{"id":6935,"date":"2017-04-05T07:13:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T07:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6935"},"modified":"2017-04-05T07:13:19","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T07:13:19","slug":"wed-curriculum-for-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/04\/05\/wed-curriculum-for-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Curriculum for What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1980s, it was commonplace for English governments to copy, rather uncritically, educational initiatives from the USA. \u00a0It was, I suppose, an example of\u00a0post-cultural\u00a0cringe<\/em>. \u00a0Those days are long gone.<\/p>\n

There is nothing necessary problematic about looking around to see what works, but the mistake that governments through the 80s made was to do all this too quickly; they tended to \u201cborrow\u201d (the verb they used) before evaluations had had the chance to illuminate faultlines and other structural problems. In many cases, we adopted an initiative just as the USA was abandoning it, having realised it was no good.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of all this by a piece in last week\u2019s Economist:\u00a0Down in the valleys<\/a>\u00a0{*}.\u00a0 This is an article about how the sorry state of Welsh schooling may well be about to get worse, even though that\u2019s hard to imagine. \u00a0In an attempt boost its dismal PISA scores (I may have mentioned this a few times), and to catch up with English standards, the Welsh government, commendably, is trying (again) to fix this problem. \u00a0However, it seems to be basing its reforms on Scotland\u2019s \u2018Curriculum for Excellence\u2019 just at the point where the wheels are falling off that\u00a0wagon {**}. \u00a0The Welsh aim to free teachers to teach how they like, but, as the Economist notes, doing this \u201cwithout first having raised standards is a risky approach\u201d.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give the last word to the Welsh Inspectorate:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 teaching is one of the weakest aspects of [educational] provision\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

....................................<\/p>\n

{**}<\/strong> The purpose of Curriculum for Excellence was to foster four capacities in young people \u2014 to be: successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. \u00a0However data\u00a0from\u00a0the Scottish government late last year show that ~30%\u00a0of pupils leave primary school without reaching the recommended levels of excellence in reading, writing, listening and talking.<\/p>\n

{*}<\/strong> In 2012,\u00a0The Economist had a report<\/a> on the same subject. \u00a0Comparing the two articles does not give a sense of progress made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1980s, it was commonplace for English governments to copy, rather uncritically, educational initiatives from the USA. \u00a0It was, I suppose, an example of\u00a0post-cultural\u00a0cringe. \u00a0Those days are long gone. There is nothing necessary problematic about looking around to see...<\/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-6935","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\/6935","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=6935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}