw down some hard data that say, "This
is this, and that is what has led to this change and shift."
We can do it if we look at the performance of young people over
time—certainly the performance of young people at Key Stage
3 in the core subjects. We can draw out that data. If we look
at the performance of young people at Key Stage 4, there are many
strong and positive stories. What do we gather from those stories?
We gather that some things work better than others. Part of our
job at the end of each assessment period is to look at where there
has been an issue or a concern and where the trajectory has not
been met, and to try to understand, at a very localised level—right
down to school level—why that has happened and what we need
to put in place to ensure that it improves. Therefore, the grist
is there in that sense; it is just that that particular grist
is not in front of you in the form of numbers on a side of A4.
None the less, it is very much there as a local response to need,
concerns and the failure to meet trajectories—to put it
in a rather cold terminology.
Chairman: May I just say that there might
be another vote, so we have less time in this session, which is
a great shame. I am going to ask for some rapid-fire questions
and answers. We do not want to prevent you from talking, but I
am conscious that once a running Whip is started, it can take
time out of our sitting. One has already taken 15 minutes out
of our programme, and there might be another.
Q383 Mr Timpson: May I take us
back to something that was touched on earlier—the cross-curricular
approaches? We work on the basis that we accept that the national
curriculum will move with the tides and that it will not always
remain static. Where does the principle of cross-curricular approaches
come into that, and do you agree with it as a principle? I know
that in your opening remarks, Rita, you spoke about how it may
directly detract from a subject-based framework as opposed to
a more holistic approach, which is what this seems to suggest.
Can I ask each of you briefly whether you agree with the principle
of the cross-curricular approach? Obviously, I can anticipate
Clive's answer, but do the rest of you agree in principle?
Chairman: Gordon has been a bit neglected.
Let's start with him.
Professor Stobart: Cross-curricular
approaches are a compromise. We have such a strict subject approach
that we are now saying that we cannot do anything about the subjects,
which some might question. You could work with areas of experience,
or you could work with broad approaches and, particularly for
11, 12 and 13-year-olds, dissolve some of the subject boundaries
that are not used in primary school anyway. I suppose that what
we are doing now is saying, "No, you have history, geography
and science," so we try to thread things across to pull them
together. My reading of the evaluation is that policy planners
see it all as a seamless robe, but when you get into schools,
it is not. It is another initiative and then another, but I am
not sure that we always do the job of making them into a cohesive
role. The risk with this curriculum is that we still have the
subjects and then we have these other things. What sense will
schools make of it? Will it just feel like a dozen different strategies
coming in at the same time? There are some things that can usefully
be done in every subject, but I would have thought that that would
depend on whether you make it an initiative in that way or make
it part of the pedagogy of the subject. My experience, again from
the evaluation, was that some schools will make some use of some
things, others will make use of other things and some might declare
that none of it is relevant. It is whether you are doing it as
a menu or whether you expect schools to do the whole lot, as well
as the social and emotional aspects of learning and other things
that are coming through such as the assessment for learning strategy
and so on.
Dr Gardner: It is a matter of
balance. What subjects bring to learning is rigour, a body of
subject knowledge and subject-specific skills. I quote here from
the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers: "subjects
constitute the available ways we have of exploring and interpreting
the world of subjective experience, of analysing the social environment
and of making sense" of our world. I am a strong believer
in subjects because they offer progression of knowledge and learning
and a set of approaches. Each subject offers a distinctive way
of looking at the world, some of which will appeal to individuals
differently. You all studied a subject, and you have different
approaches to the world. However, there is room for integrated
learning. I would argue strongly that it needs to be taught by
subject specialists and needs to be interdisciplinary or, better
still, multidisciplinary learning, where we bring the strengths
of subjects together to study themes. The evidence suggests that
some young people are turned on more by themes than by subjects.
I would say that that is partly the way that subjects are taught—
subjects can be taught with relevance in the same way to engage
young people.
So far, I have seen that method used to best
effect by a number of head teachers who are geographers. They
are using subject-integrated teaching as a transition from primary
into secondary, so it is used in year 7 as a way of getting around
the issue of moving from one teacher to, let us say, 10 teachers.
