The final piece of the curriculum puzzle
by Jon Hutchinson
Director of Curriculum & Professional Development
The Reach Foundation
Everyone likes a fresh start. A chance to begin again. For millions of children around the country, they’ll get just that after the summer holidays, and about a quarter of a million of them will make the rite of passage from primary to secondary school. It’s often a nerve-racking time, but one full of opportunity too.
There’s been a longstanding airlock between primary and secondary schools. In some senses, this feels both appropriate and helpful. When I taught year six it was clear that many of the children had outgrown primary school, and were ready to stretch their wings somewhere new.
But this airlock can, and does, cause fragmentation in aspects of children’s educational journey that is less helpful. It’s not at all uncommon to hear secondary teachers claim that they ‘assume that children know nothing in my subject’ and, essentially, start from scratch. Similarly, it’s rare for primary colleagues to have a solid grasp of exactly what is expected of children in their secondary lessons. I certainly didn’t.
These cracks are navigated by teachers. Oftentimes we aren’t even aware that they exist. But they are experienced by children. Some manage to smooth them over, especially if they are from advantaged backgrounds. But for many children, too many, these cracks become chasms.
We know the impact that a properly sequenced curriculum can make because over the last decade school leaders and teachers around the country have been doing tremendous work in carefully identifying the knowledge and skills that children need to master in each subject, carefully plotting that journey out for them. The trouble is, much of this work is held within the sandbox of each key stage, and then scattered to the wind as children transition from primary to secondary.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Over the last three years, we’ve partnered with local clusters of schools from around the country who have embarked on a mission to make the curriculum more coherent for pupils both within and between phases. Working together over a sustained period of time, leaders from both primaries and secondaries have sought to deeply understand the challenges and opportunities when it comes to curriculum.
Sometimes this has led to low-hanging fruit being identified.
For example, secondary school taught only Spanish at Key Stage 3, whilst the local primary schools taught a mixture of modern languages. This meant that all children in year 7 had to essentially start from square one, leading to undoubted frustration from the children who had already spent years studying Spanish (and I’m sure a sense of ‘what was the point of starting out with French’ from the kids who were taught that).
Then there are deeper opportunities, considering the core substantive concepts within subjects and how pupils interact with them over time.
Imagine, as a history teacher, being able to guarantee that all children arriving in year 7 understand empire, conquest, trade, treaties and monarchy. And imagine knowing the specific examples that they have studied of each.
In some cases, partners have also begun work on the enacted curriculum, with primary and secondary colleagues collaborating to plot out not only what is taught, but how. This means a year 5 teacher can benefit from understanding how fieldwork is taught when children get to secondary, and then work on setting the foundations for that, building a graduated progression of sophistication in this key geographical skill.
Of course, it’s not all rosy.
There are real barriers to this work. Aside from the fact that there isn’t a teacher or leader in the country with a spare five minutes in their calendar, there are also conflicting incentives within the different phases. It can also become very complex with schools that have multiple feeders, or who send children to multiple secondaries.
But partners on our ‘Cradle-to-Career Partnership’ curriculum thread have come to believe that just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything.
Faultless coherence may be impossible given the nature of schools and education, but 30% coherence is better than no coherence at all. And even if we can’t work completely against the system, there are wins to be claimed if everyone better understands how it works at each phase.
Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing the work that partners have been doing in building more coherent curriculum journeys for all of their pupils. We’ll share the ups and the downs. The activities and the insights.
It’s challenging, knotty, painstaking work. But there’s a great prize along the way—a fresh start that builds on the strong foundations that have come before, and gives all children the best chance to flourish.
