The national curriculum was designed to “provide pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens”, by introducing them to “the best that has been thought and said” to “engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement”.
This may sound like a solid platform for building a learning framework, but the specific prescription of knowledge as an aim in the national curriculum of England is problematic.
The importance of knowledge as the foundation of learning is not in question. But, apart from the questions of what is “essential” and who decides, there is a more profound issue with framing a curriculum in such a way.
Consider instead the International Baccalaureate (IB), which states that its purpose is to “develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect”.
As rose-tinted as it may sound, this approach offers far more scope to broaden the notional canon of learning according to the demands of the day.
It offers a more substantial ambition for educating our young people according to a set of values rather than an arbitrary body of knowledge.
And as the pressure to decolonise the curriculum grows, this issue is going to become more and more pressing. Another adjunct or initiative regarding tolerance and discrimination isn’t going to cut it.
What schools need is a more sophisticated and pliable tool than the current curriculum.
The benefits of the International Baccalaureate
The diploma offered by the IB for sixth-form-age students provides a more appropriate and connected structure, with some key benefits:
1. Approaches to learning
This is a specific package of skills that sits beneath all the IB programmes from primary to 18.
The emphasis on communication, thinking, social interaction, research and self-management ensures that whichever combination of subjects a student takes, all will experience a unifying framework.
The development of research skills, particularly the requirement to understand appropriate citation and referencing, is worthy of specific note, offering students a far better chance of understanding the bias of different voices.
2. Mother tongue (English) study to 18
This ensures an improved ability in pupils to articulate their thinking. There is no doubt that being able to communicate helps with better understanding of ideas.
In this age of frustration, it is important that discussion and well-intended debate does not tip over into diatribe and dangerous doctrine.
There is also a requirement to study text in translation, such as Death and the King’s Horsemen by the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, which offers an African perspective on British colonial rule and opens up the opportunity to explore the limits of our own language.
Young people can better understand how freedom of expression is controlled by those who are the gatekeepers of interpreting text.
3. Second language study to 18
This has perhaps more obvious links to exploring discrimination, particularly given that racism, immigration and multiculturalism are part of the required knowledge base in the IB diploma.
Critics of the IB point to the lack of flexibility in choice, often citing the language requirement as being a limitation of the programme.
This is to miss the point of the IB as a complete package for education, not just a combination of subjects that merely have transactional purpose.
4. Theory of knowledge
According to the IB, the theory of knowledge course “plays a special role by providing an opportunity for students to reflect on the nature of knowledge, and on how we know what we claim to know”.
To pick out individual elements sells the course short, however. The exploration of indigenous knowledge systems provides a positive way into the debate on decolonising the curriculum.
The recognition of a wide range of ways of knowing also gives pupils a literacy to engage in positive discussions about bias.
Learning from each other
The issue of diversity and curricula is not a new issue. As David Russell wrote in Tes in January: “It’s naive to assume educators haven’t thought about ethnocentricity and diversity in the curriculum.”
But thinking and doing are very different things.
Currently, the aims of the national curriculum in England limit teachers in engaging pupils in the current discussion.
School leaders are forced into running well-meaning, though often superficial, talks and assemblies as a substitute for stimulating debate about the origins and ownership of knowledge.
There’s plenty we can learn from other systems if we choose to look and learn.
Matt Albrighton is deputy head - academic at St Edwards’ School in Oxford
