This response summarises the views of Primary headteachers and deputy headteachers in the City and County of Swansea. It is the outcome of a well attended conference for each group, held on 20 March 2007.
For ease of reading, it has been presented as a series of separate points rather than a continuous narrative. Many of the points interlink and overlap.
Positive Points
- We welcome very much the higher priority given to skills within the subject orders.
- The Skills Framework is an essential addition.
- The increased opportunities for cross curricular and thematic study will lead in many cases to improved motivation and more independent learning.
- The proposals for the Foundation Phase are already energising teachers and improving provision for children.
- We believe the framework for PSE supports good practice in Primary schools.
The presentation of the subject orders is much improved.
Concerns and Disappointments
- The subject orders are still much too prescriptive in terms of content.
- We are very disappointed that opportunities have been missed both to improve the KS2 curriculum and to provide a coherent overview of the Primary phase as a whole.
- Curriculum breadth within KS2 still seems to be construed as ‘a little bit of each subject in the right proportions’. This indicates an outdated, simplistic misconception of learning within the Primary phase.
- At present, discontinuity between the Foundation Phase and KS2 is inevitable.
- The reaction of some schools to the new proposals will be a feeling of being over burdened by the additions, rather than inspired by a clear, renewed, national commitment to the entitlement of all children to a broad, rich, skills-based curriculum.
- Unlike the Foundation Phase, there is little in the KS2 curriculum proposals to inspire and challenge teachers to develop more effective teaching methodologies.
- In relation to ‘skills’ or ‘key skills’, there is still a disjunction between the consultation proposals and the Estyn framework for statutory inspections.
- Formative assessment has been neglected.
- There is confusion between outcomes and national curriculum levels. Therefore assessment and tracking of progress through the Primary phase will be extremely difficult under the new proposals.
- The skills framework will have low status unless and until it is made statutory and the current obsession with levelling within subjects is removed.
- KS2 to KS3 transition is supported only through the subject orders. Not enough has been done to ensure that the experiences of children within the Primary phase are built on in KS3.
- The proposals have huge implications for the training and development of all staff.
- We are disappointed that, compared with the Foundation Phase, bilingualism has low status at KS2 within the new proposals.
- Because of the lack of a coherent overview, the KS2 curriculum and its assessment are both difficult to conceptualise and also to describe or explain either to children, parents or governors.
Hopes and Aspirations
- DELLS and Estyn should communicate urgently and publicly to ensure that national expectations, whether statutory or non-statutory, and the framework for inspection coincide precisely.
- Primary schools should be encouraged and empowered to develop skills focused approaches across the Primary phase. A clear message is needed that subject content is, for the most part, merely a vehicle for making all children more skilful in all areas of learning. Everything should be done to avoid discontinuity for children moving on from the Foundation Phase.
- In time, we should move to a position in which the statutory elements of the curriculum are skills and the child’s statutory entitlement is to a broad curriculum of high quality. To this end, the Skills Framework should become statutory as soon as is practicable.
- The purposes of levelling and ‘best fit’ assessment should be re-examined in the light of their usefulness to the individual child.
- Formative assessment, in relation to both subject skills and key skills, should be given increased prominence across the Primary phase.
- Staff training should be fully resourced and should utilise the skills and expertise of Primary teachers.
- Key, headline messages should accompany the new curriculum. These should, for example, clarify the relationship between national policy about the significance attached to learning and the reality of classroom life in a good school; re-emphasise the crucial role of parents and carers in the education of their children; continue to build a national climate that is supportive and informed about learning in the Primary phase; and motivate and inspire all children and staff as learners.
click here for the Welsh Language version
