Episode 209: The significance of curriculum in education

So here's something we've talked about a little bit offline, but I think we should explore it more and that is how much of a difference does curriculum actually make? I know you both have an opinion about this, so.

Adam, you go first.

I always think that I always talk about a curriculum proof approach to teaching, right, which is a bit naive, because of course, there is a curriculum and we need to teach to it. But what you find is, is that when you talk to the majority of teachers, and you say, have you met the aims of the curriculum? Do you feel like your children are meeting the aims of the curriculum? There was a study that was done not long ago, with over 10,000 respondents, over half the teachers said that they didn't think that the aims of the curriculum were being met.

So if that's the case, then your answer of how effective is the curriculum or change to those things is not very, because surely if it was an effective curriculum, you'd want to make sure that 100 % of those outcomes are being met or as close to, right? That's the way I see it, is that if it's a curriculum that's designed to do this well, I think, and

I know this is staring away from it. I think the most important part is the ability to teach well so you understand the curriculum at a level that means that you're putting those effective building blocks in place because most curriculums, most of them, in fact, I can't think anything that wouldn't, would have similar building blocks.

There'd be some core elements. You've got to count, you've got to add, you've got to subtract, you've got to multiply. There's a pathway through.

So you can take some things out or put some things in, but the effectiveness of any curriculum is its delivery in being able to support teaching and learning in the classroom. That's it. That's what it comes down to. And I think that at the moment, like a quarter of children roughly are not meeting the expected levels. So is that the curriculum's fault or is this the teaching and learning part?

And I think that teaching and learning part is, you we can slim down on those talk of slimming down the curriculum, those sorts of things. But at the heart of it for me is, it's teaching and learning. Like that is the single most important bit, because if you look at New Zealand, if you look at, I'm going to say parts of Canada, certainly in the UK, different curriculums, but the same problems, right? So what's going on?

And to me, it comes back to the teaching aspect of it.

I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I think that the curriculum like, okay, if you compare good curriculum to good curriculum, you're make much difference, right? If you compare good curriculum to bad curriculum, it's going to make a world of difference. So, so let's just say, let's take it for granted that most of the places that we're talking about, the curriculum is pretty good. Right? Like you could argue about whether decimals should be taught in this year versus that year or whatever, right?

But, you know, like largely those things don't make any difference. You just know that at some point you've got to teach them decimals and you should do it in a responsible way, which is like, before you teach decimals, you need to know these things, right? If you can't, if you can't have no concept of place value, don't try to teach them decimals.

That's just not going to work. If you have no concept of fractions, don't try to teach them decimals. not going to work. Right? So those are prerequisites. Like as long as it's coherent, most things don't make much of a difference. And it doesn't, you know, so you can shuffle stuff around. Should you start probability in, in, in secondary school or should you start it earlier? Well, doesn't really matter. Just when you go to teach it, teach it properly. Right?

That's the main thing, you know? So those things don't matter. Bad curriculum would be something like, you know, you need to memorize all these things, right? And that would be a bad curriculum. That's not gonna work, right? We know that already. Okay.

What actually makes a difference is whether or not teachers can teach. I've been, while you were talking, my mind was spinning, I to always come up with analogies and similes and things like that. Like where's another example where maybe it might make more sense to people. Has everybody here ever been to a place where the drivers are absolutely horrible?

Yes.

Okay, so if the drivers are really, really bad, you could change the traffic laws. Right? This is not going to make the drivers any better.

No.

You could change the speed limit. You could put more stop signs and traffic lights or roundabouts or whatever, or block off and make more bus lanes. Is that going to improve the driving? It's not, right? It's not. It's the same with learning and teaching. If you just change all the rules around it, but you don't deal with the fact that actually the problem is...

Nobody here seems to know how to drive, right? If you don't address that, it's not going to get any better. Or it's bad driving practices or whatever. So an education system is very similar to that. So where does the effort need to go in the education system? The effort needs to go into the teaching, into like what's happening in the classroom. Do people know what the intent of the curriculum is? Like by the end of...

elementary school, they need your primary school. They need to be able to do all these things and they need to be able to do them in this way. And can we work together towards that? How do we as a system, because the system is where the problem is. The failure in education is always systemic, right? Every teacher has, well, not every teacher, but let's say the mass majority of teachers have good intentions and they want to do a good job. They don't want to do a bad job. They're not out to harm anybody, right? There may be exceptions.

But you know, like that's not where the problem is. The problem is not that there aren't enough rules and regulations or that people don't understand what the rules and regulations are. Right. There's something else. Something else is the system of teaching and learning and everything that goes into that isn't working the way it should. And that's where the effort needs to go. Right.

