Curriculum matters

Curriculum innovation is one thing, but ensuring that it translates into successful learning for children and young people is another. It’s all down to strong leadership, as Julie Nightingale discovers.

People are often wary of change, especially when it comes to the curriculum. Introducing an approach that is potentially exciting but unproven can be a risky business.

Yet there is now clear evidence that where innovation in the curriculum is successful, it can have a significant impact on learning.

And to be “successful” – rather than simply different – depends on strong leadership: leaders who can maintain the focus on great standards, on literacy and numeracy while introducing the best creative thinking to supplement their existing strategies.

Ofsted’s 2008 report, Curriculum Innovation in Schools, concluded that “an unambiguous message from leaders at all levels,” communicating the rationale behind innovation and the key roles and responsibilities of those involved, was critical to the success of any innovation.

The point has been reinforced in a report published by the National College, Why Curriculum Innovation Matters, which details the impact on learning in schools that strive for curriculum innovation and the key features of leadership demonstrated by leaders of those schools. It is based on the findings of curriculum development projects that took place in 40 schools between 2010 and 2011.

Its core point is that curriculum innovation is important because, as much research shows, it is what happens in classrooms, rather than school structures, new school types or altering the content of national curricula, which has the most positive impact on student outcomes.

But it points to other reasons, too. Developments in neuroscience and cognitive psychology have yielded fresh insights into the way children learn, while ICT has created new ways to enhance and extend when, where and how learning takes place.

Then there is the transformation of the economy through globalisation and the challenges it brings which will require new skills and attitudes for the future, skills which may, as yet, be impossible to identify.

The report underlines that those in education “have a responsibility to keep the way we organise learning under review and bring to bear the potential benefits of new knowledge and new ways of doing things.”

And then there is the policy context.

Gareth Mills, the report’s author, says: “On one hand official announcements suggest that schools can look forward to increased flexibility in the curriculum while, on the other, it has been indicated that the current curriculum review will set out year-by-year requirements for some subjects. At the same time schools opting to become academies are no longer required to follow the National Curriculum at all.

“Perhaps it is more important than ever that school leaders have a clear vision about what constitutes a world-class curriculum that will prepare children for the future.”

Successful leaders of curriculum innovation demonstrate specific skills, including the ability to build shared goals and set direction, create a climate of professional enquiry and empowering others, the report says. Most of all school leaders need to achieve a balance between creativity and rigour.

Mills says: “School leaders who are both imaginative and systematic are able to create a climate of ‘disciplined innovation’. This means that they are open-minded about exploring new approaches while being disciplined about taking baselines against which the impact on learners can be evaluated. One of the most important things was to find ways to show impact on learning that went beyond the limitations of standardised tests.”

A frequent concern of those who took part in the research was the potential impact of innovation on test scores, he adds.

“While teachers recognised the potential benefits of innovation to engagement, motivation and depth of learning they were more cautious about the short-term impact on standardised test scores.

“One of the ways to instil confidence is through the use of other credible benchmarks to demonstrate impact. School leaders who are able to draw upon the growing evidence base that a rich curriculum, rather than teaching to the test, is the best way to raise standards are able to overcome barriers to change.”

Jubilee Primary School in Brixton has faced what inspectors termed “exceptionally challenging circumstances” in recent years, partly due to its high levels of pupil mobility and a high staff turnover. But the school is now improving rapidly, according to Ofsted, and has “good capacity for sustained improvement”. While all children make satisfactory progress, in literacy and numeracy progress for children with special needs is good or better and for deaf children the rate of progress is outstanding.

As part of its efforts to enrich and expand its curriculum, Jubilee has introduced topic teaching for its art and design, drama, dance and music at Key Stage 1 and 2 with an emphasis on skills development.

“The school decided upon this approach as a method of increasing pupil engagement as well as enabling a clearer focus on the development of key skills within subject areas,” says headteacher Nick Hague.

The school has been working with the Artisans Community Theatre, a free resource in the Lambeth borough, which uses drama, music and role play as a medium for learning. Activities have included workshops on topics such as the Great Fire of London for Year 2 children. Having explored it through the fun of drama, the children continued the work in class by producing a diary entry based on the Great Fire.

Other workshops have covered the football World Cup, Caribbean settlers in Brixton and the impact on the Celts of the Romans’ arrival in Britain.

Involvement with the theatre has had a direct impact on the children’s narrative writing and other aspects of their learning, such as teamwork. For example, one six-year-old boy on the autistic spectrum who had previously struggled to write “creatively and with empathy” was found now to be going beyond simple sentences and linking his ideas to create more complex sentences. Another six-year-old girl whose work also made outstanding progress, expanding her use of vocabulary and phrases to the extent that some of her work rose to level 3c, having been 2b before the workshops began.

“Although working within the arts is more challenging for some children, it provides clear routes for sometimes hidden talents to surface and for confidence to grow,” says headteacher Nick Hague.

The school has now moved to working with Artis who provide weekly creative arts sessions for the whole school.

“The key to any kind of success in this area is not to be trampled on at the first hurdle,” he adds. “It takes time to embed and develop effective programmes but using talent from within the school and key external partners will help this process. Never be afraid to change – whether direction or providers.”

St John’s College in Marlborough, Wiltshire has a strong track record of academic achievement and some 75 per cent of students achieved five A*–C GCSEs in 2011. It has been developing a creative curriculum strategy for over a decade. Today, most of the teaching, including at GCSE and A level, is done at least in part on a cross-curricular basis with cross-curriculum planning and delivery and explicit links identified between many subjects which cross the arts/humanities/science boundaries.

To introduce the idea of cross-curricular working at GCSE and A level, staff were asked initially to identify micro-links between their subjects and subsequently to pinpoint five or six generic themes common to their subjects.

“In Year 13, for example, many subjects touch on the topic of insanity from a range of subject areas,” explains Richard Smith, assistant head who oversees curriculum planning. “So a teacher will look at a passage from Othello in which Othello is going mad, then the psychology teacher will come in to talk about the psychology behind it, the philosophy teacher talks about the moral aspect of it and then the law teacher talks about what’s going to happen to Othello when the police get on to him.”

The idea lends itself as well to sciences as arts and humanities, he says.

“There are links all over the place. For example, we have a chemistry teacher going into art lessons explaining the physical chemistry behind the paints before students mix them so they can achieve different effects.”

Smith says: “Students are assessed on a termly basis or can be given a ranking out of one to five according to the criteria that we have written. But it is not a quantitative assessment and is still very much in its infancy.”

Ofsted, which rated the school good in 2009, has given the school a strong vote of confidence.

“At our last Ofsted inspection, inspectors said one area to concentrate was to roll out the cross-curriculum ethos across the whole school which is what we’ve now done. So we’re doing what Ofsted want. And each time they’ve come they’ve been impressed, saying they want to see us doing more of that.”

Published January 2012