{"id":6911,"date":"2017-03-13T07:41:41","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T07:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6911"},"modified":"2017-03-13T07:41:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T07:41:41","slug":"the-new-ofsted-chiefs-unimpressive-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/03\/13\/the-new-ofsted-chiefs-unimpressive-start\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Ofsted Chief's unimpressive start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The new head of Ofsted, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Amanda_Spielman\">Amanda Spielman<\/a>, having\u00a0announced a new investigation into the curriculum, gave her first interview last week on BBC radio 4's TWAO. \u00a0I didn't find it impressive as her answers were mostly much\u00a0less precise than the questions posed. \u00a0You can listen on iPlayer\u00a0and form your own judgement.<\/p>\n<p>Her main point, I think, was that there was evidence of a narrowing of the school curriculum to the detriment of young people's general education. \u00a0She certainly mentioned 'broad'\u00a0a lot in the interview; but she also went on about 'deep'\u00a0and 'rich'\u00a0as well. \u00a0The significant thing about these words is that broad is a key word in curriculum policy in England, but deep and rich are not; wonderful words they may be, but in relation to curriculum terms they have no meaning. \u00a0The Ofsted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/new-hmci-vows-to-make-sure-ofsted-is-regarded-as-a-force-for-good\">webpage<\/a> announcing all this\u00a0quotes this from her speech:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"We know that there are some schools that are narrowing the curriculum, using qualifications inappropriately, and moving out pupils who would drag down results. \u00a0That is nothing short of a scandal. \u00a0Childhood isn\u2019t deferrable; young people get one opportunity to learn in school; and we owe it to them make sure they all get an education that is broad, rich and deep.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There was no mention of balance in Spielman's interview. \u00a0Section\u00a078\u00a0of England's\u00a02002 Education Act begins like\u00a0this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>78 \u2013 General requirements in relation to curriculum<\/p>\n<p>(1)\u00a0The curriculum for a maintained school or maintained nursery school satisfies the requirements of this section if it is a balanced and broadly based curriculum which ...<\/p>\n<p>(a)\u00a0promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and<\/p>\n<p>(b)\u00a0prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It has to be\u00a0worrying\u00a0that Spielman stressed\u00a0'rich' and 'deep' and 'broad' but omitted 'balanced' as, if you have breadth without balance, anything goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, having\u00a0announced a new investigation into the curriculum, gave her first interview last week on BBC radio 4's TWAO. \u00a0I didn't find it impressive as her answers were mostly much\u00a0less precise than the questions...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}