When I first heard about the latest report on reforming England's curriculum, my heart sank. Conservative critics were already crying wokery, dumbing down and falling standards. But after reading its 200 pages, I found it uplifting. As a former education correspondent, I was shocked by its outspoken commentary on the existing system: an overly academic and culturally barren curriculum that treats teachers as robots.
The last curriculum reform, initiated by Michael Gove a decade ago, was refreshing in showing that public policy had a role in education. But it prioritised traditional classroom teaching of traditional subjects, a reversion to Dickens' satire of little pitchers filled with facts. The result was a timetable swept clean of extracurricular activities, with arts, music, crafts and physical education neglected. Ofsted ruled with grades, league tables and humiliation.
The reformers conducted what must be the largest survey of what parents, pupils and employers want from schools, with some 7,000 submissions. Their answer was clear: give us relevance, an education for life, not a test score. Parents wanted children to learn about money, law, politics, and job skills. Only a third of school leavers recalled a useful lesson about money, while they remembered a high volume of lessons on grammatical concepts like fronted adverbials.
At last, the report stresses oracy. Gove's schools were for reading, writing, remembering and shutting up. Today's children, whose screen addiction leaves less time for conversation, need help expressing themselves clearly. They should learn to articulate opinions, listen to others, and agree or disagree respectfully. It is not dumbing down to demand that children grapple critically with the digital revolution, confronting online harms and misinformation from social media and AI.
The report insists teenagers learn about their community, institutions and their role as engaged citizens. If they are to vote at 16, they must study politics. Gove dismissed such talk as a rigour-free potpourri of fashionable SW1 preoccupations. It is good to see teachers offered professional autonomy, with the curriculum as a framework, not a recipe. The teacher's task is to bring the curriculum to life, reflecting students' lives and experiences.
Sadly, the report pays obedience to the maths cult, which retains its lock on school progress. Beyond arithmetic, maths has become a badge of pedagogic irrelevance. I am told the GCSE maths reforms have not improved numeracy. But overall, this report offers a vision of education that is relevant, engaging and fit for the modern world.
