Credit: Drazen via Adobe Stock.

6 June 2024

By Emily Ranken

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. 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’

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…)