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There is a perception that schools are saddled with a curriculum that is rigid, stultifying and monolithic. If so, how is Brindishe Community School in Lewisham giving a day a week to Philosophy Shop Director Peter Worley; his brief to develop the children’s disposition for deep and prolonged thought and discussion? What is Kingsland Primary in Stoke-on-Trent doing devoting substantial time across two terms in which the whole school plans for the imminent arrival of a decommissioned aeroplane destined for use as a new outdoor classroom? And what are they thinking at the schools in the Parkside Federation in Cambridge, where, in the words of Assistant Principal Craig Morrison, “the new diploma in creative and media is offering students unparalleled levels of choice and opportunities for interdisciplinary working?”

The fact is that currently we are witnessing unparalleled transformation in education, with genuine opportunity for curriculum flexibility and creativity to make learning both relevant and engaging for today’s learners. But some schools are quicker on the uptake than others. “Schools are at very different stages of exercising the freedom open to them,” explains Gareth Mills, the QCA’s Head of Curriculum Development and Implementation. “Currently, we have 1,000 schools in 40 separate networks across the country developing disciplined yet innovative approaches to the curriculum rooted in practice, that we are busy caching as case studies,” he adds. “One example is the school that has adopted the idea of the flexible Friday, doing away with bells and inviting in a designer to work with entire year groups, challenging the children to use the day preparing a pitch in answer to a professional project specification.”

Such positive perceptions of what schools can actually do is echoed by those supportive of recent curriculum reviews such as the Cambridge Primary Review and the Rose review (in spite of the poor media coverage it has received). “Having two major enquiries looking at the curriculum provides an unprecedented opportunity to make real progress,” says Futurelab’s Senior Researcher Tim Rudd. “They establish central principles and foundations for core subjects, enabling greater cross-curricular learning. This means that, in principle, subjects can be taught more comprehensively and in more meaningful ways rather than through experiencing often isolated and unrelated silos of static content.”

“HAVING TWO MAJOR ENQUIRIES LOOKING AT THE CURRICULUM PROVIDES AN UNPRECEDENTED OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE REAL PROGRESS”

And yet, despite Mills’ reassurances and the fact that those schools managing to mix rigour with an adventurous curriculum are the most likely to emerge with glowing Ofsted reports, the enduring benchmarks of achievement (SATs at Key Stage 2 and GCSEs) mean that many schools are fearful of risk-taking. “I have anecdotal evidence,” says Paul Collard, Chief Executive of Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), the organisation overseeing the Creative Partnerships programme, “that some schools - far from relaxing things in Year 9 thanks to the end of Key Stage 3 SATs - are actually keeping things very tight.” As for reasons why this might be, the implications of poor GCSE grades loom large. “If you create high social consequences for certain educational outcomes,” argues Dylan Wiliam, Professor of Educational Assessment at the Institute of Education, “then it is almost inevitable that you will have teaching to the test.”

For Paul Collard one of the biggest challenges facing any curriculum purporting to be creative is the development of a robust and yet manageable assessment regime that manages to capture that creativity. “We need far more sophisticated tools than seem currently to be available,” he says. “What we need is an acceptance that one of the reasons we employ teachers is that they should be trusted to provide insightful assessment of children in the round.” A key source of such liberation for teachers, suggests Dylan Wiliam, lies in the growing sophistication of assessment software. He singles out the work at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey where 20 years of research is now bearing fruit in the form of automated scoring software that has moved beyond evaluation of simple tick-box answers to analysing natural language whole-sentence responses. “Though double-negatives do still seem to fox it,” he remarks.

For Wiliam the great benefit of technologies such as this is their capacity for freeing practitioners from marking, giving them more time to encourage and evaluate more profound skills – speaking and listening, for example.

AT THE HEART OF FLEXIBLE PRACTICE ARE TEACHERS CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO LET THEMSELVES BECOME CREATIVE PARTNERS IN LEARNING

But assessment isn’t the only challenge to a more flexible curriculum. “It takes time for pupils to become used to being the masters of their own learning,” points out Steve Moseley, a teacher at Ashton Park School in Bristol, where they have been road-testing the Enquiring Minds curriculum with Year 8 pupils. Developed by Futurelab, Enquiring Minds supports young people to base their learning around their own interests to give it relevance to their lives. “While the most able children could be relied to run with the freedom, the challenge has proved to be those children least used to taking responsibility for their own learning,” he says. It is a challenge they are meeting head-on at Ashton Park by also developing their own version of the RSA’s Opening Minds curriculum in Year 7, “with the aim,” explains headteacher Chris Gardner, “of inculcating key skills in our pupils such as working in groups, taking part in peer-to-peer assessment and also acquiring the IT skills such as desk-top publishing that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their school careers and beyond.”

