NEU launches report: “Are you on slide 8 yet?” The impact of standardised curricula on teacher professionalism

Ahead of its annual conference in Harrogate, the National Education Union today (Saturday 12 April) launches the findings of a key piece of research into the impacts of standardised curriculum packages (SCPs) on teachers' working lives: their autonomy, self-efficacy and workload. The research also considers which other factors influence the curriculum.

The authors of Are you on slide 8 yet? are Professor Anna Traianou, Goldsmiths, University of London; Professor Howard Stevenson, University of Nottingham; Dr Sarah Pearce, Goldsmiths, University of London; and Dr Jude Brady, independent consultant. 

Key findings

• Teachers who use SCPs reported no better workload than those who don't, whilst also reporting having less of a say over what is taught, and how it is taught. In other words, these packages relate to reduced teacher autonomy, for no meaningful workload gains.
• ‘Workload' emerged from the study as a highly complex issue that cannot be reduced to a simplistic notion of ‘hours worked'. Taking curriculum design and lesson planning away from teachers can lead them to feel that the quality of their job has decreased and so this does not necessarily tackle the workload problem, and can lead to teachers leaving the profession.
• It may also be the case that SCPs have simply changed the nature of teacher workload rather than reducing it. Instead of spending time researching material and selecting resources, teachers are spending time interpreting and adapting generic materials to meet the needs of their pupils.

• Teachers using SCPs repeatedly expressed concerns about them, including that:

• • they posed risks to the quality of students' school experiences. In particular they did not sufficiently engage or challenge students and did not work well for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND);
  • teachers lacked the freedom to adapt them to meet the particular needs of their pupils;
  • they functioned as a control mechanism to monitor teachers' work;
  • they embodied a lack of trust in teacher expertise;
  • practices of collaborative and flexible planning were being replaced by curriculum packages being ‘imposed from above'.
• SCPs are being used to paper over the cracks of several major systemic problems in education including teacher shortages, high staff turnover and lack of professional development
• More than a third of primary school teachers say they have little or no influence at all over the content of individual lessons (34 per cent) with just under a third (28 per cent) saying the same in secondary.
• The majority of teachers across phases state that external assessments have a lot of influence over the content of lessons (52 per cent in primary and 67 per cent in secondary). This demonstrates the perverse consequences of England's unnecessarily high-stakes assessment systems: the tail is wagging the dog when assessments are so heavily influencing lesson content.
• Teacher take-up of Oak National Academy is low. In the survey conducted as part of this research, just 3 per cent of respondents indicated that they followed Oak as a full curriculum plan.

• If teachers use Oak materials at all, they do so infrequently or occasionally.
• Respondents identified the most common uses of Oak resources being to provide material for cover lessons (when a teacher is absent), to support students not able to attend school for medical or other reasons and to assist colleagues teaching outside of their subject area - not as a fully sequenced curriculum plan.
• Almost half of teachers who had used Oak (46 per cent) suggested the resources were ill-adapted to the needs of their class/students.
• This limited and low level of usage by teachers presents a very different picture to the idea that underpinned the Department for Education's establishment of Oak – that teachers needed fully sequenced curriculum plans. Considered alongside the large proportion of teachers who found the materials not to suit the needs of their students, this brings into question both the rationale for Oak and the value for moneyachieved from the large amounts of public funds spent on it.

The government was right to recognise that establishing a curriculum and assessment review in England was so urgently required that they embarked upon doing so as soon as they came into office.

This review builds on conversations that have been taking place for many years about what children and young people learn, but how that learning takes place will be just as essential to ensuring the necessary changes are effective.

This question is intrinsic to raising standards and meeting the varying needs of all children and young people. It cannot be overlooked or insufficiently addressed; excessive teacher workload will impede any reforms as will dilution of the role of the teacher.

Standardised curriculum packages (SCPs), like those of the Oak National Academy (Oak), are often presented as a solution to the workload crisis. SCPs are units/schemes of work, programmes or packages that are pre-prepared, often by third party providers or centrally by a multi-academy trust, ready for teachers to follow in teaching.

The evidence from the research published today clearly suggests that SCPs are not the answer. Empowering teachers to ensure they are involved in curriculum and lesson planning is essential to delivering a new, exciting and engaging curriculum.

The title of the report was derived from a quote from a teacher interviewed during the research. They describe the controlling way in which they have experienced such SCPs being used:

“Every single English teacher up and down the corridor would be doing the same PowerPoint at the same time [as mandated by management] and SLT would look in and say, ‘Are you on slide 8 yet?  Are you on slide 9 yet?' which was just horrific.”

Other quotes from teachers during the research further outline how these packages are being used and the impact this has:

"You [wrongly] don't trust your teachers to be able to deliver and that means you want every classroom to teach exactly the same thing. This is not a factory.”

“…we're no longer teachers because we're no longer teaching lessons that we have ownership of. We are just delivering.”

“I love making resources. I love thinking about what my students need. That's half the joy for me. So, if someone took that from me, I'd just be like, well this isn't creative anymore, is it?”

“My colleague describes it as she feels like she's a warm body at the front of the classroom, that sense of disconnect from what you're teaching because you haven't planned it, it's not meaningful for you”

“They're [the students] not questioning. They're not thinking. Neither is the teacher. You teach the lesson, you're at the board and then for half an hour they write, and that's the lesson. There's no engagement. There's no discussion”

“You want them [students] to be engaged… If you're following a script, word for word, from a PowerPoint and every lesson is the same, it doesn't work.”

“The children have to behave like little robots really. They need to sit. They need to look at the PowerPoint.”

“I was subjected to a lesson observation where I was absolutely panned for modifying the vocabulary for the [SEND] needs of the students because it wasn't exactly the same material [as the PowerPoint management told me to use]”

“For our students they're [the SCPs] too simple. I think they're going to get very bored; they're going to get disengaged. I think they're going to feel a little bit patronised by that material as well.”

Commenting on the report, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:

“It is exceptionally worrying to hear the evidence that teachers feel their roles are being undermined and diluted - addressing this must be as essential to curriculum reform, as the contents of the curriculum itself.

“It is essential because professional involvement in curriculum and assessment design is motivating for teachers but also because their involvement is critical to the process of effective learning for all students.

“No one size can ever fit all and it is the teachers on the ground, if properly empowered and given high quality training and development, who are best placed to create and interpret an appropriate, relevant and engaging curriculum for the students in front of them.

“The links between teacher autonomy and retention are well known – reduced teacher autonomy leads to teachers leaving the profession. The unequivocal, statistically significant evidence in this research, demonstrating that standardised curriculum packages including those of the Oak National Academy are giving teachers less say over what and how things are taught in their own classrooms, must act as a serious warning to policy makers.

“The ongoing Curriculum and Assessment Review is an opportunity that cannot be missed. Any outcome must support teachers to be at the heart of curriculum and assessment design.”