Gps 19.10.09

\IIML

YlFL

A big picture of the curriculum

Working Draft: April - June 2008

Qualifications and rtcuKjm Authority Three key questions The curriculum aims to enable all young people to become Curriculum aims

Successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve

Every Child Matters outcomes

Be healthy

Focus for learning

Attitudes and attributes eg determined, adaptable, confident, risk-taking, enterprising

Stay safe

Confident individuals who are able to lead safe, healthy and fulfilling lives

Enjoy and achieve

Responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society Achieve economic wellbeing

Make a positive contribution

Skills eg literacy, numeracy, ICT, personal, learning and thinking skills

Knowledge and understanding eg big ideas that shape the world

The curriculum as an entire planned learning experience underpinned by a broad set of common values and purposes Components

Aooroaches to 1 1 i ' 10 learning

Environment

to Iellmin9 need eg enquiry ,nstructjon

active, practical. theoretical

Extended hours

m for purpose integral to learning and teaching

and

Learning outside the classroom

Lessons

Locations

Routines

Opportunities for Assessment uses Personalised Assessment spiritual, moral, Relevant, a wide range of Involve offering challenge develops social, cultural, In tune with purposeful evidence to learners learners' selfand support to emotional, proactively in human for a encourage esteem and enable all learners to and range of intellectual and development commitment to make progress and learners to their own physical audiences reflect on their learning their learning achieve development own learning

Resource well matched to learning need eg use of time. space, people, materials

Overarching themes that have a significance for individuals and society, and provide relevant learning contexts: Identity and cultural diversity - Healthy lifestyles - Community participation - Enterprise - Global dimension and sustainable development Technology and the media - Creativity and critical thinking.

Whole curriculum dimensions

Statutory expectations

Events

Communication, language and literacy

A&D

Ci

D&T

Creative development

On

En

Personal, social and emotional development

Knowledge and understanding of the world

HI

ICT

Ml

MFL

Physical development

Mil

PE

Problem solving, reasoning and numeracy PSHE

PWEW»FC

RE

SC

To make learning and teaching more effective so that learners understand quality and how to improve

Evaluating impact

Looks at the whole Uses information Uses 'critical Uses a wide child eg curriculum Intelligently to friends' to offer range of aims, progress in identify trends and insights and measures, both skids, subjects and dear goals for challenge qualitative and dimensions improvement assumptions quantitative

.-. contin o * irnnrovement "

Uses a variety Involves the whole °' *ecnnil
To secure Accountability measures

Attainment and Improved standards

L.^.^^

Behaviour and attendance

I

CMcpartdpaHon

1

Healthy Rfostyto choices

•

Further involvement in education, employment or training

I

Adapted with thanks to colleagues at the Council for Curriculum. Examinations and Assessment (CCEA)

National Curriculum 2008 Key concepts Competence

Creativity

Cultural understanding

Critical understanding

Key Processes Speaking & listening

Art and design

Competence

Creativity

Cultural understanding

Critical understanding

Explore and create

Geography

Place Physical & human processes Chronological . Banding

Space Scale Environmental interaction & sustainable development

English

Integration of practice

Citizenship

Democracy & justice

Economic wellbeing & financial capability Personal wellbeing

Career

Personal identities

Writing (composition; technical accuracy

Understand and evaluate

Fieldwork and out-ofclass learning

Graphicacy and visual literacy

ieograplncal communication

mpart ol echnology v»vi

Cultural understanding

Critical understanding

Rights & responsibilities Capability

Healthy lifestyles

Risk

Risk

Communication

Creativity

Identities & diversity: living together in the UK Economic understanding Relationships

Diversity

•

www.geography.orq.uk/conference

Geographical enquiry

' Reading (the author's craft)

I

ication & tion

Music

interdependence Cultural understanding 8 diversity

Reading (reading for

Performing composing and listening

Critical thinking & enquiry Self-development

Cntical reflection

Advocacy & representation

I Exploration

Enterprise

Taking informed & responsible action Financial capability

Decision-making & managing risk

Statement of values The National Curriculum statement of values has been misunderstood, says Graham Haydon, (www.teachinQexpertise.com/articles/values-educationresource-the-national-curriculum-statement-l ) Haydon, G. (2007) Values in Education, Continuum: London Meanwhile, the agency that started as SCAA (School Curriculum and Assessment Authority) and continued as QCA was, without much fanfare, engaged in another initiative, rather grandly titled the National Forum for Values in Education and the Community. This was a group of 150 people, drawn from various walks of life and ethnic and religious backgrounds, who tried to see if they could agree on a statement of values that were held in common across Britain's plural society. The forum did produce a list of values, and a public polling exercise showed that most people agreed with the list. The statement has been included in National Curriculum documents since the 1999 revision. As of April 2007, you can still find it on the National Curriculum website at www.nc.uk.net/nc_resources/ html/values.shtml, and it has been retained in the documents on changing the secondary curriculum that QCA put out for consultation earlier this year (see the March issue of this column, and www.qca.org.uk/ secondarycurriculumreview/lenses/building/values/index.htm). I rarely encounter teachers who are familiar with this statement, let alone say that they use it. People who are aware of it often have a rather negative view. Missing the point With respect to Sir Keith Ajegbo, whose report is important reading {see the March issue), this kind of criticism misses much of the point. When the statement was first published, many people probably did not read the preamble that explained its purpose. Extracts from that preamble were still included in the 1999 National Curriculum documents. The latest QCA consultation documents, unfortunately, omit the preamble altogether, and actually say that 'the national curriculum is based on [this] statement of values'. It was never the remit of the original forum to provide a value-base for the whole curriculum (1 know; I was one of the 150). Nor was the intention to provide a set of values that could somehow in itself resolve disagreements arising from the diversity of our society. The intention was a much more limited, but still important one: to demonstrate, to people who claimed there could be no common ground of values in a plural society, that it actually was possible to find quite widespread agreement. If you try to do this, then of course you will have to avoid some controversial issues on which not everyone will agree (you will not find any direct reference, for instance, to the morality of same-sex relationships). In that sense, any resulting statement is bound to be 'watered down' in comparison with a whole range of possible and diverse sets of values that different groups might support. So is the statement 'politically correct'? Yes, if we can interpret that as meaning that the end-result that has been endorsed after a process of discussion and negotiation. Such a process is bound to be political with a small p, and is none the worse for that. People will argue for their favoured positions, but what comes out in the end is something that everyone can sign up to. So some people wanted a strong statement in support of marriage, while others wanted recognition of diversity of family relationships. The end result has a wording that everyone accepted (look it up). That is actually not a had illustration of how nponle ran finrt aerppmpnt while not hurvine their diffprpnrev