We have to be very careful with that, because I have seen examples
of history teachers teaching the subject of volcanoes badly and
geography teachers teaching aspects of history. It has to be carefully
constructed. Another way in which it has been used well is if,
throughout the school, each year group focuses on a particular
theme for a week each year, or a day each term—something
like that. I do not think that for many schools integrated learning
is a good way of organising the teaching and learning of the curriculum.
It is hugely demanding to build progression into that sort of
integrated learning. It is very demanding of head teachers and
also of lead teachers in each department to do it and to do it
well. Let me give two examples of where we think that it is done
badly. The first involves two of the QCA beacon schools for integrated
learning. They were put into special measures because they were
not covering the curriculum sufficiently through their integrated
learning. The second example is anecdotal. I am sorry that there
is not much evidence; this is an area where we do need to collect
evidence. We know of a sample of 200 schools that was carried
out by the Geographical Association that indicated that some 18%
of those are moving towards an aspect of integrated learning.
However, what would you think about an approach that, as part
of integrated learning across the humanities—religious education,
history, geography—had six themes: beginnings, celebrations,
pirates, journeys, disasters and mysteries? I am not convinced
by that.
Q384 Mr Timpson: In the Royal
Geographical Society paper that I think you submitted in March
this year, you set out what you believed cross-curriculum dimensions
could provide in terms of an ideal platform. You went into identity
and cultural diversity, community participation, technology and
the media and so on. Do you see those as elements that it will
be worth while having as part of the national cross curricular
only if they enhance the core subjects being taught around those
issues, as opposed to watering it down?
Dr Gardner: Yes, it has to draw
on the subject expertise to explore those issues and bring together
the specialists in the relevant disciplines to make that a worth
while integrated learning experience.
Q385 Mr Timpson: Who do you believe
should be the driving force behind that? Should it be the individual
lead teacher, or should it be the schools?
Dr Gardner: It requires a whole-school
approach. It has to come from the top in terms of the senior management
team having a belief in that which will enable and facilitate
their lead subject specialists to work together.
Clive Bush: Learning is not much
use unless you can apply it. The application of the learning is
where the notion of cross-curricular development—or skills—comes
in strongly. May I go back to the prosaically named functional
skills, on which we are developing training and support for teachers
in relation to English, mathematics and information and communications
technology? That is not a body of knowledge that we are teaching;
it is about how you apply the learning you have acquired in whatever
situation you find yourself. It is about trying to develop in
young people a flexibility of response so that they can use their
learning as and when they need to. It is about choosing when and
how to use your learning. Crucially, it is not exclusively in
English, maths, science and ICT; it is, for example, about how
you use that learning in geography or science. It attempts to
touch on a number of the key issues; partly the issues to which
Fiona referred earlier about the applicability of learning in
terms of the connection with business. However, it is also about
responding to the criticisms that have been levelled at the education
system from higher education institutions, and from functional
skills councils and the CBI that young people might well come
through the system having achieved an A, A* or B in a given subject
at GCSC, but they do not know how to apply that learning in the
environment in which they find themselves. That takes us back
to the notion of how to anticipate what the needs of our society
and industry, business and commerce will be, as we move into the
next one or two decades. We have to find a way of, first, equipping
young people with the core knowledge—I am absolutely with
Rita on that—and, secondly, having the flexibility to use
that core knowledge as and when they are required to do so. We
are looking at something that is much more positive than the key
skills programme of a few years ago, which generally speaking
has disappeared into the sand. We are looking at something extremely
positive in terms of the functional skills programme. That has
been well responded to as we, for example, develop diplomas. It
is integral to development. We have not touched on diplomas, but
there is a different kind of curriculum and a different way of
delivering a curriculum in the diplomas. However, the functional
skills programmes need to start in year seven—it could be
argued that they need to start even before then—and they
need to run across all subjects.
Chairman: I do not want to leave you
out, Derek. Do you want to say anything?
Professor Bell: Just that I have
virtually stopped using the phrase "cross-curricular"
because it implies something that is superficial. There are links
all over the place, but actually it has not really been thought
through. If we go back to 1969 and read the Plowden report and
consider what happened subsequent to that, people completely misconstrued
the report because Lady Plowden dared to suggest, at that point,
that primary schools could work in a cross-curricular way. If
you read the report properly, that is not what she was saying.
