It is four years since Professor Graham Donaldson, the architect of education reform in Scotland, published Successful Futures setting out a vision for a new curriculum in Wales.
Having faced some delays the Welsh government published its White Paper in January setting out proposals for the legislation required and a public consultation ended last month.
Wales’ education minister Kirsty Williams has described the process as “bringing forward our own made-in-Wales legislative proposals for the school curriculum”.
Under the Welsh government’s timetable, in the coming weeks the detailed content of the new curriculum – which is to be rolled out in 2022 – will be published for all schools to feedback and refine.
Teaching unions have been generally supportive of the principle of a new curriculum but have raised concerns about the amount of change for staff at a time when budgets are stretched and workloads high.
David Evans, secretary of the National Education Union Cymru, said: “We know that cuts have been passed down from Westminster, but the Welsh government needs to be careful with its expectations on the education workforce at a time when funding and staff wellbeing are at such critical levels. We will of course be highlighting the need to keep workload under review as the new curriculum is brought in.”
The vision for this new curriculum would see traditional subjects replaced with Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLEs) covering humanities, health and wellbeing, science and technology, literacy and communications, languages, expressive art, and maths.
English and Welsh will remain statutory, as will religious studies and relationships and sexuality education.
Alongside this, the cross-curriculum responsibilities of literacy, numeracy and digital competence will be statutory up until 16-years-old.
Key stages will be removed and replaced with “progression steps” relating to expectations for learners aged 5, 8, 11, 14 and 16.
To help teachers prepare the Welsh government is proposing that all schools have one extra INSET day every year for the next three academic years. This sixth day – dubbed a National Professional Learning day – would be held on the same day for all schools across Wales with the content of training set by ministers.
Setting out why she wants to achieve what she has described as the “national mission”, Ms Williams said the new curriculum would “develop our young people as confident, capable and compassionate citizens of Wales and the world”.
She continued: “As Graham Donaldson has said, it’s not a matter of skills versus knowledge. It’s about empowering teachers to guide pupils to become those confident citizens, while also acquiring connected, coherent and fundamental knowledge. I want our youngest citizens not only to understand the world around them, but to question the world around them, and change it for the better.”
- For more on the new curriculum, visit https://gov.wales/preparing-new-curriculum and https://curriculumforwales.gov.wales/