Yesterday at LKMCo I posted an update on the National Curriculum Review at Primary level. The DfE finally released their response to the Curriculum Experts’ Review and have also released draft Programmes of Study for consultation.
I am not a big fan of constant consultation. In my book if you are going to make a change the best thing you can do is consult first with practitioners, make your decisions, ask people what problems they foresee with the change, sort those out and then proceed. Too much faffing about only adds to the anxiety of people’s lives you are changing and rarely gives an opportunity for actual debate – in reality the only people who get listened to in consultations are those who already have the government’s ear, otherwise no-one gets listened to because the government has already decided what they are doing and is simply using the consultation as a way of working out which newspaper headlines to encourage or avoid. I will leave it to you to decide which of these two forms of consultation the primary schools review is taking.