Curriculum

#Progress 8, Decisions and Options

Progress 8 is fast becoming the new accountability currency in secondary education in England.  There is actually much to commend this measure and schools are slowly but surely beginning to understand the benefits of it over many that have gone before.  In a previous post, Update #Progress 8 May Just be a #Gamechanger, I looked at the potential ways in which the new measure could fundamentally change how we view accountability within our education system. Continue reading →

#Vis2040: The Inverted Doughnut Curriculum

How will we use the next twenty five years to develop one of the highest performing school systems in the World?  There is possibly much we can learn from the analogy of the inverted doughnut (Handy, 1991).  This can be applied to the curriculum as well as the role of government in education and our own roles within schools.  It is hopeless to ever try to fully describe and then dictate the whole, there is always a need to leave space to allow professional judgement and distinctiveness to enter into our systems. Continue reading →

Education for Wisdom

Last weekend a twitter debate started on Friday night between myself and David Didau, with various other people keen to express a view on whether the knowledge versus skills debate is a false dichotomy, which rolled onto Saturday involving Alex Quigley and Joe Kirby.  

This post is not intended to shut down the knowledge versus skills debate, I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to.  I’m happy for others to have the debate but I am in a different jungle and more interested in engaging in different debates.  Education is for wisdom, not simply knowledge nor simply skills. Continue reading →