Here, we must remember that really we are talking about building
on the skills, knowledge and understanding someone gets through
their disciplines and how we then bring those together. So I talk
in terms of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work. However,
the point is how you make it happen. The curriculum is only something
on a piece of paper. What makes the difference is what you do
with it. So you cannot just put students into a situation and
say, "Do something that is interdisciplinary," if you
do not give them any practice and work through things with them.
They need something to work from and then you can create situations
in which they can bring that multidisciplinary work together.
That involves thinking about how we organise the school day and
the school timetable, and it will not happen every week. Perhaps
once a term you have a day where the timetable is suspended, you
have an interdisciplinary problem and you get quite a lot of students,
perhaps a whole year group, working on that problem, bringing
geography, science, history and whatever into dealing with it,
in the appropriate way.
Chairman: Paul, would you deal very briefly
with section 1? Then we will move on to Graham.
Q386 Paul Holmes: It is on exactly
the same theme. I agree with Rita, who expressed doubts about
cross-curricular work because, as a former history teacher, I
know that history teachers sometimes taught volcanoes badly and
geography teachers did my subject no favours when had to do integrated
humanities. The new curriculum emphasises cross-curricular work,
yet you are expressing doubts about what that means. Surely, there
is some concern there. Also, if you are going to do a lot of cross-curricular
work between 11 and 16, how can you do that if, at 16, you have
10 separate subject exams?
Professor Bell: Some of it is
about how you interpret what the curriculum is saying. I do not
read that curriculum as saying, "cross-curricular".
I think that it is saying that there are these areas of knowledge—disciplines
and subjects—and you should use them to develop a more coherent
experience for students. Show them where things link; show them
where things do not link, and get them to respect that process.
Do not start at the top and say, "Here's an umbrella that
you can do anything under."
Dr Gardner: I entirely agree with
Derek. The teachers we have spoken to hear the messages from QCA
in terms of cross-curricular and integrated learning. Those are
not the messages that are inherent in the national curriculum.
There are some issues about messaging here and the messages that
teachers have received, some of which relate to the relatively
lesser importance of subjects compared to skills; I would argue
that both subjects and skills are equally important and both are
needed in learning. Some issues relate to the emphasis that is
being placed, particularly by QCA, on cross-curricular work.
Q387 Paul Holmes: What is Ofsted
looking for? In the end, that is what will decide what teachers
teach.
Chairman: Gordon wants to come back on
that question, but I am afraid that that is your lot, Paul.
Professor Stobart: This sounds
like business as usual—it is this seamless robe of putting
everything in context, but it will not feel like that in a school.
I must disagree a little bit with what has been said; doing one
day on a theme is not going to give transferable skills to learners
from then onwards. It will fall back into subjects. Hopefully
the subjects might be more imaginatively taught. I worry that
this is an attempt at reform that will not reform things.
Chairman: Let us talk about supporting
teachers but, first, may I point out that as soon as I asked for
shorter questions and answers, you all went longer?
Q388 Mr Stuart: How much time
did teachers have to acquaint themselves with the new secondary
curriculum? What piloting and evaluation was conducted, and what
support has been provided to teachers? Shall we start with the
critics? I always prefer the critics, but then Clive can come
back and explain why it was all great.
Chairman: Who shall we start with? Rita?
Dr Gardner: Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman: You should not have done that
commercial for geography.
Dr Gardner: We are teachers. It
is my job, but actually I believe in it too; young people need
to understand the world. I will be brief. Were teachers given
enough time to prepare? There is one argument that says that we
never have enough time to prepare, and you only prepare once you
actually start. The fact that the introduction is being phased
is good and helpful in that respect. A lot of the schools that
we talked to are seeing this first year a little bit as a pilot
year. They are trying; they are tweaking; they are seeing what
happens, and they are evaluating it. In terms of support for teachers,
there is a very big difference between those subjects that are
supported by the national strategies and those that are not. Where
they are not, in large measure the support comes back to rest
on the subject associations and the learned societies that provide
the support for those. Of course, there is some support coming
in from CfBT—Centre for British Teachers—Education
Trust, in terms of the foundation subjects, but that is of a relatively
limited duration.
