This is my last post about the Natural Connections event in Plymouth last week.
The most telling point came at the end of the day when someone asked: "What about the DfE?” What indeed, I thought. The response was that the team has an "advocacy strategy, using our Defra contacts”. Good, I thought, but to do what?
Someone said that, with Lynn Truss being an ex-DfE minister, the DfE will "start to hear this [and] will start to listen.” Incredible, I thought, in every sense.
I wondered, to myself, what the project team would say to DfE, if it ever got an audience; what it might ask DfE to do? Perhaps I ought to have said it out loud. But, anyway, here’s what DfE would be likely to say:
“What an interesting project this has been. We certainly hope that headteachers and governors will take note of what you have found. Of course, what schools decide to do about this is up to them, as it is DfE policy to delegate to schools how to interpret and implement the curriculum, and we should never seek to dictate to schools, particularly in relation to how they teach.”
Of course, they might not bother with the first sentence now that the assiduously polite Mr Gove has moved on to bashing judges.
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