Sixty questions: Self-evaluate your school’s curriculum

In my 2016 book, Making KS3 Count, there’s a section called Making curriculum count in which I advocate a more joined-up approach to curriculum design. I also encourage schools to plan engaging curriculums that do more than merely prepare students for qualifications.

I wrote that book in 2015 – a time when it was becoming increasingly clear that the school curriculum had too often become synonymous with the national curriculum or, worse still, the timetable.

This led to my 2019 book, School & College Curriculum Design, a guide to designing an ambitious, broad, and balanced, planned, and sequenced, and inclusive curriculum.

I was in the middle of writing the book when Amanda Spielman became the chief inspector of Ofsted. In one of her first speeches she trumpeted the importance of the school curriculum, arguing that schools had lost sight of the real substance of education.