Q389 Chairman: What is wrong with
just having the curriculum and exams, if people know what the
exams are? Teachers take you from the curriculum to exams.
Dr Gardner: Nice concept, but
let us just look at the teachers, shall we? Some of the older
teachers are used to making or shaping their curriculum, so they
will have a set of concepts and ideas on which they put flesh
according to the pupils' interests, their location and whatever
other circumstances there may be, including the ethnicity of the
school and so on. However, most of the teachers who have trained
in recent years have grown up with a national curriculum that
is highly prescriptive; they have schemes of work that they pull
down from the QCA and follow, and so on. Those teachers are less
able and less trained in making their curriculum, and they need
support and encouragement; we need to share good practice and
exemplars, and we need to convince schools to invest in subject-specific
teacher professional development. We need to recognise that, which
is why some of the chartered teacher schemes, such as the ones
run by science or geography that recognise continuing professional
development, are so important.
Professor Stobart: It is an English
culture thing that we do not pilot stuff, by and large, or we
half-pilot it. The Key Stage 3 strategy was run out nationally
before the pilot finished; it was declared a success within a
few months. We do not pilot; we wait for stuff to fall over, then
we do it again or we modify it—that is the national curriculum
thing. There could therefore be an argument that we are moving
into this too fast and we will adjust it as it goes. Adjusting
something when everybody is doing it sows confusion as well. The
idea of introducing things more gradually might be welcome.
Q390 Mr Stuart: But you all agree
that we are going in the right direction, so the educational establishment
is united.
Professor Stobart: We are backing
off heavy content. I am not sure it is radical enough to do the
job, but it is moving that way.
Q391 Mr Stuart: Is it a bit like
the cross-curricular issue? As soon as you have a national curriculum,
you try to capture everything that is good and, once you get a
movement behind something, if it is good and everyone agrees that
it is good and—my God!—it is fashionable, it is hard
to stand up and say, "No, although it is a good thing we
are not going to prescribe it here." Of course, we want applied
learning across the disciplines and subjects to bring those together
so that the process is useful to the child in the real world,
but we do not have to prescribe it, because otherwise we will
bureaucratise it and it is a long way from Clive's desk to the
classroom.
Professor Stobart: This is why,
on a menu, it might be all right—it could be selected—but
it is when it feels as though everybody has to do everything that
it becomes an issue.
Professor Bell: Going back to
the issue of going in the right direction, we are starting to
prescribe things less in one sense. If you go back to what is
required by the national curriculum, the programmes of study are
the statutory bits. That is now down to four or five sides of
A4, as opposed to 104. That is the right direction. However, people
are starting to add bits on, because, as you say, they have another
good idea and they throw it in, instead of using it and saying,
"That is what we have to do, now let's work with the students
and teachers to build on that in a way that is comfortable in
their context."
Clive Bush: I am not an apologist
for the national curriculum, nor do I represent the QCA.
Q392 Chairman: I thought that
was why we invited you. [Interruption.] I am teasing you.
Clive Bush: As I said before,
my job is to lead a team of people who develop approaches to help
teachers and head teachers to deliver the national curriculum
in an increasingly demanding environment and world. Going back
to your original question about how long teachers were given,
essentially they were given a year-plus. We knew it was coming,
so there was a fair bit of time. Crucially, it involves only year
7; we are working it through year 7 at the moment to see how it
develops and what the issues are. A bit of extra time was provided
for in-service training for teachers and so on. I do not have
any particular concerns about that; I do not think it was a rushed
job. Given that it is an incremental development, I do not have
any particular concerns that it was not piloted. Rather, it was
a response to what was perceived as a prescriptive curriculum
that was no longer as adjustable and adaptable to the world that
was changing around it. That is a pretty good reason for looking
to change something—in other words, you are looking to improve
it. That is not an apology for it, but an explanation that I think
makes some sense. I cannot remember what your fourth question
was.
Q393 Mr Stuart: We will move on.
Going back to Douglas's point, in the programme of study for Key
Stage 3 science, there are four key concepts in the simplified
core entitlement for every child's understanding of science, the
third of which is cultural understanding, which involves "Recognising
that modern science has its roots in many different societies
and cultures, and draws on a variety of valid approaches to scientific
practice." That is one of the four key things that children
need to learn about science, apparently. There is always difficulty
between the theory of the basic core entitlement and the practice.
