Great Expectations
Bill Laar

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On 11th August 1999 we stood, with dozens of others, on a cliff in Cornwall, waiting for a total eclipse of the sun.  Many present had travelled far for the occasion.

We waited, watchful, tensed in expectation, fearful that, for all our effort, the critical moment would elude us, slip away uncaught.

Conversation was muted, nervous laughter quickly stilled.

Then it happened, without warning, in a shocking instant.  The light of the sun vanished and the world was in eerie darkness.  Birdsong ceased, like a tap turned off.  No sound remained but the murmur of breaking waves and the wind shivering through the heather.  On another hillside, far off, cameras flickered in the gloom, seeking to capture the event.

As quickly as it had come, it was over.  The sun appeared and the world was bathed in light again.  A roar of something like exultation, of relief, perhaps, burst from the crowd.  For a moment I had a fleeting perception of the sense of a baleful, capricious fate beyond their comprehension that such a phenomenon, the apparent death of the life-giving sun, must have caused our ancestors, before the dawn of history.  Through the centuries that followed, before the Enlightenment, great natural disasters and inexplicable catastrophe must have continued, in similar fashion, to terrorise people. 

I was reminded recently of that moment of illumination and insight in Cornwall, hearing a distinguished international economist confess – the first of his race to my knowledge, to do so – that the current economic crisis filled him, and his fellow experts, with fear because financial systems had become so complex that they could no longer understand, let alone control them.  He talked about ‘something malignant out there, that threatens the ordered, civilised world.’ 

But, of course, we don't need an unprecedented financial crisis to jolt us into awareness of the complexity of our time, the bewildering nature and pace of change, and a future that defies confident charting. 

Let us relate this to the context of very young children, at the outset of their formal schooling.  Many of them, destined to live to the advent of another century, thanks to the advances of medical science, will experience developments and wonders and styles of living and marvels that are beyond our most inventive conception.  Their grandchildren, in turn, may well colonise beyond the stars; indeed might be called upon, by circumstances, to do so.

These children will be the world's privileged minority, the beneficiaries of scientific, technological, and medical advance, set apart from an increasingly impoverished and oppressed majority.  But, even for the fortunate, there will be another side to the equation: a grievously damaged planet, tumbling beyond our control, in the shadow of massive and potentially lethal climatic change, and the toxic consequences of our failure to reconcile international ideological, and political divisions. 

In the end, of course, the genius and ingenuity and the irrepressible will to survive of humankind will prevail over, and eventually turn to advantage, whatever awaits it in the future.  And the most powerful resource available to it in the process, will be its great accumulated and dynamic learning and knowledge, the product and legacy of its education systems. 

Which brings us back to those young children, who will inherit a world we will never fully know, and times in which we are not destined to live.  But we remain implicated with them, and their unpredictable future, because we are charged with the responsibility of educating them for it. 

So how timely and appropriate and encouraging that, in this country, detailed proposals for a ‘primary curriculum fit for purpose for the 21st century’ are being hammered out and formulated by two powerful and distinguished bodies, working independently of each other: the Government sponsored Rose Review Group, and the Cambridge based team, led by Professor Robin Alexander.

Their aims are ambitious, their task formidable.  Debate about the ‘right’ curriculum for young children has continued over the working life of our longest serving teachers, from the publication of the iconic Plowden Report. 

A brief summary of some of the key, and often divisive constituents, of that debate may help point up the magnitude of the task in which the Curriculum Groups are involved, and clarify some of the issues they will have sought to resolve in the best interests of children.

Children and their Primary Schools, the so called Plowden Report, was produced in response to a Government Directive to consider primary education in all its aspects.  It succeeded in its brief to a remarkable extent, analysing and advising on an exhaustive range of issues and making important recommendations, most notably in relation to the provision of nursery education.

But it will be best remembered for its vision of new kinds of teaching and learning, for its advocated ideology of child-centred education and experiential and activity based curriculum, influenced by liberal, transformational educationists, philosophers and psychologists and pioneering schools.

The Report inspired a generation of teachers to work in fresh, and often experimental ways, remaking pedagogy to allow children to take a more active part in their learning. Teachers discarded traditional subject based frameworks in favour of cross-curricular approaches, with a particular emphasis on so-called project work.  There are still schools and teachers who proudly apply the label Plowdenesque to themselves. 

