The Grapes of Wrath. Of Mice and Men. Nineteen Eighty-Four. As you ascend the staircase at Oldham College, the riser of each step is decorated with the spine of one of the great works of literature. A clearer symbol of the importance of core knowledge to the college’s philosophy is hard to imagine.

In recent years, the concept of a “knowledge-rich” curriculum has come to the forefront of secondary education. It includes an explicit list of knowledge that learners must cover; a focus on direct instruction; an emphasis on memory as an essential component of learning through intermittent revisiting; and assessment and transmission of knowledge, often through direct instruction.

The approach - which has the backing of school standards minister Nick Gibb and campaign group Parents and Teachers for Excellence - is seen by many as harking back to a more traditional style of schooling; it is considered a reaction against learner-led, “discovery” approaches and an emphasis on transferable skills.

As a former secondary schoolteacher, I can see the merits in such an approach. But when I heard that Oldham College - which caters for school leavers in one of the most deprived parts of England - had wholeheartedly adopted a “knowledge-rich” curriculum and delivery style, it came as a surprise.

Firstly, as a horribly cynical FE practitioner of more of a decade, I’m more than a little hesitant about approaches that are lifted from other sectors. FE is very much its own beast. I’ve experienced many a scheme smash-and-grabbed from schools that, when faced with the unique variables that the FE sector presents, have crashed and burned because they were a truly horrible fit.

Secondly, the vocational sector in general has historically centred on the skills needed for success in the workplace. A hands-on, practical approach is one I’ve seen replicated up and down the country in a wide range of colleges. I was struggling to imagine a more traditionally “academic” style in the workshops, beauty parlours, and painting-and-decorating centres that I’d had the luck of visiting over the years.

Not only that, but Oldham College has had a tough few years. In 2016, its financial health was rated inadequate, prompting intervention from the FE commissioner. It has faced the threat of merger and gone through a period of building redevelopment, and received two consecutive “requires improvement” grades from Ofsted. None of this suggests it was an obvious testing ground for an approach to curriculum that has its origins in the very different environment of schools.

More recently, however, Oldham College has experienced something of a resurgence. In December 2018, the inspectorate rated it “good” in all areas, with principal and chief executive Alun Francis crediting much of this success to the new knowledge-rich teaching approach.

Amid a challenging economic context and the requirement to teach learners with a varied range of needs, how was the approach adapted to fit?

“What you’re trying to do is to leave people with an understanding of the way that body of work operates: how knowledge is built and extended on by your contribution,” says Francis. “What’s limiting is the oft-used strapline of ‘the best that’s been thought

and said’. But human progress also depends on the best that’s been done.

“Vocational education is often seen as a pseudo-academic experience…There is strong knowledge content in vocational study, but what’s critical is how it’s applied. And our reference point, unlike universities for traditional academic study, is the dynamic arena of the workplace.”

As someone who is very interested in the subject of parity of esteem (or lack thereof) between FE and other sectors, I found that this piqued my interest. So what does the knowledge-rich approach have to offer colleges?

“In our ‘teaching for distinction’ programme, which was originally called ‘teaching to remember’, one of the areas we concentrate on is ensuring that new knowledge is remembered, which is, of course, critical when it comes to application,” explains Francis. “The method of teaching is based around an understanding of how memory works and making sure our staff are doing things to ensure that the things that are taught are remembered.

“One of the recognised things that makes up effective teaching is dual expertise of staff. So not only are they massively strong and experienced in their vocational area…in our version of ‘knowledge-rich’, when it comes to the teaching and learning process, we help our tutors become experts in teaching as well.”

Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that this was simply another cookie-cutter approach to something that has been deemed effective elsewhere. Already, it seems, there is evidence that thought has been put into how the approach would best be employed in this particular setting.

The college drafted in high-profile consultant Tom Sherrington, a long-serving former school headteacher, to co-design the teaching-for-distinction approach. “We started by looking at the practical aspects, given the shift in the nature of vocational assessment recently, and tested it out,” recalls Sherrington. “[We looked at] the desired focus on instruction: does it apply in construction? Does it apply in motor vehicle? Hairdressing? What we’ve learned is to adapt the language around the needs of those disciplines.

“What’s become clear is that they have much more in common than people might think. If it’s about the ‘Austin’s butterfly’ [educationalist Ron Berger’s video about improving students’ work through feedback] of incremental improvements towards a goal of excellence that applies everywhere, how does each area map out the path towards that? It’s not a generic thing. There’s been a strong focus on how to make it work in your area rather than ‘here are the rules’.”

Workplace dynamism

After two years of development, the college has created six basic modules based on a knowledge-rich approach. But there is no one-size-fits-all system, explains the college’s curricular leader, Gill Morson: “We allow our staff to interpret them in what they believe is the most effective way possible, and choose what they need to do and how they need to do it. I think this was one of the things that led to such a large buy-in from staff, as they were allowed to judge what the learners really needed to know and how best they went about that.”

