6 THE CURRICULUM
A secondary school's curriculum is a compromise between a number of competing pressures which include statutory requirements, school aims, the nature and circumstances of the particular school and logistical factors including staffing, accommodation and resources. Balancing these pressures is not easy for any school. During 1996/7, Dartford Girls' Grammar School was the only secondary school inspected where the overall curriculum provision was judged to be excellent. The only identified weakness was in curriculum continuity between Key Stages 2 and 3, a very common problem, examined in detail on pages 103-5.
Chart 66
The school's curriculum aims are very clear and focused on achieving academic excellence whilst at the same time fostering a caring and hardworking community in which pupils can recognise their worth and that of others. The day-to-day curriculum fully supports these aims and effectively promotes pupils' intellectual, physical and personal development.
The curriculum in this school is unique, offering as it does not only the full National Curriculum and religious education, but also an extremely wide range of other subjects and opportunities. There is a good emphasis upon science and technology. At present the curriculum in Key Stage 3 is not building directly upon that covered in the primary school. The school provides comprehensive written information on the curriculum for parents and pupils. The deputy headteacher, who is responsible for the curriculum, ensures management and monitoring are very good.
The school timetable includes a very valuable optional 'enrichment programme' at the end of the school day. This time is used to enable pupils to study other subjects or to take part in extra activities. At lunchtime there is a well attended and impressive range of extra-curricular activities including clubs, music
and sports. The provision for teaching all aspects of health, drug and sex education is good and meets the appropriate statutory requirements.
The well-balanced curriculum at Key Stage 3 is further enriched by the addition of personal and social education (PSE), dance, drama and a classical language in Year 7. This is supplemented by a second language in Year 8 and from Year 9 classics can be studied through the enrichment programme. All pupils are offered a residential experience.
The curriculum at Key Stage 4 fully meets the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum and for religious education. All pupils are interviewed prior to their Key Stage 4 option choices and given good advice which is valued by pupils. Currently all girls study courses in at least nine GCSE subjects. The curriculum is broad and well balanced and ensures that the pupils' further choices beyond Year 11 are not restricted. With the addition of the extra opportunities offered by the 'enrichment programme' the breadth of the curriculum is exceptional.
The breadth and quality of the curriculum in the sixth form are very good... Pupils have a choice from 33 A-level and a number of A/S level subjects. The complementary programme
for all students is very good with extremely valuable courses in physical education, information technology, religious studies, careers and health education and a foreign language.
The well-planned programme of extra-curricular activities enhances and extends pupils' experiences and personal development across all year groups. This is further supplemented by residential visits, fieldwork and work experience.
OFSTED inspection report 1997
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6.1 School aims and curriculum planning
A school's curriculum satisfies the 1988 Education Act if it is balanced and broadly based, promotes pupils' spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. The basic curriculum, as provided for by the Act, consists of RE and the National Curriculum. Holbrook School, Suffolk, has embodied all of these requirements within its own curricular aims.
These aims are designed to provide an enjoyable framework of teaching and learning which will help all pupils to become confident, competent individuals by the time they leave school. They will be kept under review.
- To ensure that pupils experience a wide range of knowledge, skills and values.
This requires a broad and balanced curriculum reflecting all the areas of experience (language, mathematics, science, technology, physical education, the arts, the humanities and the moral, spiritual and social dimensions) and includes the requirements of the National Curriculum. It also requires that all pupils have a good preparation not only for further education and employment, but also for leisure.
- To emphasise the particular importance of the basic skills of literacy, numeracy, communication and study.
- To enable individual talents and interests to flourish.
- To help pupils respond to experience with sensitivity, creativity and imagination.
- To help pupils acquire the confidence to ask questions, tackle problems and make choices/decisions in a rational way.
- To help pupils acquire social and inter-personal skills which enable them to listen to and accommodate the views of others and to work co-operatively and constructively with them.
Holbrook School Statement of Aims
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These are ambitious aims which go well beyond the subject curriculum to permeate the work of the school. The inspection report demonstrates that they are largely fulfilled: 'Holbrook High is a very successful school where pupils achieve high academic standards and also develop well as individuals.' Most schools, like Holbrook, have statements of curricular aims, although some are rather too intangible to serve as a basis either for developing the curriculum or for self-review.
Only a minority of schools with sixth forms have distinct curricular aims and written policies for their post-16 provision. Without the specific context that such aims and policies provide for establishing priorities or making decisions, in many schools new courses and practices have been introduced incrementally without any overall rationale. Curricular decisions are often left to subject departments or faculties and are not seen as part of a distinct sixth-form policy. Where there are distinct aims and policies, however, they provide a framework and focus for the sixth-form curriculum and a useful yardstick against which its effectiveness can be measured.
Chart 67
The great majority of secondary schools are successful in providing a broad and balanced curriculum for their pupils in Key Stage 3. Nine out of ten also do so in Key Stage 4 although, with the introduction of more vocational courses including Part One GNVQ, schools are increasingly finding a tension between their commonly stated aims of breadth and balance and providing choice for all pupils as a route to higher motivation.
Schools are also generally successful in providing equality of access and opportunity within their curriculum provision. There is little evidence of limited access or opportunity for either boys or girls. However, although most schools are aware through their monitoring and GCSE results that boys' attainment is generally lower than that of girls, few have established curriculum strategies to address the issue. Specialist provision for pupils with SEN is generally good and these pupils have reasonable access to the curriculum. Indeed, some of the best curriculum planning is for pupils with SEN, where teachers take into consideration the individual education plans (IEPs) and targets for pupils with learning difficulties. However, where IEPs are too vague, individual subject teachers have difficulty in using them as a basis for planning and, as a consequence, the curriculum can become restricted.
Whole school and departmental planning for curriculum progression and continuity is at least satisfactory in the majority of schools in both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. However, it is unsatisfactory overall in nearly one in five schools in Key Stage 3 and nearly one in eight in Key Stage 4. Moreover, in one in three schools there is clear evidence of variation in the quality of planning between departments and poor and ineffective curriculum monitoring by the senior management to address this shortcoming. Characteristics of the one in three schools where planning is good include clear objective setting and due consideration to the ability range of pupils in classes. Where planning for progression is weak the curriculum fails to take into account the needs of the whole ability range; assessment is not used to inform curriculum planning; there is a lack of consistency in approaches to the sharing of learning objectives with the pupils; a lack of setting by ability where it would be appropriate; and insufficient attention is given to individual education plans of pupils with special educational needs.
Departmental schemes of work help to underpin progression and continuity in pupils' curricula. Effective schemes of work are central to good teaching and a key factor contributing to high standards in all subjects. Although schemes of work are commonplace in schools their impact upon the quality of teaching and standards attained is more variable. Not all schools provide guidance to heads of departments as to what a scheme of work should contain and as a consequence their quality is variable even within the same school. In general, planning for coverage is given higher priority than planning for continuity and progression. This weakness is particularly apparent at the points of transfer between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 and often between Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. Some schemes of work, too, merely restate the programmes of study or examination syllabus, or cross-refer to a published scheme upon which the teaching programme is based, rather than providing detailed guidance on how they should be taught.
In schools which have provided effective guidance on schemes of work, there is generally much greater cross-subject consistency in departmental documentation, which facilitates liaison between departments about the content and timing of common topics. Schools with good schemes frequently place a strong emphasis on developing teachers' understanding of teaching and learning strategies. They also ensure that schemes specify assessment objectives and give clear guidance on the departmental approach to statutory assessment.
In planning their curriculum, schools are urged by the DfEE to provide a minimum of 25 hours of teaching per week in Key Stage 4 and 24 hours for Key Stage 3. In practice, the vast majority of schools have the same length of teaching week for all pupils. One in five secondary schools has a teaching week of less than 25 hours. Available teaching time for the curriculum at both Key Stages 3 and 4 varies widely, for example in schools inspected in the 1996-7 school year from 22.5 to 27 hours, and higher in some City Technology Colleges. This difference in taught time equates to nearly 100 hours per year, or the equivalent time allocation expected for a National Curriculum subject. In about 80 per cent of schools neither governors nor parents have been effectively involved in decisions about the length of the taught week.
There is a relationship between the length of time devoted to a subject and how well the course succeeds in covering the requirements of the National Curriculum Order. In practice, however, there is little evidence of timetabling reviews, undertaken as part of an effort to improve standards, being underpinned by any systematic auditing of the work in subjects or the time needed to deliver an aspect of the curriculum. Allocations of time for a subject are usually a compromise between past practice, timetabling convenience and availability of staffing. The senior management of schools often concede to requests for changes in subject time without evidence of how efficiently the time available is currently used in lessons or of the impact of allegedly inadequate time on the standards achieved in the subject. An intention of the National Curriculum review was that some additional time should become available to meet the needs of particular groups of pupils, such as the more able. There is little evidence that schools have identified any additional non-National Curriculum time in Key Stage 3, let alone used it to provide curriculum enrichment. Where there is additional provision for able pupils, for example, it generally continues to take place at lunch-times or after school.
6.2 Continuity from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3
Ensuring effective curriculum continuity from primary to secondary schools remains a major issue to be addressed by senior and middle managers in many schools. Most schools invest a great deal of time in ensuring that incoming pupils settle quickly and feel confident and secure in their new secondary school environment. To this end much liaison activity concentrates on pastoral rather than curriculum issues. The information sought on pupils is often fairly general in nature, for example the general ability of pupils, the nature of special needs, and pastoral issues. Far less time is expended in promoting continuity and progression in learning, and although for many pupils new demands from specialist subject teachers bring rapid acceleration, for too many the experience is one of marking time or even regression. The practical difficulties facing schools in ensuring progression are, admittedly, complex. As a consequence of more open enrolment many secondary schools receive pupils from an increasing number of primary schools. Some schools and departments, particularly those in an urban setting, are overwhelmed by the logistical difficulties of liaising with large numbers of primary schools and assimilating the large quantities of transfer documentation that this requires. Primary school staff are often uncertain as to what information will prove useful to their secondary colleagues and sometimes receive different requests from each of the schools to which they send pupils.
A number of useful local initiatives have promoted curriculum continuity across Years 6 and 7 in particular clusters of schools, or between middle and upper schools. For example, in some cases primary school co-ordinators and secondary staff have met to exchange their teaching programmes in order to improve co-ordination.
Mathematics is a subject where close liaison is particularly important. However, in large clusters where schools use different commercially produced mathematics schemes, planning a common teaching programme across the two years presents significant problems which relatively few schools have addressed.
The Castle School, South Gloucestershire, takes pupils from six main feeder schools and some 24 other schools. The school's policy on liaison derives from productive cluster meetings and is supported by a detailed statement of liaison procedures for the academic year, which involves staff from the mathematics department. Mathematics teachers also meet the curriculum co-ordinators from feeder schools and occasionally provide some specialist teaching in Year 6. Cross-phase agreement trials have promoted shared insights about standards. The secondary mathematics representative interviews groups of pupils who are to transfer. The useful and informative record they complete is passed to the Year 7 mathematics teachers. These records, together with notes from the Head of Year 7 liaison co-ordinator, enhance the agreed transfer document used well by all feeder schools. The document has helpful notes on its completion. It includes teachers' assessment against each Attainment Target with a useful section for comment. The information gathered informs Year 7 mathematics provision and pupils embark on work that builds on their previous knowledge and experience. Pupils too recognise the clear continuity in their mathematics learning across Year 6 and Year 7.
HMI inspection, 1997
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