Tests blamed for blighting children’s lives

Landmark study of primary schools calls for teachers to be freed of targets

Polly Curtis in the Guardian 20/02/2009

69 Comments as of 24/02/09

The Cambridge Primary Review published to day is available from their website in two parts (Part 1 & Part 2) there is also a briefing document.

From the Briefing Document

Towards a new primary curriculum
The new primary curriculum proposed by the Cambridge Primary Review:
• seeks to resolve the problems summarised above;
• starts from, and is driven by, a clear statement of the aims of primary education grounded in analysis
of children’s present and future needs and the condition of the society and world in which children
are growing up;
• has regard to principles of procedure which highlight entitlement, quality, equity, breadth, balance,
local engagement, and guidance rather than prescription;
• respects and builds on the EYFS curriculum (proposals on the EYFS/primary relationship and the
reconfiguring of the primary phase will be in the Review’s final report);
• is conceived as a matrix of 12 educational aims and 8 domains of knowledge, skill, enquiry and
disposition, with the aims locked firmly into the framework from the outset;
• dispenses with the notion of the curriculum core as a small number of subjects and places all eight
domains within the curriculum on the principle that although teaching time will continue to be
differentially allocated, all the domains are essential to young children’s education and all must be
taught to the highest standards;
• at the same time insists on the centrality of language, oracy and literacy, both in their own right and
as enabling learning across a curriculum in which breadth and standards go hand in hand;
• reconceptualises key curriculum areas, notably language/oracy/literacy, citizenship and personal
education;
• provides for a strong local component, differentiates the national and community curriculum, and
divides time between them on the basis of 70/30 per cent of the yearly teaching total;

An interesting take on this from – The Educational Technology Site: ICT in Education

Arguing for a rejection of the review by the educational ICT  community.

The following days Guardian Leader. ‘That’s the way it is.’

A thoroughly evidence based review.  Says Joe Nutt