Teachers feel “disempowered and deprofessionalised by overstipulation and the challenge to cover content” in the curriculum, Professor Becky Francis has said as she outlined emerging themes from her review roadshows so far.
Francis, who is leading the government’s curriculum and assessment review, said there are “many mixed and diverse views” about the curriculum. Currently roadshows are being held around the country to gather views for the review panel to consider.
She told the Confederation of School Trusts conference how “frequent complaints” include that assessment and exams “dictate curriculum” and the curriculum is “overprescribed and overstuffed”.
It’s “asserted” this has led to “deprioritisation of certain subjects” and reductions in enrichment activities.
Francis added: “Teachers often talk about feeling disempowered and deprofessionalised by overstipulation and the challenge to cover content.
“Literally, what I hear is ‘getting through the content’. That’s a phrase that teachers have used repeatedly.”
There are also concerns about “an ongoing lack of awareness of vocational routes at post-16” and inclusivity challenges for pupils “who struggle to progress and achieve for a range of reasons”.
On positive themes, there has been appreciation of the “relative balance of breadth and depth” and “of our universal offer and entitlement to 16 and of diversity of options and pathways at post-16’.
“There’s an appreciation of the ambition for all expressed in the present national curriculum and of different things that have gone well. Reading is often mentioned as one example, and another is a well sequenced curriculum.”
Francis has said before that if things are to be added to the curriculum, then things also need to be removed.
She said today that “ideas about how to reduce or what to remove have been relatively scarce”.
She also said “there is no perfect and there are instead many trade-offs, and the challenge is to find the best case and to try and avoid unintended consequences.”
‘Opportunity for sector to grasp the wheel’
Francis said one of the concerns “running through the review’s work is that by alleviating accountability and prescription, we risk facilitating poor practices that further marginalise disadvantaged young people.
“We all know how responsive the system is to accountability levers and most of us can cite unethical practices that a few have adopted to maximise performance measures.”
Where the curriculum has been described as overprescribed, she said it’s often “hard to disaggregate the cause – there are issues around school culture and cumulative additions that build up at a local level, trust stipulations and projections about Ofsted expectations and so forth.
“All of this can mean that at a local level, the curriculum can build actually without necessarily reflecting the national curriculum”.
Francis said to school leaders: “It seems to me that as we refresh the curriculum and assessment system with a view to greater flexibility and professional ownership, there’s an opportunity for the sector to grasp the wheel in going beyond what’s prescribed for us or encouraged by crude incentives and drivers, to build school practice that has young people and their teachers always at the centre.
“There are many challenges to address and unintended consequences to avoid as we continue our work with the review, but I really hope that with your support and your expert input we can maximise this opportunity to build well.”