The buy-in was achieved by distilling the loftier pedagogical processes into practical steps. Techniques such as “cold calling” (a method of frequent questioning where the choice of student to answer the next question is made in an unpredictable way, requiring the whole class to pay greater attention) and retrieval practice were articulated to make them applicable to the wide range of situations and environments in an FE college - “in a polytunnel, where it’s bloody cold, rather than a classroom, for instance”, notes Sherrington.

The techniques were modelled then developed with the teaching staff through CPD sessions so that they could be adapted for different curriculum areas.

“Heads of faculty were able to differentiate approaches, given their unique situations, but there’s also a lot of cross-pollination where different faculty members are able to get out of their areas and point out ways in which approaches can be used elsewhere,” says Morson. “Managers and advanced practitioners were so important to that process.”

So how does the knowledge-rich approach translate into vocational curriculum areas? Gillian Sarioglu, the college’s sector manager for digital and creative, horticulture, sport and manufacturing programmes, believes that enabling individual tutors to share good practice is key.

“We’ve modelled the processes and shown how they can be delivered to tutors, and I think because it’s coming from someone who they know, someone inside the college, that makes it a lot easier,” she says.

“We’re not giving them another thing to do; we’re celebrating their success and giving them a common language [with which] to communicate that success.”

This feeling of ownership and success was reiterated by John Wrigley, the programme leader for electrical and motor vehicle.

“The ‘strong start’ is something I’ve started doing,” he explains. “As soon as the students come in, they’ve got a task to be getting on with, or they have to answer questions on what they learned last lesson. Previously, there were a lot of phones out and it took them ages to settle down. But they know where they are now: it’s all routine, it’s normal and they’re just getting on with it.”

Consistency is key

Critics of the knowledge-rich style have long raised concerns about the heavy emphasis on routine, and that the more “traditional” approaches that are part and parcel of it could be stifling for learners. So, has Oldham College experienced a backlash or any resulting disruption from learners unhappy with the new approach?

“Oh no, that’s not happened,” replies Wrigley. “A lot of my lot that I work with want that routine. It’s like being safe. Also, in a lot of ways, it prepares them for what a lot of the work [after college] is like.”

From an outsider’s perspective, what is striking is the consistency of approach at all levels - how the main features are replicated, accepted and carried out by managers, advanced practitioners and tutors, all of whom are striving towards shared aims. It is obvious, through the many conversations I have had with staff, that the visible benefits the knowledge-rich approach is having serve as motivation to continue to refine it using the agreed underlying principles. And given the constant churn of government policies and pedagogical fads that tend to dominate the FE sector, the project is a surprisingly long-term commitment. The approach has already been given two years to develop and embed, and the overarching aim is to achieve positive, lasting change rather than a quick fix.

What I find intriguing is the concept of ensuring that learners have a knowledge base to take with them, long after they have completed their next assessment - and even after they have moved on from college. This, to me, feels like a return to what FE has always been about: the gaining of experience, albeit, in this case, in a more structured sense. In this way, Oldham’s approach is perhaps not as incongruous as I had first thought.

A positive move

Could Oldham’s success be replicated? Dan Williams, a lecturer in post-14 initial teacher education at the University of Derby, thinks so.

“Generally speaking, I am very impressed by the model,” he says. “While there are continued debates about the blanket approach to evidence and research-informed methods in teaching, I think this framework provides all teachers with valuable information, underpinned by a wealth of empirical studies.

“Arguably, the agenda is driven by a knowledge-focused ideology. This is something I personally feel is a positive move for FE, particularly having read [UCL Institute of Education professor] Michael Young’s calls for “powerful knowledge” in schools. With such a skills focus (in its broadest sense) in FE, it is easy to lose sight of the key factual and procedural knowledge that underpins the curriculum and, instead, focus on generic, transferable skills.

“While I’m not suggesting that FE providers should throw the baby out with the bathwater, with the new education inspection framework shifting its focus to the curriculum and quality of education, FE providers across the country would do well to consider a framework similar to Oldham College’s ‘teaching for distinction’.”

As I make my way up those oversized books and out of Oldham College, having witnessed the enthusiasm of the staff and the thought and care that has gone into ensuring the validity of the approach, I begin to question my preconceptions regarding the suitability of a knowledge-rich model in FE.

If such an approach can be genuinely beneficial to learners - and Oldham makes a very good case that it can - perhaps our first response shouldn’t be to question why it should be used in FE, but instead to ask why it is not.

Tom Starkey is an English teacher, education writer and consultant

This article originally appeared in the 1 March 2019 issue under the headline “The stairs of knowledge”