So that using your analogy though, you've got all these bad drivers and what if you have some outstanding drivers, but the majority are bad drivers, but the outstanding driver, it doesn't matter that they're outstanding, they're just surviving.

They're not going to make a difference, right? Yeah.

They're not going to make a difference exactly. So what if in your curriculum, let's just use primary education and your year one, two and three teachers are using the curriculum, but not effectively. And that's where you're saying.

Okay, so you want to talk about how you fix that. That's a different question, right? And that's a big question. But the problem is not, the curriculum isn't what's going to change it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. If you were to ask me what can change it, I think that's a discussion for another day, because that's a whole thing on its own, right? What could you do?

Yeah, because if we zoom out, I'm sure we'll pursue that one. But I was just thinking as we're talking, right? So we go back to Singapore. by almost all international measures, the most successful education system. So I think

And the one that was transformed the most from being bad to good, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So by almost all measures, it's the one that we can aspire to, or at the very least, if we were going to agree and say, pick an education system, which one do we want? This one here. The point that I was going to make was, if that's the case, which it is, that's just fact in terms of attainment and stats and figures and those things, why not just globally, right? Everyone just adopt Singapore's curriculum. Just adopt it, wholesale. And then because the argument then would be, if that was the case,

and you took their curriculum and everyone globally adopted it, if it was only to do with the curriculum, then you'd get the same results as Singapore, right? Because it's the same curriculum, it's simple, except it's not. And so there lies the difference. know, like governments around the world aspire to have the international results that Singapore do so they can proudly say, look at us on the international league table and those sorts of things.

So if it was, if it was just about curriculum, it's a no-brainer. just photocopy Singapore's and just say, that's it, done. But of course it's not that. And we know that.

You start looking at the teacher development in Singapore, the pathways, the structures. Yes, it's a different country population-wise and all sorts of things at play. And I guess that's what it comes down to is that, good curriculums have been written.

And know that because we're saying, like, this is just the way it is. And England's made changes and has done since 2014 and internationally has got better and maintained a higher standard. But yeah, of course, there's other things at play. And I think that's the thing is that it would be easy just to grab Singapore in.

Yeah, you've kind of answered it Adam. You've given it all away. What does it take? Right. So one, it's not the curriculum. Right. Like, let's just accept that. Like, as long as the curriculum is good, changing it isn't going to make any significant difference. Right. What will make a difference is changing the system. So what you're pointing out is

Singapore works because XY or whatever we can't do what Singapore does. Well, all that's not true. Right. In the sense that you can, but you can't do it. You have to do it in a, in a controlled fashion in small steps. So if you say, let's change the entire country to the system that works in Singapore, be a catastrophe. Just like if you said, let's change all the traffic.

parameters, you know, like all the level of instruction that that drivers get and everything like absolutely every aspect all at once in this major metropolis like London, right? Like we're gonna change all the traffic rules. We're gonna change how we're gonna change the side of the road we drive on. We're gonna switch all the signs, you know, red is gonna mean green and green is gonna mean like we're gonna change everything all at once. Right. It's gonna be a catastrophic failure. The city would collapse. You can't do it. Right.

So what do you, how do you do it? How do you do it? Well, as a school, you could do what they do in Singapore and that would work. Right? As a multi-academy trust, you could say, we're going to do it like those guys. And that would work. As a district, you could say, we're going to do what those guys are doing. And it would work. Right? It's a small change. It's grassroots change. The change has to happen there.

You have to change the system there. Right? But where the government can help is the government can do things that allow for people to do those things properly. So that requires a push factor. You got to push them down this road. Okay? Right? That's what the government can do. But there needs to be a pull factor as well. We're going to pull you along.

We're going to make you do it. So we're going to tell you, you're going to do this, but we're going to also make you do it. And that involves things like national exams and all that kind of stuff, which is a whole other conversation, you know, about stuff. But if you want people to do it, you got to force what's going to pull them into it. What's going to push them into it. You got to do both. And, you know, even if the government doesn't do it, you could do it in your school or

you could do it in your district or you could do it in your multi-academy trust and it would work and you'd see tremendous success. And you know what? Like we've, we spoke into schools, like we spoke recently, we spoke to a school Aragon primary and in, in Morden, uh, wonderful school, you know, like their results they're doing as well, probably better than Singapore, that one school. Okay. They're doing remarkably well.

And I think enough to back that I'd suggest that if a new curriculum came in, they would do incredibly well with it. no, no, absolutely, absolutely. But the basis of it would work. Yeah.

Like really, really well, right?

Yeah, well, even if they didn't change anything, they would do really, really well. Like, like even if they didn't teach to the new curriculum, they would still do better.

Because when you're doing well, it doesn't matter what's on the test. It doesn't matter what the curriculum says because you can do it all when you're doing well. Right?