Michael Gove declared to change the National Curriculum in 2011

How will the change in the National Curriculum affect schools

Under the coalition government, one thing high on the agenda was the progress of our school children. On 20 January 2011 the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove announced a review of the National Curriculum in England. He appointed Tim Oates, Chair of the executive panel to run the review.

The new National Curriculum will set out only the essential knowledge that all children should acquire, and give schools and teachers more freedom to decide how to teach this most effectively and to design a wider school curriculum that best meets the needs of their pupils.

Michael Gove wanted a review of the national curriculum, looking at the best performing schools in the world and how they are achieving their goals. In Singapore, children are expected to know their times table by the time they are in year 4, here in the UK it’s year 6. This gap needs to be bridged if our pupils have any chance of competing in the international job market when they are older.

  The principal objectives for the review are to                                                                            

• Give teachers greater professional freedom over how they organise and teach the curriculum
• develop a National Curriculum that acts as a benchmark for all schools and provides young people with the knowledge they need to move confidently and successfully through their education, taking into account the needs of different groups including the most able and pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
• Ensure the content of our National Curriculum compares favourably with the most successful international curricula in the highest performing jurisdictions, reflecting the best collective wisdom we have about how children learn and what they should know
• Set rigorous requirements for pupil attainment that measure up to those in the highest performing jurisdictions in the world
• Enable parents to understand what their children should be learning throughout their school career and therefore to support their education.

The overhaul of the National Curriculum will be for bothPrimary andSecondary school children, no only to benefit children and their learning development but to give more control to teachers. Schools should be given greater freedom over the curriculum, incorporating the National Curriculum with the wider school curriculum.  The National Curriculum should set out only the essential knowledge (facts, concepts, principles and core subjects) that all children should acquire and the wider school curriculum is set out to enable to decide how best to teach their pupils.

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