{"id":7515,"date":"2019-07-16T07:16:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T07:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7515"},"modified":"2019-07-16T07:16:34","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T07:16:34","slug":"unsuccessful-futures-in-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/07\/16\/unsuccessful-futures-in-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsuccessful Futures in Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"
I see that the hapless Welsh government is having another go at curriculum reform \u2013 finally embarrassed by its PISA scores, perhaps.\u00a0 This is called \u201cSuccessful Futures\u201d.\u00a0 Inexplicably I note that it has hired the guru who designed Scotland\u2019s woeful\u00a0Curriculum for Excellence<\/em> [ CufEx \u2013 or for excrement<\/em> as many now say in North Britain ].<\/div>\n
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The idea of CufEx was to be progressive and child-led, reducing the focus on subjects and related knowledge \u2013 there was emphasis on cross-curricular themes and on 21st century knowledge \u2013 whatever that is.\u00a0 Child-led might not be much of a problem if you\u2019re from a literate middle class home that can fill in the gaps, but it\u2019s a disaster if you\u2019re not, as evaluation studies show. \u00a0For example,\u00a0I read recently that\u00a0Scotland\u2019s largest private employer of apprenticeships has noted a steady decline in numeracy levels since CfEx was introduced 10 years ago.\u00a0 More PISA troubles ahead, then. \u00a0The last Labour government tried this in England before rapidly backing off. \u00a0This attempt\u00a0was dismissive of subjects and the formal conceptual knowledge they embody, and based too strongly on learner experience and knowledge which was seen as important as any other.<\/div>\n
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Michael Young\u00a0has argued that the idea of the school subject is importance from the point of view of equality.\u00a0 The point is that, although in a society such as ours, any curriculum is likely to be inequitable because of the nature of society, a curriculum based on concepts (ie, subjects), can be seen as a carrier of equality as such a curriculum can make a good fist of treating everyone equally irrespective of background and the available cultural capital at home.\u00a0 In Young\u2019s view subjects are the only basis we have as a curriculum for all<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Young has stressed that a curriculum has to be about concepts that allow students to abstract from their own experience and personal knowledge and understandings, and that a curriculum that only emphasises experience and relevance lets down those who lack access to other knowledge at home; after all, he said, no one goes to schools to learn what they already know.\u00a0 Young has said that, whilst all knowledge is socially constructed, its truth is not dependent on its origins, and his view is that knowledge is best experienced through disciplines with boundary crossings (good teachers know how to do this). \u00a0Whilst the curriculum is not a given, and is open to change, an effective curriculum protects schools from passing and powerful social forces. \u00a0After all, the subject-based curriculum was<\/em> an enlightenment project<\/div>\n
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You can read about, and comment on, Unsuccessful Futures here<\/a>. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>And\u00a0this<\/a><\/strong><\/em> offers a quick summary. \u00a0Sadly I cannot provide a link to a venn diagram I saw recently which summed up the incoherence of the proposed approach.\u00a0 Grab Bag is a polite term. \u00a0A key question for many will be what's the role of ESD(GC) in the new curriculum. \u00a0My searches suggest it has been abandoned \u2013 and just when OECD PISA is valorising it.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see that the hapless Welsh government is having another go at curriculum reform \u2013 finally embarrassed by its PISA scores, perhaps.\u00a0 This is called \u201cSuccessful Futures\u201d.\u00a0 Inexplicably I note that it has hired the guru who designed Scotland\u2019s woeful\u00a0Curriculum...<\/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-7515","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\/7515","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=7515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}