In designing a curriculum – given its prevalence in the judgement of quality of education – much pre-eminence is rightly given to coverage of the national curriculum. We must, quite rightly, ensure that the statutory curriculum is followed. This is the base entitlement to an education that all children should enjoy. What gets me genuinely excited as a curriculum lead, however, is where schools and teachers talk about how they have also formed a curriculum around the things that matter to them. Where they have managed to give time and pre-eminence to the things they value above all else while covering the things they need to.

One of the most exciting conversations I had with a curriculum leader last year was with the Head of PE at Longcroft. He had read Lee Sullivan’s book Is PE in Crisis? and, on the back of that, had the courage to redesign his curriculum from scratch. If you haven’t read this book and work in PE, I’d recommend it. Sullivan is a successful Head of PE with many years of superb results behind him. However, he talks about discovering through pupil voice that while the children who chose PE GCSE loved it, the majority of the other children in his school did not.

Sullivan could have been content with his outcomes but decided that wasn’t enough for him and that if PE was only about creating elite sportspeople or generating great outcomes, it was failing. When we met him as part of our Trust training, he put it to us that PE teachers were at risk of just creating more PE teachers. As an English teacher I sometimes worry the same. What he advocates in his ideal curriculum is a compromise that develops high level sporting skills but that they also learn the wider personal skills that will make them effective not just on the pitch but in life such as resilience, communication, and teamwork. He also encourages a curriculum that breaks down the key sporting skills – movement, balance, coordination – so that children don’t just play a game to practice it unthinking but rather get better at the skills behind it. We are passionate about this approach, and it now spans across all schools across the Trust. It is pleasing to see from the most recent OFSTED visit that our inspectors liked it too. Thank you, Mr Martin.

Gareth Davies

Trust Head of Curriculum and Learning

To read more see Gareth’s article in Issue 11 of our One Family with Wonder newsletter.