{"id":8229,"date":"2022-11-26T12:50:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T12:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8229"},"modified":"2022-11-28T12:00:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T12:00:06","slug":"a-question-of-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/11\/26\/a-question-of-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions of balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, the DfE published Teaching a broad and balanced curriculum for education recovery<\/a>. \u00a0Its purpose was to offer suggestions to help schools decide how to prioritise elements within their curriculum for education recovery from the pandemic's depredations.\u00a0 It had very little to say about \"balance\"; indeed, the word was only used twice and was not defined or explored. \u00a0DfE has a habit of doing this. \u00a0Here, it is taken as read as if the concept needs no context. \u00a0Another take on this is to say that a balanced curriculum is the school curriculum; that is, the national curriculum plus some whimsical extras.<\/p>\n

And yet,\u00a0Section\u00a078\u00a0of England's\u00a02002 Education Act begins like\u00a0this:<\/p>\n

78 \u2013 General requirements in relation to curriculum<\/strong><\/p>\n

(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

(a)\u00a0promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and<\/p>\n

(b)\u00a0prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this, \"balanced\" is also undefined other than in the inchoate list set out in [78 b], above.<\/p>\n

Back in 2017, I wrote this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I wrote the other day<\/a> about the new Head of Ofsted's first unsuccessful foray into curriculum, and in particular about the lack of mention of 'balance' in what she said. \u00a0She preferred to focus on 'broad' rather than 'balanced' despite what section 78 of the 2002 Education Act says.<\/em><\/p>\n

The perils of breadth without balance\u00a0are\u00a0obvious. \u00a0Here's a broadly-based exemplification of a curriculum:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Society's debt to Surrealist art and fashion<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. The writings\u00a0of Shakespeare, Jonson, Rattigan and Pinter<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. The genesis and genius of Bebop<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Moral dilemmas within genetic engineering<\/em><\/li>\n
  5. Synchronised swimming (depths 1 to 4)<\/em><\/li>\n
  6. Mandarin Chinese conversation<\/em><\/li>\n
  7. Fortran programming, probability and\u00a0the Taylor series<\/em><\/li>\n
  8. The history and philosophy of science in the Enlightenment<\/em><\/li>\n
  9. Cooking traditional English pastries, puddings, pasties and pies<\/em><\/li>\n
  10. Flint knapping theory and practice<\/em><\/li>\n
  11. The sexual preferences of the kings and queens of England (1066 to 1603)<\/em><\/li>\n
  12. Contrasting\u00a0Shia and Sunni approaches to the good life\u00a0in the 20th Century CE<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The above might be a broadly-based set of experiences for young people \u2014 from flint knapping to Ben Jonson and Cornish pasties to Fortran \u2014 but is it balanced? \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

    A much more significant question, of course, is how could\u00a0we tell? \u00a0Balance is usually enshrined in educational aims and\u00a0Robin Alexander has argued\u00a0that it is deeply undemocratic only to think of aims once content (like the above) has been decided (usually by expert others). \u00a0It is like thinking about nutrition only after a year's meals have been decided upon.<\/em><\/p>\n

    In 1980, in A View of the Curriculum;\u00a0HMI Series: Matters for Discussion No. 11<\/em>, HMI<\/a>\u00a0said this:<\/p>\n

    \"The curriculum, whether for a school as a whole or for individual pupils, has to be presented as more than a series of subjects and lessons in the timetable. \u00a0When schools come to plan their detailed programme of work, they need to be able to measure the adequacy of those programmes by reference to more specific objectives, some checklist of important knowledge or skills to be acquired, or of essential areas of understanding and experience to which all pupils need access, within their capacities<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n

    Both the HMI primary survey [1] and the curriculum 11 to 16 working papers [2] used this last approach to curriculum analysis, though with somewhat different formulations. That used in the primary survey was as follows:<\/p>\n