When the current Year 6 cohort started key stage 2 back in September 2012, we hadn’t seen so much as a draft of the new national curriculum, let alone begun to roll it out. It has been a chaotic rollercoaster of change and error ever since, culminating in Mr Nick “I make no apology” Gibb (pictured) publicly apologising and announcing an investigation into the workings of part of his department.

It’s an apology that should have been broader and made sooner. It might be a cliche to refer to a “catalogue of errors”, so let me present, instead, a mere sample of what primary schools have had to endure. There are 10 examples, but I would not be so cruel as to label them the 10 Calamitous Commandments of the Department for Education…

1. Thou shalt not teach history in the wrong order

In February 2013, we got sight of the first draft of the national curriculum and it suggested a strict chronological teaching of history in KS2 from the Stone Age to the Glorious Revolution. It seemed that no one at the DfE knew about mixed-age classes and small schools.

2. Thou shalt not be sluggish in the adoption of new knowledge

June 2013 brought the realisation that if all year groups started the new curriculum in September 2014 as planned, the first Year 6 cohort would be using a new curriculum but old national curriculum tests. Cue a rapid change to the roll-out plans.

3. Honour thy new curriculum (though it might not be ready yet…)

The old curriculum was disapplied for most year groups in September 2013…but the new one was not quite published yet. You couldn’t make this stuff up. 

4. Thou shalt not leave school starters free of testing 

Despite much opposition in the consultation, and 73 per cent of responses saying that it would be a bad idea, in March 2014 the DfE decided to let several different private providers develop Reception baseline tests. That went well. 

5. Honour thy trailblazer competition winners

In July 2014, in an effort to make up for the headlong rush into scrapping levels, the DfE launched its Assessment Innovation Fund winners - 10 schools whose assessment systems could be taken as models. Remember those? It seems that the DfE would rather you forgot: all evidence of them has since vanished from its website. Another £100,000 well spent!

6. Thou shalt not worship false idols

In October 2014, the long-awaited replacements for national curriculum levels for teacher assessment were announced - and promptly scrapped because…they were too much like levels. 

7. Thou shalt not exclaim in the wrong fashion

Sample questions for the new tests were published in June 2015, along with some bizarre new rules about what counts as an exclamation. By the following spring the new exemplification framework would show that a different interpretation was favoured. Seems like the left and right hands of the department were clearly not working in unison…

8. Thou shalt plan ahead (though you will have no tools to do so)

Promises to provide information at least a year in advance soon unravelled when interim teacher assessment frameworks were finally published in September 2015. By November we were promised that the supporting exemplification would be available by the end of January; it finally emerged in bits and pieces by April.

8. Honour thy moderation process… if possible…

In November 2015, new plans for statutory moderation were announced, with moderation to take place after teacher assessment judgements were submitted, and with no professional dialogue involved. Except, to achieve that, the DfE would have had to have got its act together in time. By February it had given up trying and pushed moderation back again.

9. Thou shalt sit the key stage 1 SPAG test

Except they accidentally published the test online and had to cancel it…

10. Thou shalt not doubt us

In February 2016, the DfE published a press release that included the claim that it would be disingenuous to claim that the department didn’t know what it was doing. Desperate words, from a desperate department, perhaps?

Michael Tidd is deputy head of Edgewood Primary in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. He writes weekly for TES and tweets at @MichaelT1979

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