It involves stuff that I regard as arrant nonsense, backed up
by further stuff in the explanatory notes, which say, "Scientific
theories are consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively
evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world".
That is another rather specious explanation. Are you happy with
the content of the Key Stage 3 programme of study of the national
curriculum?
Professor Bell: Broadly, yes.
You are ignoring that fact that you have professionals out there
who understand their science, by and large. I know that there
are people teaching outside subjects, but they understand their
science and how we need to teach it.
In the past, science has been dealt with
without any respect for the fact that it is part of culture. We
make decisions about things in science that relate to our culture,
and we have to bear that in mind. If you are talking about pupils
becoming citizens first and scientists second, you cannot divorce
the two things. Otherwise, you move into a situation in which
it is not education, but training to become a narrow scientist.
Q394 Mr Stuart: Do we not want to
teach people to be citizens rather than narrow scientists? Or,
indeed, do we want to teach, as the geography Key Stage 3 document
says, global citizenry? That is a key element, and I can see you
nodding. Does that have the educational establishment's full support
as well?
Professor Bell: It is not about
an educational establishment; it is what other people are telling
us. If you talk to some people in industry, they say that they
want students who understand a little bit more about the world
around them and how their learning in school fits into that. That
is what wider society is asking for, so if you are going to prescribe
a national curriculum, you need to think about including it. The
decision was to include it.
Dr Gardner: As for global citizenship,
we live in a world that is increasingly interconnected. I think
that young people of the future, who are going to have to make
some very tough decisions on climate change need to understand
the perspectives on climate change and how it will affect different
parts of the world. They need to be able to make the right decisions
on how they try to influence policy agendas through their democratic
rights as voters on that big issue.
Q395 Mr Stuart: Are they to see that
from the earliest possible age through a prism of global citizenship
and climate change, introduced from a certain—[Interruption.].
That is politics, not the teaching of geography. Key aspects of
the—
Chairman: Order. Come on, Graham. You
cannot keep throwing off questions. Ask a question, then indicate
which person you want to answer. What is the question?
Mr Stuart: If I may, Chairman—
Chairman: I want to know what the question
is.
Mr Stuart: If you are quiet, you can
listen to it.
Chairman: I will not be quiet until you
ask a simple question that my friends over there can answer.
Mr Stuart: You very rarely are quiet.
The geography curriculum includes this statement: "Key aspects
of the UK ... include the geographical aspects that underpin a
young person's identity and their global citizenship." Global
citizenship is a status that I did not realise had any—
Chairman: Graham does not like that.
Mr Stuart: It is politically loaded,
and it is at the heart of what apparently is the core entitlement
of our national curriculum. It is an absolute disgrace.
Dr Gardner: It is not politically
loaded. We are all individuals and we live in neighbourhoods,
in nations and in the EU. We live as part of a citizenship of
the world.
Professor Stobart: Small worldism.
Dr Gardner: No—why does
it bother you? This is encouraging young people to see themselves,
in one of their roles, as part of a global citizenship. There
are some issues that we have to face, such as climate change.
Yes, those issues may become politicised, but they are nevertheless
going to affect the life of every young person in this country.
We need to understand those issues on a global scale. That is
what we mean by global citizenship. It is about seeing yourself
as part of a global community. Some issues can be dealt with only
by communities on that scale. That is what that is getting at.
If you turn it around to look at the nature of neighbourhoods
in the UK, it is vital that young people have a—not politicised,
but sound—understanding of the ethnic composition of the
neighbourhoods that they live in and how that relates to diaspora
communities in other parts of the world. It is vital that they
understand what has driven migration patterns—the search
for jobs and employment—that shape and change the nature
of the areas in which they live. That ties closely to agendas
that relate to—
Q396 Mr Carswell: Agendas?
Dr Gardner: No, that ties in to
issues and ideas that relate to social and—[Interruption.]
Do you not see that young people have to understand the wider
world?
Mr Carswell: This is Gramsci.
Chairman: You have to ask questions through
the Chair and answer through the Chair. I am not going to allow
this to become a debate between those who believe in climate change
or the EU and those who do not.
