The children of St Mary's Church of England Primary School in Handsworth, Birmingham, are passionate about what they learn at school and how they go about it. So much so that they have written a rap about it. Here is a verse:
"I want to work in Parliament as an MP or Lord
Doing that job I won't be bored,
So come on Sir Jim, this rap is all about visions
You could help us by making the right decisions!"
The rap is performed in full in a short film made by St Mary's pupils as part of a project to develop their own Charter for Learning. This particular verse is directed at Sir Jim Rose and represents the children's attempt to persuade the man reviewing the national curriculum for England's primary schools to do the right thing.
Has Sir Jim fixed it for the nation's children? Will his report (published in April), that recommends reorganising the curriculum into six areas of learning, make it easier for schools to provide the lessons children's themselves would like to have? Before attempting to answer these questions, it is worth asking what children actually hope for in their lessons.
Some answers can be found in the innovative Children's Charter for Learning project developed jointly by the National Education Trust and the National College for School Leadership. The project set out to devise a model Charter for Learning based on the views of 170 pupils in 17 primary schools. The project team then invited primary schools to draw up individual charters of their own, identifying the elements of learning that their pupils enjoyed most or would like to see more of in future.
The response from schools has been enthusiastic, with pupils demonstrating both a clear sense of what they would like from their learning and a good deal of creative flair.
Red Oaks Primary School in Swindon spent an entire day brainstorming ideas for their charter, beginning with the questions, "What makes learning fun at Red Oaks?" and "What can we do to make Red Oaks better?" The result is an electronic charter, produced by a professional agency to the children's specifications, with their key ideas and expectations bursting out of a magic box.
Pupils at Birchfield Community School in Birmingham cleverly distilled their own charter into a single formula: 5+fun = better learning. The charter, reproduced on five slides (each accompanied by a video clip) gave the message that "Children learn best when they: have choices in learning; use new technology; learn in different places; learn from each other; and learn from different adults." A number of common threads run through the charters. Pupils at St Nicholas Church of England School in Blackpool are typical in wanting to have a say in what they learn. "We don't want to be told what to learn but to follow our interests and find things out for themselves," they say.
They also strike a common chord by calling for technology to be used more creatively in the classroom: "We want to use PSP's to take photos, surf the Internet and film rather than using adult devices which are out of date and clumsy," they say.
Richard Howard, NET's chair of trustees, explains: "Basically, children want excitement and challenge. They want to learn in teams, rather than to learn alone. They need respect. In nearly every case they talk about learning outside the classroom. It may be through school trips or it may be from people who talk to them about their hobbies and experiences, or their work. The interesting thing is that when you present this challenge to kids they don't take the soft option. They want challenge; they want to learn new things and skills."
So will Sir Jim's blueprint, designed to encourage schools to take a more cross-curricular approach, while preserving the discipline of subject teaching, lead to a curriculum that is more to children's liking? Headteachers at schools that have drawn up their own charters are mainly positive.
Sue Robinson, headteacher at Cherry Orchard Primary School in Birmingham, believes that by reorganising the curriculum into areas of learning, Sir Jim is emphasising the skills children need to learn while leaving schools to put in the content.
Getting the children to draw up their own learning charter, she says, has helped her school to provide "the beating heart" that ensures that the knowledge, skills and understanding the children need to acquire is brought to life in an exciting and relevant way.
"Our children's charter is pupil voice in action and our curriculum in action. It's not just asking pupils for their opinion and then recording what they say; it's using and applying it. It's changing the curriculum to inspire them," she says.
"I think the children can lead on what they enjoy and feel entitled to. What we have to do at Cherry Orchard is to ensure rigour, continuity and progression through the curriculum. The Rose Review allows us to a certain extent to put the two together. The beating heart is the children's voice and the skeleton is the framework we put around it."
Richard Howard also believes Sir Jim's plan to organise the curriculum around areas of learning is a major step forward, potentially ending decades of polarised argument that claims you can't have both high-quality subject teaching and cross-curricular learning.
"There is a chance that the curriculum will be broader and more exciting. We can get closer to the curriculum children would like to have but we're not there yet," he says.
