How schools have treated the new secondary curriculum
Ofsted has conducted a series of inspections to look at the way the new secondary curriculum has been implemented. It says that, rather than taking school-wide decisions, most schools have left the matter up to individual heads of department. Ofsted says this results in a jumbled whole-school curriculum.
Of 37 inspected for this particular purpose four were outstanding, 21 were good, eight satisfactory and one inadequate.
The best schools had developed a coherent curriculum which was led and monitored by senior managers. But in other schools where individual departments took control some made only slight changes to their normal procedures. This was particularly noticeable in areas such as personal, learning and thinking skills, teamwork, creative thinking and self-management. Ofsted was looking for these to “underpin” the curriculum – and it was in schools where it happened that the top reports were given.
Ofsted said that in some schools it was unclear where the skills were being taught. But where these skills were taught there was a positive impact on progress in lessons and the enjoyment of learning.
There was also criticism of functional skills in English, mathematics and ICT which were introduced in most cases and taught well but without integration across the school. “Only three of the schools visited included functional skills outside the core subjects of English, mathematics and ICT in an effective way,” the report says.
As always, in Ofsted reports there is no recognition of the problems that introducing such widespread change can give schools.
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