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By John White on 24 September 2024

‘Major surgery, not sticking plasters.’ What Keir Starmer said recently about NHS reforms applies also to school education in England. For nearly 40 years we have been blighted by a National Curriculum whose main rationale is as the central pillar of a selective system as indefensible as the eugenics-based binary system of the post-war years but all the more effective for being less visible. (more…)

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By Joseph Mintz on 10 September 2024

Government policy for the schools system in England has moved away from using the term ‘differentiation’, replacing it with what they have called ‘adaptive teaching’. This is an idiosyncratic term in this context, and it seems that by adaptive teaching the Government means to refer to an emphasis on direct instruction and mastery learning. I argue here that this shift risks the individual learning needs of children with special educational needs being ignored, and that this has not been given enough attention in policy, practice or teacher education. (more…)

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By Charlotte Booth, Claire Crawford, Vanessa Moulton on 4 July 2024

Every new government likes to put their own stamp on the National Curriculum – with varying use of evidence to support their changes.

The next government is sure to be no different, no matter who wins today. While the UK’s two main parties have campaigned on very different platforms, there is one issue where the Conservatives and Labour do agree – the importance of maths. (more…)

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By John White on 20 June 2024

I agree so much with the arguments running through the four recent blog posts on primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy. Today, curriculum and pedagogy are dominated by assessment requirements. This explains why so much of the curriculum is about knowledge acquisition and regurgitation – and, as Alice Bradbury’s piece points out, why so many pupils are bored or anxious about their Sats performance. Children are, after all, active, inquisitive, creative creatures. They need a curriculum, pedagogy and assessment system befitting these qualities. (more…)

This is the final in a mini-series of blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. 1. 1. In the hands of new government: the future of primary education in England
      2. Children, choice and the curriculum
      3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
      4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’

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By Alice Bradbury on 7 June 2024  

Assessment plays a key role in any teacher’s work: through formative assessment, teachers understand what children can do and what they need to learn next. This guides how learning is planned and what is taught. However, the current assessment landscape in England is dominated by statutory, summative assessment, where the purpose of the assessment is not to help children learn, but to measure what they can do. This is one part of the education system which, as we in HHCP argue in our new briefing paper, needs a different approach. (more…)

This is the third of four blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. 1. 1. In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England
      2. Children, choice and the curriculum
      3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy
      4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’

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By Emily Ranken on 6 June 2024  

Children’s opportunities for authentic, hands-on experiences as part of their learning, such as science experiments, school trips, and ‘forest school’, are decreasing. Rising constraints on school budgets, combined with a detailed curriculum that prioritises traditional, knowledge-heavy content, means that schools are less likely to be able to provide children with these real-life, resource-intensive activities. Yet, they provide children with an essential component of primary education. (more…)

This is the second of four blog posts about primary education from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (HHCP) at IOE. Each post addresses key points that are included in a new HHCP briefing paper written to inform debate about education in England as we approach the general election. The four posts are:

1. 1. 1. In the hands of a new government: the future of primary education in England.
      2. Children, choice and the curriculum.
      3. Hands on learning: a progressive pedagogy.
      4. Assessment in primary schools: reducing the ‘Sats effect’.

Credit: Cavan for Adobe via Adobe Stock.

By Yana Manyukhina on 5 June 2024  

Curriculum is a fundamental aspect of schooling as it dictates what children learn. Behind each curriculum is a set of significant assumptions about what we intend for our children to achieve by the time they complete their schooling. These assumptions reflect our societal values and the kind of citizens we aspire to nurture. (more…)

Secondary school students in a drama class. Phil Meech for UCL.

By David Scott on 1 February 2024

This blog post is not just an opinion piece but also, I hope, a reasoned argument about the curriculum, and for the introduction of a ‘true’ Baccalaureate into the English Education System – with all the implications this has, not just for the 16-19 phase, but for the system as a whole. A more detailed account of this argument is available in my edited book, On Learning: volume 2, Philosophy, Concepts and Practices, which is free to download at UCL Press.

The call for England to adopt a broader curriculum for the 16-19 phase is one that has surfaced intermittently. It is echoed in the government’s plans to introduce an ‘Advanced British Standard’ (more…)

The stone columns of the UCL Wilkins building lit in purple to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

By Rebecca Hale on 25 January 2024

Every year, on the 27^th January, people come together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). They participate in events to remember the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust and in other genocides.

For many schools, HMD provides an important opportunity to teach students about the Holocaust, supporting them to reflect on its contemporary significance, and providing a space for young people to honour the memory of the victims. Indeed, in the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education’s most recent national study, 74.5% of teachers reported that their school marked HMD as part of their teaching about the Holocaust. (more…)

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By Lindsey Macmillan and Jake Anders on 16 January 2024

The start of 2024 has seen a renewed focus on persistent absenteeism from school, with the Secretary of State for Education announcing a major national drive to improve school attendance, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Education laying out Labour’s plans to ‘rebuild the broken relationship between schools, families and the Government’. Yet this is not a new problem: the issue of persistent absenteeism has been looming since schools returned to ‘normal’ after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone agrees that the rise in pupil absence since the pandemic is of significant concern. But the causes and what we should do about this are much less clear. (more…)