But, almost immediately, the Report came under attack from a cohort of influential philosophers and sociologists – and, in their wake, educationists. 

They criticised it for what they perceived to be its lack of intellectual rigour and precision; for excessive emphasis on the importance of children's biological development at the expense of a recognition of the impact of social determinants; for a naïve and crude distinction between didactic teaching and discovery learning; for a failure to stress cognitive progression and continuity and to adequately value academic performance and attainment.

So what will the Reviews say to us? The Rose Review with its stated aim to suggest a curriculum ‘fit for purpose for the 21st century’; the Alexander Review, underpinned by a series of substantial contextual papers already published. 

It is idle, of course, to speculate but we may risk suggesting at least some of the following from Rose.  Largely due to what we have learned from the QCA, partners in the Review, we can anticipate an agenda of aims and purposes incorporating what have been established in recent times by educationists, child development and behavioural experts, and seminal researchers, as the critical skills, understanding and dispositions that make for effective learning.

The agenda will proclaim, inevitably, an insistence on the essential learning skills of literacy, numeracy and information technology.  Accompanying this is likely to be an emphasis on the qualities, characteristics and capabilities of the successful learner. 

These are certain to include the development of positive, emotionally secure personal self identity; the capacity to relate to, communicate and work effectively with others; to be at the same time autonomous, independent, resourceful, enterprising and self reliant; to be morally, socially and spiritually aware, with all that implies in relation to an understanding of and a respect for human diversity, the rights of others and social justice.

The Review will advocate practice, teaching and learning, and curriculum, designed to cultivate in pupils intellectual curiosity and enquiry, an appreciation of what is significant, worthwhile and enduring in terms of values, behaviour and culture; openness and willingness to respond to, and be inspired by, human endeavour and achievement.

Stress will be placed on the importance of children understanding how they most effectively learn, and their acquisition and mastery of the strategies that will enable them to do so, together with a sense of ambition and motivation.

Schools will be long familiar with, and wholly committed to all of this, and more, as the essence of Every Child Matters, the rationale now underpinning the entire statutory education system.

What we await, perhaps most keenly, are decisions and recommendations about the organisation, nature and content of the curriculum itself.  There are indications that relevant learning contexts will be created within a series of major overarching themes, such as cultural diversity and identity, creative and critical thinking, and the global dimension and sustainable development, all served by relevant clusters of subjects.

Is there a suggestion here that we are back to old ground, in an attempt to solve the seemingly intractable problem of how to provide for an ever expanding and increasingly complex subject structure curriculum, within an education stage where individual teachers are required to deliver it in its entirety to age-grouped cohorts of pupils? 

Will the Review encourage the identification of a minimal, manageable range of skills, concepts, knowledge and understanding central to each subject, but with natural cross-curricular links and applications, as manifest, for example in combinations such as Geography and Mathematics?

In such an event, curriculum organisers would need to be wary of over elaboration in the formulation of such clusters, if the old trap of unwieldy and unbalanced projects is to be avoided. 

At the same time, Sir Jim Rose has indicated to the Parliamentary Education Committee that the Review has treated as an important issue the provision of specialist teaching and expertise at KS2 to ensure appropriate cognitive challenge for and attainment by pupils.  This suggests a commitment to maintaining the place and integrity of individual subjects, however they might be organised to contribute to the overarching themes. 

What does seem likely – and this would be surely one of the most important outcomes – is that the Review will mark a return of responsibility and freedom to schools, to organise the delivery of the whole curriculum in the form that seems to them most effective.

Disquiet has been expressed in many quarters that an evaluation of assessment in relation to curriculum was not part of the Rose Review brief.  We are led to believe, however, that it will be referred to in the context of a broad exposition on the nature of learning and approaches to it.  What the Review has to say about the unresolved and complicated business of personalised learning should be particularly intriguing. 

And what of Alexander, perhaps the most profound and incisive commentator on Primary education in recent decades? 

We anticipate nothing less than a root and branch review, including, unlike Rose, a view of assessment in the learning process and certainly a move to reconcile the theoretically inextricably bound up components of curriculum and pedagogy.

For both Reviews we have great expectations. 

Bill Laar is a writer on education and a former Chief Inspector.