Picking a school: a good curriculum is as important as the teaching staff

 You’ve visited a school and established that you like the headteacher. They have a clear vision for their pupils, and the place has an orderly and friendly culture. Time to list it as one of your preferred choices on the council application form? Not so fast.

You wouldn’t pick a restaurant for an important meal just based on meeting the chef or popping your head around the door to feel the atmosphere. You’d make a point of checking out the menu, and probably sample some dishes too. It’s the same when picking a school – you need to know what it is they’re going to teach your child.

After exceptional behaviour by all staff and students, a school’s curriculum is by far the most important thing to consider as parent. It tells the world what a school wants for its students, and how serious it is about achieving that. Most importantly, it sends a message to its students as to what it hopes they will do with their lives.

And yet for much of the past forty years or so, too many schools – state and private – abandoned the idea of children learning the very best that has been thought, said and done, instead trying to teach fuzzy concepts and “skills”. Because of this too many children leave school knowing far too little about the world they live in. 

Fortunately there has been a sea change in recent years, with more schools adopting more rigorous, rich curricula. Exams have been toughened up too, to make them more demanding and ensure students really know and understand how they are to obtain good grades.

How then can parents ensure that a school is going to do right by their child? We recently held a conference that covered this very issue, and asked some of the best curriculum minds on the country to suggest questions that you can ask a Headteacher for this very purpose. Here’s what they said, and a few words from me on why these questions are so pertinent.

Do you teach enough knowledge to allow my child to be creative? ( Clare Sealy and  Martin Robinson)

Just as you can’t be a great free-form jazz musician until you’ve cracked your scales and understanding of structure, your child can’t develop creativity or other attributes until they have a solid basis of knowledge and understanding to play with. As I used to say to my students, you’ve got to know stuff before you can critique it; you need to know the “rules” before you can break them.

Great headteachers should be able to tell you clearly and concisely exactly what it is their pupils will be taught, when, and how it all fits together. There will be a clear narrative to explain why they teach what they do, and the big ideas and concepts that hold everything together.

Ideally, it will be done through discrete subjects from Year 3 or Year 4, so that children can start to appreciate what it is that makes History, Geography, Literature and so on, so magical. Many primaries still tend to have a curriculum where basically everything other than English and maths are lumped into generic “topic” lessons. As a result, pupils tend to end up knowing loads about, say, the Romans, rainforests, and Tudors, but little in between, nor how different disciplines differ and complement one another. Clare Sealy outlines brilliantly the kind of curriculum that kids need in a blog here.

What should I and my child be reading to understand this subject? ( Summer Turner )

Accompanying a clear and coherent curriculum in school, you want to know what you can be doing at home to support your child. Let’s be clear: homework such as making model volcanoes or Tudor houses will not help your child learn anything. They will also probably end up largely being done by mum or dad.

Aside from practising spellings and times tables, the only other thing parents should consciously be doing to help their child is to get them to do wider reading around subjects. This could be related story books or novels, non-fiction, newspapers, magazine articles – and the school should be able to provide you with a reading list to help with this.

Reading is the key to succeeding at school. When they’re little, read to them and with them. As they get bigger, make sure they stick with it.

What provisions have you made for low-attaining students? ( Paul Hammond )

You can tell a lot about the aspirations that a school has for all of its children by exploring the ambitions and provision it has for children who start off behind where they should be. I would suggest that you want to hear the Head tell you that they believe every child can succeed, and be able to tell you the specific things they use to overcome particular problems to ensure this.

Be wary if they talk about different experiences or pathways for different children. The very best schools in the country achieve their success not through dumbing down what a struggling child learns, but intervening as soon as they identify a problem to help them to catch & keep up.

Obviously these questions are not exhaustive but they should give you a pretty good idea as to what your child will actually know and be able to do by the time they leave the school. And after all, education is about ensuring that children learn everything they need in order to get off to a good start in life – knowing what a Headteacher considers this to be is really important, and will reassure you as you choose a school.

Next time I’ll be considering what parents should ask heads about extra-curricular and enrichment activities. Often overlooked, this is an absolutely essential part of the school experience, and one you need to understand before picking somewhere for your child.

Mark Lehain is the director of the Parents and Teachers for Excellence Campaign.