From the chapter ‘Education‘
Joe Hallgarten, Teacher and CEO at the Centre for Education and Youth and Jo Franklin, ex-headteacher and CEO at The LETTA Trust
Since its introduction in 1988, every education minister has suggested that the National Curriculum,[i] the knowledge and skills that are mandated for state schools to teach, should never be the be-all and end-all of a school curriculum. Schools must have their own agency, not just to deliver the National Curriculum in their own way, but also to agree and teach additional knowledge, skills and dispositions that they and their communities value. This rhetoric around curricular freedom has never matched the reality. This is largely a result not of an overloaded National Curriculum, but of an assessment and accountability system that forces schools to narrow and shallow their curriculum offer. What might primary schools do to break this vicious cycle?
The Explorer Curriculum: spotting the gap between the National Curriculum and what is really needed
LETTA is a growing multi-academy trust[ii] in Poplar, Tower Hamlets in London, currently consisting of two primary schools: Stebon and Bygrove. We run a popular teacher training scheme alongside 20 partner schools and are a registered provider of apprenticeships. Our mission is to promote social equality through excellent educational provision and to raise aspirations and make sure that all our learners keep on learning new things. Together we strive to give children the best chance of happiness and success at school and beyond, and help grow active citizens with a strong moral compass who will make a positive difference in the world.
At LETTA last year we faced a dilemma that we believe many primary schools face.
Our National Curriculum teaching was already strong and getting stronger in curriculum delivery, and we were both confident about our current approach and committed to continual improvement.
However, like almost all schools, our school has a vision for our young people that goes far beyond the knowledge and skills that the National Curriculum specifies. Our vision is that every child in every school in The LETTA Trust:
- Loves learning, achieves their very best, has fun at school and feels excited about the future.
- Knows how to make friends and get along well with people; to treat them with fairness, compassion and respect.
- Grows healthy and strong, believes in themselves and has the confidence and resilience to follow their dreams.
- Feels part of their community, proud of their school and inspired to make a positive difference in the world.
Although we have strong buy-in from our staff and the wider community to this vision, we know that this isn’t enough. However brilliant our delivery of the National Curriculum might be, however many out-of-school and after-school opportunities we offer (including residentials and visits), however our schools’ cultures – from assemblies to lunches to play times – try to ensure that this vision is ‘caught’ as well as ‘taught’, we knew it was all still inadequate for the task of developing the young citizens we know our children can be and become. To come closer to achieving our vision for all pupils, we needed two more things: precision and space.
Precision: turning our vision into behaviours
Just like any set of curriculum goals, vision needs some specificity in terms of outcomes. So we sought to agree and define the particular dispositions – habits of mind and character – we want our children to develop, being:
- Curiosity: the desire to learn, ask questions, understand and try new things.
- Creativity: problem-solving, innovating and inventing across all subjects.
- Determination: not giving up, bouncing back, trying again and staying focused.
- Kindness: making people feel good, sharing, giving, selflessness – crucial to wellbeing.
- Confidence: self-confidence, confidence your voice will be heard, confidence in your ideas.
- Fairness: as children progress to include equality.
- Leadership: organising, taking responsibility, communicating.
- Teamwork: understanding yourself and others.
- Citizenship: local, national and global – making the world a better place.
This, to some extent, was the easy part. Many schools have similar lists. Much more difficult is to consider what progression in each behaviour should look like, breaking down each behaviour into smaller, clearer, and where possible, age-related steps that can be taught and modelled across the school. Our aim was not to create any assessment framework (although this may come at some point). At this stage, we wanted all staff to:
- understand each behaviour;
- share a common language to describe and model each;
- understand what progress in each behaviour might look like;
- recognise and celebrate progress.
This was a tricky task. Our final document from this is in no way perfect, but does give us a starting point through which to improve through testing and practice.
Space: dedicating in-school time to move beyond the National Curriculum
A genuine focus on these nine behaviours needed dedicated time outside of the National Curriculum. Prior to the pandemic, our schools had already dedicated one afternoon each week to a version of Scouting – putting children in mixed age groups to achieve badges, such as ‘athlete’ or ‘cook’. But we used the opportunity of the pandemic pause to begin a radical redesign of this time, and created our Explorer Curriculum.
Our Explorer Curriculum in action
Fridays in LETTA schools now look and feel different from the rest of the week. Children are in mixed age groups, collaborating on projects that, where possible, address real-world challenges. These enable pupils to broaden their horizons, develop their character and explore their personal interests and talents. Much of this takes place outside classrooms, using the outdoors, the local neighbourhood and other parts of London as resources for learning. All school staff (as well as parents and others in our community) are involved, and older pupils are given genuine leadership responsibilities.
During each project, children have the chance to complete ‘Destinations’ and exhibit the processes and outcomes of their project to others. They have opportunities to develop the outlined behaviours, reflect on their learning and receive meaningful feedback from peers, school staff and other adults. These projects complement our existing knowledge and skills-rich curriculum that is taught through subject-driven termly themes. The Explorer Curriculum provides opportunities for pupils to develop character behaviours and discover the passions and interests that will enable them to thrive, as children and as adults. It gives us the chance to develop and embed these character behaviours in a more focused, systematic way, and makes a significant, unique contribution to achieving our vision for every child in our trust. At the same time, they are having lots of fun!
Our policy ask of government
The starting point for any engagement with education policy makers – including a ‘cabinet minister dedicated to children’s services and wellbeing’, as this project proposes – should be empathy. The system is under all sorts of pressures from all sorts of people and organisations to add more, do more, make more things mandatory for all schools. The curriculum is a particular battlefield, as are all the other accountability and professional development levers at their disposal. Rarely a week goes by without somebody proposing that the Department for Education should add x to the National Curriculum, or y to what should be regulated or inspected, or z to what teachers should be trained in. We need to give our policy makers – all of whom want the best for all our children, and especially for our poorest children – license to push back on these demands. This is more about a generic ‘government as space creator’ attitude than a specific policy, based on a belief that schools that have some freedom to design and deliver their own mission will achieve far more for their pupils. However, one policy worth considering is this: Governments should encourage and guarantee a 20 per cent space (about a day a week, or a week a half term) in all school curricula for ‘non-National Curriculum learning’, and ensure that accountability systems protect, inspect and monitor this space. What might emerge in these thousands of freed-up hours is delightfully unpredictable. And that’s the point. Our schools and our young people are extraordinary. Let’s give them some space to surprise us.
Notes
[i] DfE (Department for Education) (2014) National Curriculum, www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum
[ii] Multi-academy trusts (MATs) are charities that run groups of academy schools. Academies are state schools that are run independently of the local authority they are present in.