The national curriculum, testing and exams:
fundamental principles and what should be done
Introduction
On top of this year’s disappointing primary test results, news that the government’s review of the national curriculum and exams will take until 2014 to complete must be cause for concern, especially among parents and employers. On 17 December 2011, it was a headline announcement that, in future, children must learn their tables by nine. This was the good news to sweeten the pill. The bad news, which came out at the same time, was that government advisers on the curriculum and exams would not publish their preliminary report until the end of 2012. According to Tim Oates, who leads the expert review panel, fundamental issues need further discussion. ‘We need to create time for this discussion’, he said. So now, it seems, nothing radical, or serious, can be implemented until the full review is completed in 2014.
As our chairman, Chris McGovern, writes in Newsletter, No 75, Winter 2011 (www.cre.org.uk), at the current rate of progress, it will be more than a decade before the impact of the promised reforms is felt at higher education or employment level. Since then, education secretary Michael Gove has admitted that his reforms will take 10 years to complete.
For the curriculum and exams in particular, this is unacceptable. Revising the curriculum and exams is not rocket science. Nor is it merely an academic exercise for educationists (or politicians) who rarely agree on anything. Children’s futures are at stake and procrastination will not help the ones who are currently in school.
Aims and objectives
In an effective system, the curriculum, national tests and exams are inextricably inter-twined. The national curriculum should simply recommend the content that should be covered by every child in each subject year-by-year for the ages from 5 to 16. How the content is taught should be for teacher-professionals to decide. The primary purpose of national tests and exams is to measure the degree to which each child has learnt and understood the content.
The aim of 5 to 16 education should be to provide all youngsters, whatever their background, with solid foundations in all the key subjects, after which they can usefully participate in further study or training, or enter the workplace as they wish. It is the content and its understanding that should be emphasised and this must not be distorted by emphasis on pseudo-subjects or bogus skills. The prime objective should be to ensure that all pupils master the content for each year in preparation for whatever may follow.
Which subjects?
English, maths, geography, history, science (or biology, chemistry, physics) are obvious core subjects plus, of course, art, music, PE and RE, about which there is arguably less urgency. Time should not be wasted on contentious sociological add-ons such as personal, social, health education or citizenship. (Please note, citizenship education is not the same as civics, which was/is uncontroversial.)
Who should do it and in what timescale?
There is no need for large committees or years of consultation. It is quite possible for 2 or 3 good primary/secondary teachers in each subject to produce, within 4 weeks at most, a list of recommended content that could (and should) be taught in each subject each year. These lists of content (curricula) should be published immediately so that good teachers, good schools, parents and employers have immediate access to clear, sound guidance. Discussions about how the content should be delivered should be decided by the school.
Testing and exams
National tests and exams, with published results, are vital to measure the performance of individual pupils, teachers and schools. They are the quid pro quo for allowing schools freedom to teach. But these could and should be limited to tests of reading ability at 6 and 7 (separate from more general English and maths tests), and then one more general test at 11 when children finish primary school. To simplify administration and reduce costs, the latter could arguably be a one-hour paper with 100 questions – perhaps 20 on English, 20 on maths, 20 on science and 10 each on geography and history. The remaining 20 questions could cover basic general knowledge of art, music or RE . One hundred questions and one hundred marks are the same as a percentage and would produce results that properly differentiate, require no manipulation, and are meaningful for all concerned – all attributes the current system studiously avoids. Because such tests would largely be a test of all-round general knowledge/content (genuinely broad and balanced), the only preparation required – or possible – would be 6 years of good, all-round primary teaching that includes geography, history, art, music, RE etc, not just English, maths and science.
At 16-plus, teachers, schools and parents should be offered the choice of GCSEs, IGCSEs, or O-levels (which are still produced for overseas candidates). All the key subjects and types of exam should carry pre-defined, fixed numbers of points for school performance tables and university entrance. To make the system manageable and controllable, the number of qualifying exams and awarding bodies should be drastically reduced. How can hundreds of officially certified qualifications and around 120 awarding bodies possibly be monitored effectively?
What could and should be done?
Our year-by-year curricula for 5 to 11-year-olds for English, maths, science, geography and history provide an example of what could, and should, be done – see www.cre.org.uk under ‘Primary’. Our website also includes curriculum suggestions for history up to the age of 16 under ‘Issues and policy’. Clear year-by-year lists of content in other important subjects for the secondary years (11-16) could easily be produced. Then, all that is needed is a clear commitment from ministers to the production of rigorous exams that measure knowledge and understanding of the listed content. For the benefit of the young people concerned, this could, and should, be done with maximum speed. An interim national curriculum will be necessary for that majority of pupils who remain locked into the current one.
One further, vitally important step, is required. The education secretary and his ministers should call Tom Jeffery, the DFE’s permanent secretary, into their office and stipulate that, in future, any subversion of ministerial aims or objectives by any DfE official will result in serious disciplinary procedures against anyone involved. If the reforms are to succeed, it must be clear who governs here.
/24 January 2012.