A new way of working from the DFE? My thoughts on my visit there today (@educationgovuk)

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the HQ of the DFE in London today. I’m still not exactly sure why I was one of the few to be invited but I am grateful for the opportunity. An unexpected bonus for attending was that Liz Truss, the minster with responsibility for the new national Curriculum joined us for the first 30 minutes.

Whilst I may not always agree with the education policy of the current government, the meeting left me in no doubt of the government’s intention to improve our education system. Reference to our Pisa standing was made which may not be the best driver for improvement (and one of the people invited did point out that the new national curriculum has nothing in it that will do that anyway since it is mostly new content).

The reason for inviting us to London was to use us as a panel of ‘experts’. The DFE wants improvements to the curriculum to be school and teacher led. They want the curriculum to be “the what” and teachers to be “the how” – those words came straight from Liz Truss. They want the new curriculum to be more than a one off CPD event and school preparation, but to be a continual and ongoing process.

The DFE website already contains information for teachers about where to seek help and pointers to teaching schools, but those present hadn’t seen the information so it could be better signposted.

More freedom is available for individual schools, in how they organise and deliver the curriculum. Their question was how do we get every school to innovate?

Much of the ensuing discussion revolved around assessment and the fact that the DFE doesn’t realise how much Ofsted drives what happens in our schools. Schools are unlikely to start planning for change until they know how they will be measured. I think that point took the officials by surprise. There were other side discussions about how to get the word out, what good exam assessment should look like and who is the best organisations to develop additional support materials.

I thought I had been noticing a change in tone of the tweets coming from the DFE, as well as the PR and government ‘propaganda’ there has been some useful links and sharing of good practice. Whilst party policy hasn’t changed, the meeting today made me see the value of education to the government and their desire to engage with teachers wide and far to get it right.

I’d be interested to hear comments or feedback below (tweeting a comment with a link to this post will also capture your feedback)

Apologies for any typos and autocorrect errors, sat typing this on a swaying train from St Pancras back to the midlands! Additional apologies for two blog posts in one day but I wanted to capture my thoughts straight away.

 

Update: Here is another account of the meeting from @teachingofscience