From the TES blog:
LINK
Teachers have more power than they realise to resist government
reforms to primary education, Professor Robin Alexander, author of a
wide-ranging review into primary education, has said.
The respected academic, who led the
Cambridge Primary Review
– a three-year analysis of all aspects of primary education published
in 2009 - attacked the current "discourse of derision" in which the
government denounced those who disagree with its ideas was the real
"enemy of progress".
He was referring to a recent argument over the review of the national
curriculum in which 100 academics curriculum proposals as an "endless
lists of spellings, facts and rules" and were in turn denounced as
"enemies of promise" in a
newspaper article written by education secretary Michael Gove.
Professor Alexander said at an event in London last night: "It's
surely proper to ask whether heaping abuse on members of the electorate
because they hold different views is what government in a democracy is
about.
"It is especially bafflingly during a period of public consultation
when different views are what the government has expressly invited."
Alexander is no fan of the current coalition government’s national
curriculum review, saying it uses international data with ‘eye-watering
selectivity’.
Alexander's Cambridge Primary Review contained 75 recommendations but
just one - start formal lessons at six - made the headlines, and the
report was consequently largely
dismissed by the then Labour government and had commissioned its own overhaul of the primary curriculum.
But he pointed out that many of the 2009 report’s recommendations did
not need government action, they could be and were being, implemented
by headteachers and teachers themselves.
Alexander was speaking at the launch of the
Cambridge Primary Review Trust,
a not-for-profit company with core funding from educational publisher
Pearson. The trust, based at York University, will carry out research
and training building on the review's evidence and principles. There
will also be a separate body to develop branded professional services
and materials for schools.
The launch event included a panel debate,
Any Primary Questions?,
which was chaired by broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby. Graham Stuart,
chair of the Commons education select committee, was one of the
panellists. He said afterwards that he felt more political attention had
been focused on secondary than primary issues.
“It is important that primary community speaks up, rather than
despairing of politics," Stuart said. "One of the priorities of The
Cambridge Primary Trust is a policy dialogue and the Trust could become a
strong advocate for the world of primary.”
