Curriculum changes always pose a challenge to schools and an overhaul on the scale brought in this September has proved particularly demanding.
The way schools have responded, however, has shown both the resilience of the profession and the value of collaboration to set out models of good practice.
A key change is the movement of significant amounts of content to the next layer down; topics studied at key stage 4 are now taken at key stage 3, for example, and higher tier GCSE material is now part of the foundation level.
Julie Nash, headteacher at Cape Cornwall school near Penzance and a member of the school leaders’ association NAHT, said that teachers in her team have mined Twitter and other online communities for help, advice and resources. One source has been NAHT Edge, a new section of NAHT providing guidance for middle leaders. The NAHT report into assessment, published, earlier this year has been a particularly useful source of advice, she says.
But it is middle leaders who have been at the sharp end of delivering the changes – applying them in the classroom and making sure their departments are up to speed.
“Everything is happening at once and they’re caught in the middle,” says Louis Coiffait chief executive of NAHT Edge. “As well as having to teach the new curriculum themselves, they also have to make sure their teams are on top of it. We are really focussing on providing support to these ‘middle leaders’.”
NAHT Edge has a bank of resources online, available to its members, to help middle leaders get to grips with the changes. An “Ask the Expert” function allows members to raise any issues not addressed. It’s also possible to share good practice ideas in forums on the site.
“Middle leaders are pulled in different directions so this is all about giving them the support to be better teachers and better managers,” Coiffait adds.
The association’s advice has been invaluable to Penny Baron, year 5 teacher and languages co-ordinator at Bignold Primary in Norwich.
“There wasn’t much guidance from the government,” she says, “It’s about making sure our subject knowledge was up to date and we knew what order the changes came in. We had a lot of information from our professional association to help us make sense of it all.”
The new curriculum has meant significant changes at individual subject level too. At Landau Forte Academy Amington, in Staffordshire, the English team prepared for the new curriculum by carrying out a survey of years 7, 8 and 9 students at the end of last term.
“We found the authors they were quoting weren’t really the calibre we wanted,” says Ruthie Walmsley, curriculum leader for English and a Teaching Leaders fellow.
In response, teachers introduced students to new authors. This term, for example, year 9 is looking at horror writing, studying extracts from Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, plus comparisons of Dracula and the Twilight series.
The English team set up a book group to familiarise staff with some of the new texts introduced into the GCSE course, while years 7, 8 and 9 will also have an exam at the end of each year to help give them the skills required for the shift to linear assessment.
At Oakley Cross Primary, in West Auckland, County Durham, lack of time to train her leadership team has been the key issue for headteacher and NAHT member Rachel Brannan. She’s hopeful that NAHT Edge will help her team to help themselves now term is underway.
While “every bit” of meeting time was devoted to planning for the changes, according to Brannan, there is also space for the school to put its own stamp on the curriculum, particularly in history and geography. “We have tried to build a lot of the history of the local area and using places in the locality to support the geography that we’re doing, to give children a better sense of the world around them,” she adds.
In special schools, the challenges are different again. One aim of the changes has been to make examination courses more rigorous, but that has effectively excluded many pupils with special educational needs, says Kim Johnson, head of Bradfields Academy in Chatham, Kent.
“A lot of time has been spent researching exam boards and the courses available to make sure they’re accessible to our students,” says Johnson, also an NAHT executive member.
Middle leaders at Bradfields led a project to adapt the changes to the abilities of the students. “We try and make the provision fit the students, and not the students fit the provision,” Mr Johnson adds.
For many teachers, this term’s changes have been the most wide-ranging they will ever have seen, and collaboration, whether online or in person, has been key. And there is still work to be done.
“It is going to take a while to embed it fully,” says Nash. “It is going to be quite demanding for at least the next year, until everyone feels completely confident.”
