Showing posts with label john catt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john catt. Show all posts

Friday 17 May 2019

The Primary Curriculum Leader's Handbook


I am pleased to say that I have a short essay in John Catt's 'The Primary Curriculum Leader's Handbook', edited by Roy Blatchford who has 'has brought together some of the sharpest thinkers in education in a brilliant mixture of both practical and conceptual essays about what makes for a positive primary curriculum'.

Here's the opening of my chapter which is entitled 'Apprentices and Masterclasses' and which reflects the current practice that my school and my colleagues have been developing:

The National Curriculum, with a degree of effort, is fairly easy to cover, once you’ve got to grips with what some of the statements mean. If everything is planned out well, a school can ensure that all the statements are ticked off, at least in their intent, even if sometimes some objectives are lost at the implementation stage. But is that the sort of curriculum you want? One that is concerned with ticking
boxes?

You’ll have seen the delivery of this sort of curriculum in action. An afternoon’s art lesson often concludes with 30 pieces of near-identical artwork, 31 if you include the teacher’s piece that ‘inspired’ all the children. A Design and Technology unit that is concerned with making sure that at the end of the half term all children proudly present their parents with a glue-gunned photograph frame that, choice of embellishment aside, is the same each one of their classmates’...

The book costs £15 and is out on 22nd May abut it can be pre-ordered here now: http://www.johncattbookshop.com/titles/the-primary-curriculum-leader-s-handbook