Earlier this week, John Tomsett, Mary Myatt and I hosted an event at the Regent Hall on Oxford Street. 200 people gathered for a celebration of curriculum thinking and an exploration of the way ahead – based on our work with schools and discussions with teachers and leaders, much of which John and Mary have capture in their incredible Huh! series. Thanks to everyone who came! And thanks to Alex at John Catt who supported us to include a book with every ticket.
Most of my work is now with schools looking to embed and enact their curriculum intentions. I encounter schools where they have done superb work in thinking about curriculum sequencing and content, with plenty of ambition. The challenge is to put plans into action. I’m still a big fan of the idea of ‘knowledge rich’ because it makes us think about what exactly we want children to know. Recently I’ve become a little alarmed by the threat of a swing against this idea (something I’ll explore further elsewhere) and I’m always keen to remind people of the beautifully intelligent synthesis achieved in Martin Robinson’s Trivium 21c – that goal of wisdom, through grammar, dialectic and rhetoric.
Schools like Turton in Bolton who share their ideas freely on their websites, show us how much thought has gone into every aspect of curriculum design - the selection of texts, enquiry questions in history and all the links that are possible between subjects. But, now, without doubt, the wave of ‘intent’ discussion from 2017-2019 has turned into a preoccupation with implementation, including the need for quality resources.
Here, the development of high quality materials is something to celebrate. I gave shout-outs to the Counsell/Mastin Opening Worlds materials, the Didau/OAT English curriculum, the Boxer/Carousel online retrieval practice tool and the brilliant Complete Mathematics resource. Really, there’s no excuse these days to be using sub-standard curriculum material when there are so many sources of the good stuff – free or highly affordable. . Teachers and leaders need to invest time in engaging with their subject communities to keep abreast of what’s available, making sure theirs is as good as anyone’s.
