PrimaryOdds'n'Ends » PrimaryReviewSpeculation

Never to be seen again!

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:13:53 +0000

It’s interesting how electronic information can be rewritten so easily.

Just take it down.

And in the blink of an eye 11 years of work and discussion has gone.

I wonder if there are any paper copies.

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It’s not happening

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:59:33 +0000

Vast swathes of the Children, Schools and Families Bill didn’t make it through parliament before dissolution.

What’s that? - The New Primary Curriculum was in that bill and it isn’t happening.

Ed Balls forced to drop key reforms

Sex education plans sacrificed to get education bill through parliament before it is dissolved

Jessica Shepherd – Guardian 07.04.10

After all the heartache of the last 15 years we now have to live with the spectre of this?

Gove unveils Tory plan for return to ‘traditional’ school lessons

Alice Thomson & Rachel Sylvester – The Times 06/03/10

New conservative (sorry, crossout and replace with labour) were bad enough but to go back to Conservative. My heart weeps!

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What is it about Britain?

Mr Ball — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:31:25 +0000

Devastating criticism of primary education dismissed by ministers
• Doing nothing would be weak, say headteachers
• Schools department calls report out of date

Polly Curtis – Guardian 16/10/2009

Two quotes from this piece in yesterday’s Guardian seem to sum it up

“There are recommendations in this report that could transform the Primary ethos and turn pessimism into hope.” Cambridge Review

“We completely refute the claim that primary standards have not risen across the board.” Vernon Croaker – School’s Minister.

One edgy, open to new possibilities, the other like the veritable prison door slamming shut behind you.

No discourse, no attempt to understand a blanket NO!

These lines are just too important to ignore.

But today’s report found growing concern about the international evidence that finds that some children are put off school if they feel they have failed formal lessons in the 3Rs at an early age.

The idea that children can learn things in anything other than a formal environment is anathema to the other lot too.

However, we do not agree … that politicians should end school for four to six-year-olds.” Nick Gibb – Shadow Schools Minister. But they only said that children should not start formal lessons until the age of six!

Start school at six, key schools report recommends
• Education ‘narrower than in Victorian era’
• Labour accused of ‘Stalinist’ approach
• Scrap Sats and league tables says biggest study

Polly Curtis – Guardian 16/10/2009

Still the best thing is to actually read the report.

The Cambridge Primary Review

In Brief

Background and Key Conclusions

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Rose Review Conference

Mr Ball — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:14:16 +0000

Early thoughts of the Primary Curriculum Review from someone lucky enough to go to early briefings.

Rose Review Conference from Redbridge Primary ICT Conference.

A video recorded at the time.

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Capita about to get the chop!

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:15:25 +0000

Labour to junk Tony Blair’s flagship school reform

Headteachers to get more powers as era of centralised control ends

Farewell then the Numeracy and Literacy Strategy, all the heartache and disillusion these strategies have caused. For me the Literacy Strategy was always worse than the Numeracy, but then I’ve always found maths easier to teach. Just that bit more linear and explainable in bite size chunks.

Who remembers with fondness ‘the carousel’? It went against the grain of all your instincts as a teacher but it was the ‘bees knees’ and the way things had to be done. Similarly, I will miss trying to get in three of four objectives into a lesson and squashing all the weeks objectives into a weeks planning and then throwing in the few that didn’t quite fit.. That 15 15 20 10 monika, although that’s largely gone, will be sadly let go.

Around the time they realised they’d left out speaking and listening from the melting pot, they began to blame teachers for it’s loss, saying it was within the National Curriculum really.

This blame game seems to be happening again on a big scale, “well the literacy strategy and the numeracy strategy were never statutary.” They might not have been but heaven help you if you weren’t doing them. Non Statutary – Foobah! It’s a bit like those ‘non statutary’ Yearly SATs tests which SATurated the time in school with so many tests. It took a brave head to stand out against ‘The Strategies” given the weight of paperwork, the advisors, the school development officers who advocated it, even if they didn’t believe in it’s advocacy. They all parroted the line. Even the University lecturers, who knew it wasn’t enough.

