Rethinking the Curriculum: Key Stage 3

“What we need is a metamorphosis of education – from the cocoon a butterfly should emerge; improvement only gives us a faster caterpillar”

B.H.Bethany in “Systematic Change – Touchstones for the future school”, Ed. Patrick Jemlink, 1996.

Study visits to Australia and New Zealand emphasised the need to integrate ICT into the teaching and learning process. In those countries thinking skills, ICT and teaching and learning are not separate programmes but integrated into a coherent whole. The rigid content-led subject centred curriculum of the UK’s Key Stage 3 is a barrier to this approach. The best work in New Zealand, for example, springs out of an integrated, enquiry-based approach.

Projected national changes to the 14-19 curriculum also highlight the deficiencies of the current Key Stage 3 curriculum. This Key Stage is simply no preparation for the demand or excitement of the post-14 revolution. Rather, it is a 1950s curriculum, preparing students for the past and not the future.

A rethink of our Year 9 curriculum, albeit within the constraints of national requirements, is now urgent with the imminent changes 14-19. The seven period Learning to Learn course, the development of larger blocks of time for History and Geography using the semester system and the abandonment in this yeargroup of sharing Science classes between two staff, represent the first steps in this major conceptual rethink.

The next step may be to re-conceptualise the Key Stages with, say, Key Stage 3 replaced by Key Stage R, based around Guy Claxton’s 5 R’s and Key Stage 4, replaced by Key Stage ‘I’. 

Certainly in Year 9 we need to consider carefully the introduction of Information and Visual Literacy. ICT can help students to think with critical awareness and selectivity. The interactive CD-ROM ‘The First Day of the Somme’, for example, allows students to create their own documentary from both reconstructed video shots and actual war footages.

In addition, they can choose their own sound track and record their own narration. The use of video helps students to improve their multimedia communication and literacy skills and could form the basis of an excellent interdisciplinary project. 

Equally we need to consider Citizenship including Global Citizenship and Internationalism, possibly through enquiry-based project work underpinned by ICT and relationships through say conflict resolution skills.

There are also new ‘subjects’ like Biotechnology which deserve attention.

Whether this new curriculum remains predominantly subject based – with an injection of new skills and perspectives – or, looks ‘new’, it presages a major transformation to the character of education in Year 9 epitomised by:

Although these resources may have to be phased in over several years, a creative rethink of Intensive Study Weeks, Investigation Week and Immersion Week could release expertise and resources at particular times of the year.

Investigation Week could, for example, be an opportunity for a collaborative, enquiry-based approach using WebQuests; Intensive Study Weeks a platform for cross-disciplinary work. Given possible reorganisation it makes sense to focus on developing cross-curriculum work and enquiry-based approaches within existing subjects and during Intensive Study Weeks/Investigation Week.

Any new curriculum should, of course, meet the needs of all learners. We must investigate the extent of challenge in the present Year 9 Curriculum, particularly in respect of Gifted and Talented Students. An Express Maths Group for students gifted and talented in that area was implemented for September 2003. This needs to be evaluated, as does the effect of our mixed ability teaching in Modern Foreign Languages, History, Geography and Religious Studies. Students’ feedback needs to be considered. In addition, we need to keep an eye on boys’ achievement. This is a noticeable issue in ‘word-centred’ subjects, and Humanities and English have taken particular steps to address this.