Time and Space for the Curriculum Barbara Cook
In his Schiller Lecture on 8 March 2021, Dr. Tony Eaude outlined a compelling argument that primary children need a broadly-based and balanced curriculum. I agree. This is especially so following more than a year of disrupted schooling and the social inequalities exposed by on-line cut-back learning, in particular access to any practical curriculum or first-hand experience. Now that schools are in session, it is important to acknowledge that all children have entitlement to the full curriculum. Reflecting on the content of the talk I have been left with questions, not about why this is needed, but how will it be achieved. Did the lecture go far enough to be a catalyst to encourage primary schools to take a new look at the suitability of their curriculum offer, post pandemic? The National Curriculum (NC) (2013) lays out the 10/11 subjects and their subject content plus Religious Education (RE) and Relationships Education. In all Local Authority primary schools in England the programmes of study are to be followed, by law, in Key Stages 1/2. Every state funded school must offer this content, which aims to provide pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to become educated citizens who are compassionate and able to contribute to society. However, there is also an acknowledgement that this framework is just one element in the education of every child:
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There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications. (p 6). Furthermore, the framework goes on to tell teachers, schools and headteachers that they can transform this content into exciting and stimulating lessons. I would argue that lessons or series of lessons do not constitute a curriculum, even if all subjects are timetabled. Dr. Eaude referred to that fact that the law states that the primary curriculum should be broadly based – if there are eleven subject areas together with RE and Relationships Education, then surely the curriculum will be broad. However, a simple list of subject disciplines is not a curriculum. Adults wrote the framework and it needs to be translated by school leaders and teachers into meaningful learning suited to primary-aged children. I would argue that lessons, however stimulating and exciting, are not enough to make learning coherent or for children to begin to make sense of their place in the world and society. Children are capable of so much more than they are allowed to achieve in ‘lessons’ if one subject piles on top of another, fragmenting and constraining understanding. In addition, there is the NC reference to time and space, highlighted in para. 3 above. If there is this void, extra time, available beyond the framework requirements, why is there such concern amongst
