curriculum | Schools Week

Stop ‘clogging’ curriculum with ‘reams of guidance’, Barton tells ministers

Union leader says it’s time to ‘strip back our national curriculum to its essential core’

No need to design your own curriculum, Ofsted tells primaries

Smaller schools can pool their resources when developing curriculum, watchdog says

Biggest academy trust turns to NFL for inspiration in diversity drive

Trusts are hiring diversity specialists and challenging “Eurocentric” history, revamping their policies, curriculum and “overwhelmingly white” leadership teams.

Speed read: ASCL’s blueprint to tackle education’s ‘entrenched injustice’

The school leaders’ union wants wide-ranging reforms, warning studies suggest rich-poor attainment gap ‘may never close’.

Still no date for national music plan, but another expert panel

The government has assembled a panel of music grandees to help produce its national plan for music education (NPME), but steered clear of confirming when the delayed plan will finally be published. The NPME was supposed to be published last autumn, but it was delayed during the pandemic and is now only promised “early next […]

Gibb: ‘There is a case’ for a model history curriculum

Schools minister Nick Gibb has said “there is a case” for a model history curriculum like the one recently produced for music, amid mounting pressure to teach more black history in schools. The Department for Education has so far rejected calls for compulsory lessons on the subject, which intensified in the wake of the killing […]

DfE: Schools may need to change curriculum ‘substantially’ to help kids catch-up

Schools may need to modify their curriculum “substantially” as part of their efforts to help children catch-up following lockdown learning losses. The Department for Education has today published non-statutory guidance for schools on “teaching a broad and balanced curriculum for education recovery”. DfE says schools should continue to teach a broad and balance curriculum in […]

Gibb slams Catholic RSE resources in rape culture clampdown

A minister has slammed Catholic RSE materials portraying women as “receivers” in sexual relationships, just a few months after he said using the resources was a decision for schools. The warning by schools minister Nick Gibb, and an Ofsted visit to one school using the resources, suggest a tougher government stance after a wave of […]

Muhammad cartoon row school launches independent probe into RSE lessons

The trust in charge of Batley Grammar School has announced an independent investigation of its curriculum after its teacher’s use of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class sparked a fierce backlash. The West Yorkshire trust said the probe would help it “learn the lessons” by examining the “context” in which the cartoons were used, […]