Policy

Why The ‘Instructional Core’ Is Key To Curriculum Reform

David Hopkins sets out how any debate about the nature of the curriculum needs to be carried out in the wider context of its links to the fundamental nature of education and overall school improvement strategy.
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As someone whose overarching goal as an educationalist has been to occupy that space bounded by the vertices of policy, research and practice, my enduring view of debates on the curriculum is that they have been far too restrictive.

I believe that any view of the curriculum must accommodate both the development of student autonomy and learning skills, together with a view on how both content and skills are acquired through what is termed the instructional core. When I was in Government in the second New Labour term, we used the phrase ‘Personalised Learning’ to describe this approach to the curriculum.[1]

What does it mean to be educated?

One way of both pinpointing the curriculum issue and drawing the argument together is to pose the question ‘What does it mean to be educated?’ at any particular phase of education. Being educated at any phase of learning has four central elements:[2]

  • a breadth of knowledge gained from a curricula entitlement;
  • a range of skills on a developmental continuum that reflects increasing depth at ages 7, 11, 14, 16 and, in many cases, 18;
  • a range of learning experiences; and
  • a set of key products, projects or artefacts.

It also means that students are sufficiently articulate to:

  • sustain employability through basic skills;
  • apply their knowledge and skills in different contexts;
  • choose from and learn in a range of post-14 study (assuming an entitlement curriculum up until then);
  • draw on wider experiences to inform further learning and choice.

Personalised curriculum at all stages of education

Most National Curricula do not meet these desiderata. Although the following proposals were originally based on my original work on the Key Stage 3 (11-14) curriculum in England, they represent a broader attempt to imagine a structure that enables schools and teachers to personalise the curriculum across all stages of education.

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