Strijd tegen ‘hostility towards knowledge’ in Engeland & nieuwe eindtermen/leerplannen in Vlaanderen

Naar verluidt werkt men momenteel aan nieuwe eindtermen en leerplannen. We vragen ons af welke richting die zullen uitgaan.  In deze context  citeren we een aantal passages uit een toespraak  van de Engelse onderwijsminister Nick Gibb op OESO-conferentie 22 januari: Reforming qualifications and the curriculum to better prepare pupils for life after school and Schools  ...  Het gaat vooral  om de strijd tegen de ‘ hostility towards knowledge’.

Het zijn uitspraken die ons interesseren in het perspectief van de opstelling van nieuwe eindtermen en leerplannen Met de O-ZON-campagne van Onderwijskrant  bonden we begin 2007 ook de strijd aan tegen ‘hostility towards knowledge’ , de ‘vijandigheid ten aanzien van kennis’ die o.a. tot uiting kwam in de eindtermenoperatie van de jaren negentig en in een aantal erbij aansluitende leerplannen. Onze O-ZON-campagne  kon op een massale instemming rekenen vanwege leerkrachten en docenten. De ontkenning kwam vooral uit de hoek van de beleidsmakers en de onderwijskoepels. Academic curriculum versus hostillity tegen knowledge

1. ‘Strijd tegen vijandigheid ten aanzien van kennis’: nieuwe curricula

Perhaps the part of our plan (=hervormingsplan van regering) which has drawn most from best practice overseas has been our programme of reforms to the curriculum.  As we came into government in 2010, Tim Oates, the curriculum expert from Cambridge Assessment, produced a paper entitled ‘Could Do Better’. It provided an extensive survey of the challenges we faced. Tim found that our curriculum lacked clarification, teachers were overloaded, and assessment practices were overbearing. The demands of the national curriculum were so vague that it had become impossible to decipher what children should actually be learning.
For too long, our school curriculum lacked the basic essentials that a good education affords. The 2007 secondary curriculum, produced 3 years before we came into office, featured 29 bullet points on the curriculum aims which barely touched upon what pupils should be doing or learning. … There was a marked hostility towards knowledge, and an obsession with so-called transferable skills.

The 2 schools of thought - progressivism as opposed to a rigorous focus on knowledge - are represented clearly by Michael Fullan and Daisy Christodoulou.In Fullan’s ‘A Rich Seam,’ he suggests that education for the 21st century should be led by curiosity and ‘new system economies.’ But his  thesis, in my view, is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Although it is not entirely clear, I think he is describing a new version of the disastrous ‘child-centred’ approach of yesterday.
I think Christodoulou captures the position we should all subscribe to: ‘To be an active citizen’ she says ‘of a democratic society you have to know about history, the world, sciences, the arts. You have to know about things that most people do not bring to the classroom and which they cannot pick up through experience.’  (Dat was ook de basisstelling in het manifest van O-ZON begin 2007).

The work of academics such as ED Hirsch and cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham has shown that teaching core knowledge must be central to any effective curriculum. Previous attempts to teach skills without knowledge, or to develop proficiency without practice, were always doomed to failure. Listening to this evidence, we recognised that a new national curriculum was essential in order to restore rigour and to drive up standards in our schools.

And in developing this new, academic, knowledge-based curriculum, we looked overseas to find the best evidence of what works. The Massachusetts Miracle, as it has come to be known, has demonstrated that a rich knowledge content improves educational achievement and it improves social mobility. The Common Core State Standards in Massachusetts have helped to place their teenagers above those of other States’ in the US, and equal to those in South Korea, Hong Kong, and other high performing jurisdictions. Since the early 2000s, the Florida State Literacy Plan has sought to improve reading through phonics and phonemic awareness. They also increased accountability by publicly grading state schools. Between 1998 and 2013, Florida’s fourth-grade reading and math scores went from below the national average to above it.
Since Shanghai entered PISA for the first time with the 2009 study, they have consistently outperformed every other system in reading, maths and science. Their maths performance is particularly impressive, with 15-year-olds outperforming our own by an average of 3 years.

In September last year, we flew 71 British teachers to Shanghai to see for themselves the quality of Chinese primary-level maths lessons. They saw first-hand the 35-minute, whole-class lessons that place high expectations on every child to follow and learn the content, while providing quick catch up sessions for those who struggle.And in November last year, 29 Shanghai teachers made the trip to England, to demonstrate how they teach maths to young children. The large majority of Shanghai pupils progress through the curriculum content at the same pace. Differentiation is achieved by emphasising deeper knowledge and through individual support and intervention. The trend for differentiation in England , by contrast, encourages classrooms being divided into groups, with each group taught a separate curriculum.
Another country in the East - Singapore - has been the inspiration behind our call for UK publishers to produce a higher standard of textbook. TALIS data shows that English teachers are 10 times more likely to feel they are lacking good resources than teachers in Singapore where good textbooks - which provide a systematic approach to building knowledge - are a standard fixture both in the class and at home.
Our recently established maths hubs are implementing the mastery approach of East Asian countries and are also now trialling Singapore-style textbooks. Inspire Maths, published by Oxford University Press (OUP) and Maths No Problem, are now being used in some primary schools to provide structure and support to the new national curriculum. We aren’t the only ones influenced by East Asia. Tennessee has looked to Shanghai to inform its Teacher Peer Excellence Group project.

‘Progress in the UK’

I am pleased to say that, while we have been keen scholars of international education methods, we can happily share some of our great successes too. As I have already mentioned, phonics teaching is having a positive impact on literacy.74% of state school pupils passed the phonics check last year, compared with just 58% in 2012.

Tom Bennett and his excellent ResearchED conferences are packed with teachers demanding to know ‘what is the evidence’ behind teaching methods. More students are studying core academic subjects: A level maths is now the number one choice at A level, and we have seen an increase in exam entries for further maths and all the science subjects.And crucially, we have more girls taking science and maths subjects compared with 2010: 1,000 more taking physics A level, 2,000 more studying maths A level, and 13,000 more girls are taking physics GCSE than in 2010. This will provide children with the knowledge and skills required for rewarding careers which are currently deprived of qualified candidates.

2 .Accountability

Since 2010, over 4000 schools have become academies and 255 free schools have opened, all benefiting from additional freedoms but also held to account through an improved framework. England has, for some time, had a relatively effective accountability framework. Key stage 2 assessments and GCSEs are well embedded in our education system. Despite some problems - particularly the inexorable grade inflation. It has proved valuable to have broad and consistent measures with which to measure pupil attainment and school performance.
But we recognised that we could go further. As Poland has demonstrated in their far-reaching and successful reforms, stronger accountability leads to better results for pupils. So our new key stage 2 assessments, coming into force 2016, will reflect the more challenging national curriculum and will report a precise scaled score at the end of the key stage rather than so called levels.We are also reforming GCSEs, making them more rigorous and ensuring they teach the core knowledge demanded by employers, and by further and higher education. And the new Progress 8 performance measures will shift the focus from students on the C/D borderline, to supporting students of all abilities.