In his last annual report as chief inspector, Mike Tomlinson commented on the unacceptable narrowing of the curriculum as some primary schools felt obliged to squeeze out the arts, creative and practical subjects.

Working on the “it ain’t necessarily so” principle, Ofsted published a report this week highlighting the success of a number of schools that were combining a clear focus on literacy and numeracy with a broad, balanced and enriched curriculum. Yet importantly, nothing that was described in our report is beyond the reach of every primary school in the country.

Of course, there are some important prerequisites. Schools need to believe that they have freedom to determine the nature and structure of the curriculum, within and beyond the statutory framework. But they have to regain the initiative and not see themselves as helpless victims in the context of instructions from“above”.

Both the national literacy strategy and the national numeracy strategy have been vital in driving improvements in primary schools. They can be covered without a loss of focus on subjects such as art, music and PE but good planning is essential. There must be no going back to a woolly-headedness about vaguely defined project work that fails to allow enough time for the essential focus on literacy and numeracy. Rather, other subjects need to be seen as both valuable in their own right and as contributing to the core skills.

The schools in our study demonstrated that it was possible to be efficient in their planning by using ICT to write and amend plans, using them from one year to the next. Such schools are tackling the workload issue head on by having a highly structured approach. Interestingly, the headteachers concerned were often less interested in monitoring plans and much more interested in monitoring learning and teaching.

But what about Ofsted and the national curriculum? Surely this study rather puts paid to the argument that Ofsted is constraining what schools are doing because it was through inspections that these schools were identified in the first place. Ofsted inspections are about measuring impact and not about processes and procedures and particular approaches.

And as for the national curriculum, schools were intelligently covering the requirements of the programmes of study by not covering all elements in the same depth. Indeed, some subjects got slightly less attention than others at different times without sacrificing the breadth of learning that pupils deserve. In this way, schools were able to tailor their curriculum to the particular needs of their pupils.

In all of this, you won’t be surprised to know that leadership is crucial. The heads concerned saw themselves as curriculum leaders, building their approach on clear values and aspirations for their pupils.

This was combined with a hard-nosed approach to specifying learning objectives and a clear approach to teaching. There was also a strong emphasis on enquiry, problem-solving and practical work such as taking part in live theatre because the headteachers knew that these were powerful ways to engage pupils in learning.

But the importance of this report goes well beyond what it says about the primary curriculum. Those elsewhere in the profession, as well as politicians and the wider public, need to pay heed to the other messages.

The headteachers in our survey were quite open about the extent to which they had tried various forms of curriculum design, discarding here, keeping there. Often this process took years rather than months. For none of the heads was there a quick-fix solution. This is a sobering message to politicians and policymakers when they are considering the speed of change.

This is not an argument for delaying change. In fact, our report identifies some of the ways in which other schools can learn to respond more quickly in the light of the experiences of the trailblazers. But well-embedded change won’t happen overnight.

A workable solution is to leave more decisions about the curriculum in the hands of schools while still requiring them to keep within the broad framework of the national curriculum. Arguably, it was the greater sense of control that was the driving force in the schools in our report. Again, in the context of secondary reform, this is an important message.

And finally, reform and change is not just for the supermen and women of the profession. What our report shows is that single-minded determination coupled with a clear understanding of how the curriculum acts as an important lever of change can bring about substantial change.

If this is mixed with sensible planning and a greater sense of professional control and strong but proportionate accountability, then headteachers and teachers can build on the reforms of the past five years to take education into a new era.

Leader, 20 David Bell is Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools