In England over the last few years there has been a review of the thinking behind the Curriculum. Different subjects have had to dig deep and justify their position on the timetable. In Northern Ireland we have just seen the first review of the NI Curriculum for many years and it seems that change is in the air.

I am thoroughly looking forward to having an opportunity to discuss, tweak and amend what we do in schools. The KS3 Curriculum has been in place since 2007 – so it is long overdue for a change and a lot has changed in educational theory and thinking over the last 18 years. A major focus of the 2007 Revised Curriculum was the theory of thinking skills and Learning Styles. This thinking has largely been set aside in recent years and who knows what current thinking will be revoked in the next 20 years! Some educational theory sticks and stands the test of time but some things are al ot more ‘fad-ish’ and wash in and out with the tide.

I always think it is important every once in while for us to pause and consider what is considered as essential knowledge for young people. The number of interest groups who have axes to grind and stalls to set out is crazy. You cannot keep all of the people happy all of the time. You compromise and sometimes you take hard decisions. I have been involved in some apsects of writing curriculum and specifications in the past and was baffled at the different views that sometimes informed the final direction. Sometimes, the people we listen to the least are the teachers on the ground so I hope that as we move towards a new Curriculum in NI that we are planning on listening to all teachers – not just the Principal teachers, not just those who shout the loudest or think they have something to say, but also to the teachers with their heads down and just trying to do their best for the kids in front of them.

I like that from time to time, subject disciplines have to justify their existence. In Post Primary schools we constantly argue the importance of English and Maths as these are cores skills that are going to be needed in the future. We talk about how these are the subjects that employers and FE are going to be most interested in. However, do we consider HOW these courses are designed? Do we consider the content and whether maths students really need to know and understand algebra or would more emphasis on money and mortgages be of wider benefit to young adults? Do we really need 2 pieces of Talking and listening in English when some reluctant speakers are never going to be able complete this by age 16? Are we preparing our weaker studensts for failure? Are we happy that an assessment system based on Bell curves will always have people who suceed and people who fail? I want my students to achieve qualifications in Maths and English but I constantly wonder if the current qualifications are fair and fit for purpose – especially for those who have chosen not to attend a Grammar school.

I sometimes worry that are creating an ability-led qualifications system. The number of vocational courses avialable for students is declining rapidly. We say that we want to prepare students for the workplace but we seem to be sliding back to a place where assessment will not be assessed through practice but through examination. In recent years in NI at GCSE we have removed the opportunity for tiers of entry which might allow weaker readers to take exam papers. We also lost the opportunity in many subjects to complete a piece of coursework/controlled assessment. This is especially much lamented in geography as fieldwork is a recurring theme when arguing the importance of geography – the skills required for collection, processing, analysis and interpetation of the results. For a subject that talks about outside the classroom – we seem to have lost the same opportunity of getting students into this outside. They expereince waterfalls and coastlines through screens rather than face-to-face. The impact of this is that weaker students who maybe could have relied on a tiered paper or a slighly better coursewrok mark will struggle more to achieve a pass grade. We have made it more difficult for the hard working but weaker ability students to achieve.

In previous years I also taught A Level Travel & Tourism. Back in the days of the AVCE and Applied qualification there used to be opportunities for students to develop, practice and be assessed using workplace skills like having to deal with customers, complaints, selling a holiday. They had to do role play situations that were easy to assess. In another unit, I used to create two teams for an Event Management unit where the students had to create a business plan for a trip, carry it out, deal with issues and deal with risk assessments, financial planning, making profit etc. It was a fantastic learning experience for the students. However, curriculum reviews removed the fun and we ended up with two really dry (and quite difficult) research modules instead. Vocational qualifications should continue to test skills not knowledge.

My concern is, that with the incredibly quick rise and dominance of Artificial Intelligence, that we are going to quickly turn ever further away from coursework/portfolio/controlled assessment. Are we going back to 1989 and times when the only form of assessment was examination? Is this the only way we can trust and manage the final output for qualification? I would like to think that we could find solutions to the issues surrounding AI so that we could continue to use coursework as a tool within the assessment system.

As a Geographer, I constantly have to think about how to ‘sell’ my subject. How is this useful to indivduals in the 21st centrury world and econony? The geography that I experienced at university is very different to the geography that is studied at geography now – yet, geography teachers nearly always revert back to what they studied at school. They conservatively protect the same ‘building blocks’ that they expereinced as learners. We need to break this cycle and modernise subjects and ensure that all of the knowledge that is taught in schools is building towards something.

I like the idea of hybrid subjects – like maybe allowing students to complete a subject that combines elements of history and geography into a hybrid humanities subject. I still thing that the option for independent study should be there but we also need to explore the overlap between subjects more. For example, many students study volcanoes in science, soils in agriculture and the impact of the NI Troubles in history and these are all things that are often also explored in the geography classroom. We used to talk about how these would lead to transferable skills but, the issue has always been that many students put their learning into a box and don’t make the connection. We need to explore new ways to getting student to think outside these discipinary boxes.

However, in some ways the most pressing issue in relation to the curriculum is that schools (and the taught curriculum) is expected to be able to address and fight every issue within society. We keep seeing the curriculum as a Christmas tree where we can constantly add on new baubles and decorations when the need arises to deal with society’s ills. Problem with racism in the community – that should be dealt with in school. Issues with identity and sexuality – the schools will deal with that. Sex education and issues with consent – yes, let’s get the teachers to address that. We have even had to invent a new subject ‘learning for life and work’ which has quickly become the ‘catch-all’ for any agenda that the government want to force. Perfectly valid learning opportunities, eg teaching all children how to do CPR, has been shoe-horned into an already busy curriculum.