What should we teach primary school children?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has commissioned an Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum – led by Sir Jim Rose. This is an 'out-sourced' consultation, asking respondents to submit evidence via the DCSF.

In announcing the consultation, Secretary of State Ed Balls said: "A strong, coherent primary curriculum is central to achieving the ambitions of the Children's Plan and delivering the outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda. It follows that our central purpose is to make the curriculum as good as it can be for all primary children, taking fully into account the importance of providing continuity with the early years foundation stage and the secondary stage curriculum". Respondents may therefore want to look at the aims edxpressed in those two documents.

A good source of information is the Cambridge University-based Primary Review, which recently found "a decrease in the overall quality of primary education experienced by pupils because of the narrowing of the curriculum and the intensity of test preparation". This was because of "a curriculum dominated by literacy and numeracy".

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) website also provides some useful perspectives: from a resolution passed by their 2000 conference which states that "Primary teachers are being forced to teach following a prescribed methodology regardless of their professional judgement, the circumstances of the school or the needs of pupils"; to the NUT response to the aforementioned Primary Review.

Similar themes of narrow curriculum and over-testing also emerge from the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). You can download the 20 page NAHT submission to the Primary Review, which states: "there needs to be continued rationalisation of, and flexibility within, the National Curriculum at primary level, and of the assessment process" and that "there is a good case for arguing that today's primary children, particularly towards the upper end of Key Stage 2, are placed under too much pressure to perform well, which can lead to concerns about their emotional well-being". It also looks at some of the inherent contradictions between a wider curriculum and testing: "primary schools . . . recognise the value to children's learning of music, drama, poetry and creative subjects, while the inspection system still focuses on standards in maths and English".

The leader of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) recently made headlines by stating that: "Our national curriculum should be far more focussed on the development of life skills and ways of working than whether or not we teach the Battle of Hastings . . . too much learning that goes on in primary and secondary school is rote learning and that's not learning for the 21st Century".

And so it appears that educational professionals feel there is not only enough space in the curriculum for creative subjects, but also for life skills too (aside from literacy and numeracy) and that testing causes this.

It's interesting that since devolution Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all abolished SATS for seven year olds. Should England follow suit?

Full details of the consultation can be downloaded from the DCSF website. The deadline for consultation responses is 30th April 2008.