Subject to Change – a new report from the Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning
Primary education is always a political hot potato. The curriculum – what children should learn – is at the heart of current debate. The Department for Education’s current review of the National Curriculum is intended to identify the essential knowledge that pupils need, to make the curriculum more focused than it currently is, and to hand control back to teachers.
But how children learn is as important, if not more so, than what they learn. Michael Gove has spoken of his concerns about ‘the drift of educational thinking … away from subject disciplines and towards cross-cutting, thematic, multi-disciplinary learning’. He believes that ‘one thing stands out in all the most successful schools … – they opt for an approach towards education which rests on traditional subject disciplines’.
Is this right? This report poses three questions:
- Do all the most successful primary schools structure learning around traditional subject disciplines?
- Should primary schools set aside their natural enthusiasm for thematic approaches, and focus instead on strong, subject-based teaching?
- Should we be exerting top-down pressure on primary schools to deliver learning in this way?
It brings together evidence from recent reviews into primary education, from the growing body of research on what works in curriculum development, and from case studies of high performing schools and school systems, highlighting the key policies, practices and behaviours that lead to success.
To read and download the full report, please click here.
Subject to change was launched on Tuesday 19 April at an event in London. Presentations, videos and photos from the launch can be found here
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[...] a report here from Pearson about whether to teach by theme or by subject. It goes over the Rose Review, the [...]