Fiona Mactaggart: Or those who believe
in the existence of a globe.
Mr Carswell: I am talking about Antonio
Gramsci, who—
Fiona Mactaggart: I know as much about
Gramsci as you—[Interruption.]
Chairman: Members should wait until it
is their turn to ask a question. Derek Bell.
Professor Bell: I just want to
go back to something that was said earlier about the science curriculum
not being all about cultural and ethical issues. It is actually
about hard, rigorous science. That is the core of it, and that
is where it starts. The point that is picked up with the change,
because it is different, it is all the other bits. If you go into
any school, the majority of time is spent talking about the science,
not about the ethical issues, as the media would have you believe.
Q397 Mr Stuart: Today's teachers
are supposedly better than ever, but Ofsted's subject reports
note that there is poor teacher subject knowledge. Many commentators
argue that the national curriculum and national strategies have
undermined teacher confidence and competence. Is it simply that
the national curriculum demoralises teachers, or is teacher training
too focused on the prescription of the national curriculum and,
as such, not focused enough on enabling teachers to think in creative
and innovative ways?
Clive Bush: There is considerable
evidence to suggest that levels of ability, or outcomes, after
11 years of schooling are improving year on year. That would suggest
that although Ofsted has identified certain areas of subject weakness
in teachers, the ability and capability of the teaching force
is improving over time. The notion that the national curriculum
is in some way demoralising teachers I find difficult to understand.
The revised programmes of study that we are discussing today allow
teachers to be much more creative and, as we have said before,
innovative in how they deliver the curriculum. That presupposes
that they are able to do so in an increasingly demanding and complex
environment, in which—to touch on the socio aspects of the
previous discussion, although I am loth to do that—we find
that young people's experiences of the world might be hugely different
to those of the person who is sitting next to them. That might
be because of their ethnic origin, where they come from or their
recent migration to this country. Those are all real and significant
issues that teachers have to face. If you add to that the driver—in
my book it is quite right and fair that it is there as a driver—that
the process in a classroom should not be formulaic, should not
be teaching to the middle, but should be personalised, should
actually find a way of engaging, exciting and lighting up each
and every individual in the room, then the demanding job of the
teacher is more demanding than it has ever been. There must be
a way in which organisations, whether we are dealing with the
QCA and national curriculum or the National Strategies, in some
way support, mitigate, encourage, help and back up that highly
demanding job. One thing you can absolutely rely on is that it
will not become any easier to be a teacher. The demands will not
decrease; they will increase, so we have to find ways in which
we can support teachers' abilities to rise to those challenges.
Q398 Mr Stuart: And does the national
curriculum do that?
Professor Stobart: I think what
the revised national curriculum is doing is trying to give teachers
permission to do more and to teach more creatively. Whether so
much prescription in the past has left them lacking confidence
is an interesting one; we have some evidence from Wales and elsewhere,
where national curriculum tests were taken out, that teachers
are not always clear what they want to do afterwards, because
it will take time for them to get their confidence up about that.
Q399 Paul Holmes: Just to pick
up on something that Clive said, perhaps as poacher turned gamekeeper,
now that you have moved from schools to the other side of things,
you echoed almost exactly what a Minister told us a few weeks
ago—that you cannot believe that the national curriculum
has disempowered teachers, or that teachers have not been keen
on it, or whatever; but you justified that by saying it was because
you have now slimmed the curriculum down. Well, the slimmed-down
curriculum has been in effect only for eight weeks, for year 7.
Surely you do not deny that in the past 20 years the national
curriculum has had some pretty negative effects on teachers and
schools.
Clive Bush: I think I said in
answer to a previous question that there was a need for change,
and we had identified that need for change because, essentially,
of two things, one of which you can interpret as the prescriptive
nature of an over-full curriculum, and the fact that it did not
necessarily match the needs of the world around it now. All right,
we have adapted and adjusted that curriculum since 1987, but not
particularly radically. I think there have been five revisions.
This is a much more radical revision, and it is perhaps recognition
that the world is a different place from 20 years ago.
Chairman: We move on now to section 3,
and John will lead us. Another Division is imminent. If that happens,
we shall finish the sitting quickly after the vote. I shall ask
members of the Committee to come back very quickly.
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