Scotland is “updating” its high-level curriculum; New Zealand is “refreshing” its curriculum. Wales should learn from them both, rather than waiting a decade before realising it’s made the same mistakes.
The curricula in Scotland, New Zealand and Wales have much in common. They’ve moved away from specifying disciplinary knowledge and skills, and instead set out high-level “experiences and outcomes”, “achievement objectives” and “descriptions of learning”, organised around areas of learning.
The trouble with doing so is that it is the teaching of carefully sequenced knowledge and skills over the course of a curriculum, and the opportunity to apply them, that allows students to achieve these objectives.
Removing the knowledge from the curriculum framework removes the scaffolding that supports teachers in planning coherent curricula, which, in turn, could support students in achieving these lofty but worthy ideals.
Concerns over Pisa scores
Scotland and New Zealand have both seen a decline in their mathematics and science Programme for International Student Assessment results over the decade or more since they introduced their high-level curricula. New Zealand has seen significant declines in reading, too.
Of course, this doesn’t prove that it was the introduction of these curricula that caused the decline, but it does tell us that, at the very least, the curricula approach taken did not improve standards.
Unlike Scotland and New Zealand when they first introduced their curricula, Wales doesn’t have room for manoeuvre. Wales can’t afford to fall any further. And, as it happens, neither can Scotland.
Additional pause for thought for Welsh politicians should come from the fact that both Scotland and New Zealand are in the process of refreshing or updating their curricula, and in both cases, one of the changes they are making (or thinking about making), is reducing the ambiguity of the existing curriculum statements, and being clearer about the learning that cannot be left to chance.
In New Zealand, the government stated that “being clear about the important learning that all ākonga need” (which is Maori for “learner”) was one of the “crucial areas needing the greatest change”.
The recommendations of a series of pilot curriculum reviews by Education Scotland, made public by Tes, included the suggestion that “greater clarity on the knowledge learners should have” is needed “at key points in learning”.
Let’s take a moment to notice what it is they’re changing, and what they’re not. Commitment to the purposes of these curricula remains; their vision also remains. They have learned, though, that they need to be clearer about what children need to know in order to help them achieve those purposes.
The problem of ‘absence of specificity’
Why is it that they’ve focused on clarity around knowledge and reducing ambiguity? I’ll share two key problems that the absence of specificity has caused, and finish with some curriculum challenges for Welsh and Scottish governments.
The first is unequal opportunities. When the curriculum contains only high-level, somewhat ambiguous statements, it leads to variation in interpretation that doesn’t only lead to differences in taught content (which needn’t be a problem) but to different standards in different schools.
A recent study in New Zealand looked at different interpretations of the same high-level literacy standards in different schools serving different demographics. It concluded that “the problem (of unequal opportunities) not only persists in New Zealand secondary schools, but is aided by the unintended consequences of the flexibility of the curriculum and assessment systems”.
In the announcement of the curriculum refresh, the former associate minister of education in New Zealand, Jan Tinetti, stated: “It is critical that our national curriculum is fit for purpose, and that there is a coherent system of support for its delivery…The variability, inconsistency and inequity that is characteristic of our system shows that we haven’t got this right yet.”
‘Lack of commonality’ in move from primary to secondary
The second problem thrown up by a lack of specified knowledge and skills is felt at transitions. Even if every primary school had high standards and high expectations, a lack of commonality across them leads to a lack of coherence in the curriculum experienced by the pupils as they move from primary to secondary.
This was the cause of a recommendation by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Scotland to “consider how the design of Curriculum for Excellence can better help learners consolidate a common base of knowledge, skills and attitudes by the end of broad general education”.
Similarly, Education Scotland reported from their pilot curriculum reviews (made public by Tes) that: “Participants also identified potential consequences of a lack of clarity for the position of knowledge on transitions from primary to secondary…Differing interpretations were felt to create variations in the knowledge base of learners moving to secondary from feeder primary schools. This, it was postulated, then undermined confidence of secondary staff who then responded to the lack of a common base of knowledge by ‘starting again’.”
This leads to the dual problems of repetition and boredom for some children, and confusion caused by gaps in learning for others. And this very practical problem experienced by teachers and students also has strong underpinnings in cognitive science.
A strong predictor of what children will learn
One of the strongest predictors of what children will learn is what they already know. Children - and adults - need to connect new learning to something they already know in order for it to be meaningful.
We therefore have a moral obligation to ensure - through the design of coherent national curriculum frameworks - that even (and especially) our most disadvantaged students have the prior knowledge they need to link their new learning.
To conclude, I’ll share some challenges that any updated curriculum frameworks in Wales or Scotland should meet.
They should ensure:
- There is enough commonality across different primary school curricula that secondary teachers are able to build upon shared knowledge and not start from scratch.
- That curriculum statements include some knowledge that all children are entitled to, which is sufficiently unambiguous as to support equal opportunity to learn.
- That non-subject-specialist teachers are supported to identify and sequence the most important ideas and concepts within a broad range of subjects.
- And that schools have enough autonomy in planning their own curricula to meet the needs of their own learners - and to leave space for teacher agency.
This is difficult, but not impossible. I’ll set out one solution that meets these challenges in a follow-up article later this month.
Lucy Crehan is an international education consultant, based in Wales, and the author of Cleverlands: The secrets behind the success of the world’s education superpowers. She tweets @lucy_crehan
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