Plain Sailing In Schools

There has been a lot in the news recently about how narrow the primary curriculum is in England, especially with the emphasis in recent years on teaching the basics in literacy and numeracy. There are now plans for a major shakeup of the curriculum.

The author of a recent Cambridge University report warns that too much emphasis on testing the basics could “impoverish” learning in areas such as the arts. Professor Robin Alexander says this could mean a “deficient” education.

The report says inadequacies in the primary curriculum stem from a mistaken belief that breadth in the curriculum is incompatible with improved standards in the “basics” of maths, literacy and numeracy. History, geography, science and the arts have been “squeezed out”, it argues. The report’s authors suggest learning in primary schools is skewed towards subjects which are formally tested in the national tests, used to draw up league tables.

The review suggests the primary curriculum should be “re-conceived” with 12 specific aims, which it arranges in three groups:

• The needs and capacities of the individual: wellbeing; engagement; empowerment; autonomy
• The individual in relation to others and the wider world: encouraging respect and reciprocity; promoting interdependence and sustainability; empowering local, national and global citizenship; celebrating culture and community
• Learning, knowing and doing: knowing, understanding, exploring and making sense; fostering skill; exciting the imagination; enacting dialogue.

These aims would be achieved through eight “domains”, rather than a small number of subjects. The domains would be: arts and creativity; citizenship and ethics; faith and belief; language, oracy and literacy; mathematics; physical and emotional health; place and time (geography and history); science and technology.

This seems to me to be quite similar to the framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, along with its’ six areas of learning – the Early Learning Goals. I have always found this to be a very effective model for curriculum planning, and lends itself to a more thematic or ‘topic’ approach, which is how things were done in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It seems fundamental to me that children do not view their learning, or the world, in terms of separate compartmentalised units. In contrast, they need to see that everything is interrelated.

What are you views on this? What impact will it have on teachers?

Schools should band together to provide social workers for unruly pupils and support groups for parents, according to the government’s “behaviour tsar”. The proposals will be among a number of suggestions included in Sir Alan Steer’s report to ministers in April.

Teaching unions say teachers need better support and fewer targets to enable them to better manage behaviour. Sir Alan said the vast majority of pupils are well behaved, despite society’s “negative” perceptions of children. But he believes more can be done earlier to prevent unruly behaviour becoming a serious problem, such as through primary schools jointly funding social work professionals.

Teaching unions have welcomed the idea, providing it does not burden them with more work, but say the real problem is that staff are ill-prepared to deal with bad behaviour. NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said “Behaviour management training is inadequate both in initial teacher training and when teachers are in the job in schools. What’s preventing a lot of teachers from actually being able to manage behaviour effectively is the current school accountability regime which drives teachers to reach numerical targets, to teach to satisfy inspection.”

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said three in 10 teachers leave the profession in the first five years and unruly behaviour was the main cause.

Sir Alan says a more intelligent approach is needed to combating bad behaviour in the classroom. “If we can extend into schools some other services to support children, to help those children who struggle then we are far more likely to have success,” he said.

What procedures does your school have for dealing with disruptive pupils? Have you got a story you would like to share? Do you think that initial teacher training programmes should build in strategies for behaviour management?