William Kitchen: Now is the time for curriculum review and reform - let's build a world-class education system
If you were asked to state clearly the purpose of education, what would you say? It might depend on, for example, whether you are a pupil, a teacher or a parent.
Regardless of what our interests might be in education, we can all agree that education should – at the very least – seek to improve children’s lives. The next natural thing to ask thereafter is: how best do we bring about that improvement?
This is the core business of the people responsible for the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of our education system; what educationalists call the ‘curriculum’ (what) and the ‘pedagogy’ (how).
There may well be an argument that education should be about more than simply ‘knowing stuff’; indeed, if all children can do at the end of their formal education is tell us that the Battle of the Hastings was in 1066, or state the mystical Pythagorean Theorem, then educators would rightly be disappointed with their role.
That said, ‘knowing stuff’ is really valuable. A person who knows things has the potential to make an informed decision, and that is hugely valuable, perhaps even virtuous. Action without knowledge is capricious; whereas action with knowledge has the potential to be liberating. To create a free thinker – that is, someone who understands and who is capable of engaging in robust critique – you must first create a knowledgeable person.
Around 20 years ago, international educational policy and practice was moving in only one direction. That direction was away from a knowledge-rich curriculum, and towards a skills-based curriculum. The impact of this was the devaluation of knowledge. The new product of our education system was to be the highly skilled person; but no-one paused to query what it means for a person to be skilled in something about which they know nothing!
We were told that in the new digital age (as it was in the mid- to late-1990s), knowledge was available on the web, and the teacher’s role was therefore to become a facilitator of the learning environment, to enable the pupil to create meaning for himself or herself.
Northern Ireland, along with many other devolved parts of the UK, moved towards this educational approach in 2003 with its revised curriculum, and with a new approach to pedagogy (how a teacher would deliver the curriculum).
Teachers across the Province saw a much-reduced set of guidelines, with no knowledge base embedded into the fabric of the document which was to be the new educational approach. Teachers were trained to allow for the new ‘child-centred’ approach which – if delivered as it was intended – would mean that children were now agents of their own learning, with teachers demoted to the role of enabler of learning.
These ideas sounded noble; and indeed, they warmed many a heart. In this utopian new world, children would, we were told, foster some new love of learning, on the notion that they were no longer being dictated to by an out-of-touch teacher spewing information at them from the front of the room, whilst they passively absorbed it, only to find use for it later in life at the weekly pub quiz.
CCEA (the organisation responsible for the curriculum in NI) had documents which clearly showed this new utopian vision of education to be more than mere hyperbole. The reader should review The Pathways documents, written as guidance for parents and teachers between 2003 and 2007; in these documents you will see this ‘progressive’ form of education is espoused and celebrated.
Has this curriculum been impactful since its inception back in 2003? Most importantly, are children in a better place now – educationally – than they were before this curriculum was introduced? The most frightening reality of this is that there isn’t a morsel of evidence to say so.
No review of the curriculum has ever been undertaken. No meaningful evidence is gathered to measure its impact on children’s learning outcomes. For what was sold to the public as a ‘skills-based curriculum’, there is no evidence to point even towards the upskilling of the school populous since its inception.
Now is the time for curriculum review and reform. But this must be done in a meaningful and lasting manner. To do this, the educational establishment needs to focus on evidence, rather than mere ideas. Evidence must never become the enemy.
We can learn from medical practice how this should be done. We rightly demand that our medical practitioners follow evidence in their practice. To ignore evidence in medical practice could cost lives. Whilst education may not be so clearly life-or-death, it is perhaps just beneath that level of importance. Getting it right, therefore, must be based on evidence.
We need a knowledge-rich curriculum, set inside a system which values teachers for the hugely important role they play in society. We should follow the evidence of what is ‘best practice’ in terms of teaching, so-called ‘explicit instruction’; a master-apprentice style of teaching and learning, in which pupils seek to assimilate the behaviours of the master expert – the teacher.
The disgraceful ‘dumbing down’ of what our children do in schools should end. This was a failed venture, and there are many examples of similar failings – like Scotland, New Zealand, England, and the US – from which Northern Ireland should learn.
Learning these lessons will allow us to build the world-class education system our children deserve. It will take bravery from those entrusted to make decisions on our behalf, and perhaps an education minister radical enough to grasp the nettle, and lead Northern Ireland into a new generation of educational excellence.
Dr William H Kitchen is an author and academic. He lectures at Stranmillis University College.
Ruth Dudley Edwards will return next week.