Teach-Primary-Issue-19.3

www.teachwire.net | 37 L E ADERSH I P A mong the most common complaints about the national curriculum are that there are too many subjects, too much content, and not enough time to teach it all. Debating the first two complaints will likely form an important part of the government’s curriculum review. But whatever the form of the next national curriculum, schools will still face the challenges and limitations imposed by the length of the school day, weeks, terms, and So much content, SO LITTLE TIME years. However, by pursuing Tim Oates’ initial aim of teaching “fewer things in greater depth” and using principles of cognitive science for curriculum design, we are presented with a wonderful opportunity to refine the national curriculum and improve outcomes for all our children. There is a stark irony that the national curriculum in England has too much content, despite most subjects’ programmes of study covering less than two sides of A4. Whilst the lack of specificity has offered important opportunities for curriculum innovation, in many cases it has perpetuated the use of a topic-based approach to curriculum planning. Children ‘do’ the Romans in history, or volcanoes in geography, but what they learn is not always easily connected to existing schema, reducing both the content’s relevance and its ability to stick. When content struggles to be more than a list of facts related to a topic’s name, curriculum sequences can yield poor returns on the time and resources invested in teaching and learning; children can quickly become overloaded with seemingly disconnected information and, consequently, fail to commit the content to long-term memory. THIS WAY! School improvement advice for headteachers and SLT MIDDLE LEADERS | CPD | SUBJECT LEADERSHIP