At Robin Hood Primary in Birmingham, the same spirit of negotiation combined with embedded flexibility and the cultivation of core skills is manifest in a fascinating daily ritual. Headteacher Neil Hopkin explains: “We have a system whereby Key Stage 1 parents, teachers and children spend up to 30 minutes negotiating the content of the curriculum for each day ahead. The teachers have an opportunity to explain their priorities for each child, for example, a core skill such as paragraphing, and the discussion focuses on how this can be married with what the child might want to do.”

“BEING AN EFFECTIVE TEACHER IS A CONSTANT, LIFELONG PROCESS OF CHANGE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT”

Of course, at the heart of such flexible practice are teachers confident enough to let themselves become creative partners in learning. “It is a concern to us,” suggests Rebecca Boyle, Chief Executive of Artis, an organisation dedicated to bringing professional artists into schools, “that a generation of teachers may have emerged from their training narrowed by the need to focus on the National Curriculum.” However, many feel that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the National Curriculum - it’s only when it’s delivered in an unimaginative way that learners become disengaged. And, to overcome that, effective lifelong Continual Professional Development (CPD) is needed. For Pam Dawson, Primary PGCE Tutor at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, it’s not initial training that’s the problem: “It’s a time of huge creativity and excitement for many PGCE students – no, it is when they begin in their first job that the reality check can take place.” Dylan Wiliam suggests that we need to be wary of focusing on initial teacher training: “It is a model that’s at risk of ignoring the fact that being an effective teacher is a constant, lifelong process of change and professional development.” This is dependent, however, on teachers getting time out for CPD, without which, to quote Fiona Banks, Head of Learning, Globe Education at Shakespeare's Globe, “the development of more creative practice is unfeasible.”

One answer to this challenge is offered by the increasing proliferation of collaborative models of creative working in which specialists come into schools, not to release teachers for CPD time but rather to work alongside them. It is just such a model that informs Creative Partnership’s projects and a large proportion of Artis’ work in schools. At Brindishe Primary in Lewisham, Executive Head Vicki Paterson is adamant that the local initiative that has brought philosopher Peter Worley into the school should be an opportunity for staff development as well as curriculum creativity. “For our teachers to miss his sessions would be such a waste, both in terms of their own growth but also the opportunity each session affords them to conduct the kind of detailed observation of their students from the sidelines that is all too rare in the school day.”

At the end of the day the success or failure, embrace or rejection of a more creative curriculum lies to a great extent with a school’s senior management team. “It will take a while for teachers here to believe us when we say that we want them to be more creative and adventurous,” says Sharon Nicholson, headteacher at Ray Lodge Primary in Redbridge – taking time out from a video-conference session with the National Space Centre in which her Year 6 pupils have been asked to develop a space station. However, with the wealth of advice increasingly on offer and ongoing training – in curriculum theory and planning as well as practice – teachers will not only get this message, but also know how to make it happen.

Links

Enquiring Minds - an innovative approach to teaching and learning – www.enquiringminds.org.uk
Artis - www.artiseducation.com
The Rose review of the primary curriculum - www.dcsf.gov.uk/primarycurriculumreview
Cambridge Primary Review - www.primaryreview.org.uk
Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools, timeline - ctat.pact.cs.cmu.edu/index.php?id=timeline
Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) – www.creativitycultureeducation.org
KingsWings, Inspiring Creativity Through Inspiration - www.thekingswings.com
QCA, Curriculum Innovation in Schools Report - www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Publications-and-research/Browse-all-by/Education/Curriculum/Curriculum-Innovation-in-schools/(language)/eng-GB
QCA Curriculum Network, case studies - www.qca.org.uk/qca_16822.aspx
QCA, Video Case Studies - www.qca.org.uk/qca_14001.aspx
Media projects at Parkside Federation - www.parksidemedia.net/parkside_media
Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills - curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/plts/index.aspx?return=/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/index.aspx
The Philosophy Shop - www.thephilosophyshop.co.uk

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