Curriculum and assessment reform: a collective effort

Madeleine Anderson , Managing Director, shares thoughts from Ark Curriculum Plus on the curriculum and assessment review.

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Since joining Ark, I have loved the diversity of thought and approach I’ve encountered. As one of the very first academy chains established, I’d heard it put in the same bucket as the most centralised trusts. And I have found consistencies – most noticeably, brilliantly high expectations of what can be achieved. But even though the schools are all exposed to the same evidence base, Ark schools strive for great teaching in different ways that make sense for their contexts. This is a trust that knows that one size does not fit all. Ark is not a place for party lines.

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Disagreeing for the right reasons

Which might be one of the reasons we haven’t shouted more about the curriculum and assessment review. There are difficult trade-offs in every decision, and many very well-considered people don’t agree even on small things. An example: I thought one of the most straightforward areas where we would find consensus would be open-book exams for English literature. But even that has thoughtful teachers worrying about students whose schools can’t afford clean copies. So we’re not going to easily agree on something as complex as, say, an expanded role for functional skills assessments.

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Facing into complexity

Ark Curriculum Plus is the team behind the Ark mastery programmes, and our subject teams spend every day engaging deeply with schools about the ins and outs of curriculum and assessment in their subject. And we too have held back on campaigning for big headline proposals.?

I would say it is precisely because our subject teams know so many of the ins and outs that we are not shouting louder. There are of course areas desperately in need of improvement. But the complexity of getting reform right calls for a more considered approach.??

Why is it so complex? There are potential pitfalls everywhere. The review has reminded us of just how much is good in the current curriculum, that we could too easily forget to advocate for. Even the most positive changes have unintended consequences and come with real trade-offs. And the devil is often in the detail. As the half of teachers who don’t like the new Ofsted report cards have found, the biggest headline changes are also where there is the least guarantee that you will be pleased with the change when it comes.

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Remembering what is good – knowledge rich

If we forget to appreciate what we have and don’t advocate for what is good, we really could lose it, and the pendulum could swing right back to where we started.??

For all the diversity of views across Ark, we are all informed by the same evidence, and there are areas of remarkable consensus. So we couldn’t be more pleased to hear Bridget Phillipson reinforcing the commitment to a knowledge-rich education in her speech at the Centre for Social Justice on Monday. We all want children to experience the joy of advanced thinking. But we aren’t going to get great thinkers if we don’t give them something to think with. We need to ensure they have the building blocks of their arguments on the tips of their tongues when they need them. That as they grapple with more complex concepts, there are steps they can take for granted and don’t have to think about at all.

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Remembering what is good – high expectations

Just as important: we absolutely don’t want to lower expectations for children with SEN – let alone children from disadvantaged backgrounds, where this is a basic question of social justice. The evidence shows us that there are few limits to what most children can learn, with sufficient curriculum time and good enough teaching. Perhaps to give all children the best possible outcomes in life, we should be building in more functional skills at each stage. But, any new curriculum options need to be alongside continuing to strive for the richest education for every child.

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A prize worth struggling for

Is there change we definitely would want to see??

Absolutely, yes. For example, the maths curriculum is simply too full, in primary as well as secondary. There is just not enough time for the whole class to grasp each topic. Dedicating too little curriculum time is a false economy, with curriculum time used up later on re-teaching. And of course this has a real impact on children’s confidence.?

In English, assessments are ripe for reform. As well as fundamental issues with reliability, at KS4 there is not enough of a distinct focus for the English language GCSE. At KS2, writing assessments do not align sufficiently with what students need to be successful at secondary, and the emphasis on a polished piece is not representative of the writing pupils produce across the curriculum.

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The devil in the detail

Here’s the conundrum. To make a message land you have to simplify. But the more you simplify, the less certain it is that you’ll be glad of the change when it comes. Proposals about what to take out of the maths curriculum in a given year group involve difficult trade-offs, but at least they are well defined and therefore relatively safe. In contrast, proposals for changes to assessment structures are more like campaigning to move to an Ofsted report card: you don’t know what you’re going to get. Next time, will you be one of the 6% of teachers who are positive; or the third that have real reservations???

What this means is, we could see all the headline changes to the English language GCSE that we ask for, and students could still end up with something worse than they have today. Unless the detail is also right and the assessments work for teachers and children, the structural change is irrelevant or damaging.

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Unintended consequences

We have some fantastic former AC+ colleagues working hard at AQA to try to make sure we don’t fall into this trap. But even if they succeed and the detail is right, and we all get what we thought we wanted, there may be downsides we didn’t anticipate – just as the success of the EBACC has come hand-in-hand with a drop in take-up of non-EBACC subjects at GCSE. ?

There’s also a cost to every change. Change takes a huge toll on the education profession, and sucks up time and energy that could have been put into more local improvement. We have to be sure the benefits are certain and large enough to be worth the opportunity cost.

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A collective effort

All of this argues against big headlines. You will not hear us pretending there are any simple solutions.??

And it argues for working together. The depth of professional debate needed is best achieved by joining forces, working together as part of our wider subject communities.??

Happily there are subject organisations like THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION , or the Maths Horizons project co-led by our founder Dr Helen Drury , who have been convening professional communities to have exactly these debates, drawing on our collective expertise. In AC+ our efforts are staying firmly here: working with and through the sector and moving forward together.