We’ll all miss that great timesaver, the online planning tool, that never worked!

There are so many fond memories from these fantastic strategies. Fantasy indeed both the thought and the strategies.

Will they take the website down? How will we plan? What are we going to do? How will ofsted check us? It’s all up for grabs now?

And why? Not because anyone has seen sense but because it all costs too much. On a day when the Bankers get their bonuses Back, 2000 steel workers loose their jobs and British Airways Staff are asked to work for free.

Are there comparisons to be made with ‘Care in the Community’? Pity the poor heads, who will have to make it work on a local scale?

Whithered ‘Education, Education, Education. on the vine, it did. In ‘whatsit’ speak ‘improvements have stalled’ But belatedly people have realised that teaching to a test can can only stall or get 100% every year and then you’re really up against it.

We need some better measures of what constitutes a good education. No longer, narrowly defined outcomes will measure our success. That narrow path has lead to the world we live in.

This appeared this morning.

Cadenzas in a curriculum

My school days were lit up by two wonderful teachers. Would there be room for them today?

Rebecca Front in the Guardian. Friday 26th June 2009

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ICT comes of age.

Mr Ball — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:38:57 +0000

ICT – An essential for learning and life.

An apple
A pencil
A ruler
A whiteboard/slate
A calculator
A computer
A satchel

Where cometh all the computers from?

ICT capability
Focus: Children use and apply their ICT knowledge, skills and understanding confidently and competently in their learning and in everyday contexts. They become
independent and discerning users of technology, recognising opportunities and risks and using strategies to stay safe.
Children learn how to:
1. find and select information from digital and online sources, making judgements about accuracy and reliability
2. create, manipulate and process information using technology to capture and organise data, in order to investigate patterns and trends; explore options using
models and simulations; and combine still and moving images, sounds and text to create multimedia products
3. collaborate, communicate and share information using connectivity to work with, and present to, people and audiences within and beyond the school
4. refine and improve their work, making full use of the nature and pliability of digital information to explore options and improve outcomes.

ICT Capability for “Essentials fo Learning and Life”

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Primary Review – Final

Mr Ball — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:25:33 +0000

Independent review of the Primary Curriculum – Final Report

This page links to PDF Downloads of all the related parts of this document.

The Review has sought to address two central questions:

What should the primary curriculum contain?
How should the content and the teaching of it change to foster children’s different and developing abilities during primary education?

The key features of the primary curriculum put forward by this Review are:

Recognising the continuing importance of subjects and the essential knowledge, skills and understanding they represent.

Providing a stronger focus on curriculum progression.

Strengthening the focus on ensuring, that by the age of seven, children have a secure grasp of the literacy and numeracy skills they need to make good progress thereafter.

Strengthening the teaching and learning of ICT to enable them to be independent and confident users of technology by the end of primary education.

Providing a greater emphasis on personal development through a more integrated and simpler framework for schools.

Building stronger links between the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, and between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3. in offering exciting opportunities for learning languages for 7-11 year olds.

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Sir Jim’s Leeks

Mr Ball — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:06:36 +0000

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up
• New curriculum will give teachers more freedom
• Second world war and Victoria not compulsory

Polly Curtis – Guardian 25/03/09

Study Twitter? Study Blogs? They are just tools to engage and stimulate. For many they are already, just an every day, common place thing.
I wonder sometimes if the people writing the headlines have any idea?

“The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.”

You can just hear the scrape of old soapboxes as they are pulled out of cupboards in response to this idea.

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Front Page News

Mr Ball — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:33:03 +0000

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

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Stifling creativity?

Mr Ball — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:28:29 +0000

Sir Ken Robinson in an interview with Jessica Shepherd in today’s Guardian.
Our approaches to education are “stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the 21st century – the powers of creative thinking”, he says.

We await the Rose review to see how far the cross-curricular themes advocated will really allow the creativity to flow in the Primary Curriculum?

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