Debate: How do government policy makers view the curriculum?

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By John Coe — General Secretary of the National Association for Primary Education

Teachers see the curriculum as subjects, to children it is simply ‘what happens’. But do government policy makers see this?

I could not believe my ears. A government spokesman at the UK Education Forum had just offered a view of teachers that likened us to operatives on a production line. ‘A teacher is a supplier of a product to the end user,’ he said, ‘the product is the literacy hour and the end user is the child.’ This was a few years ago and since then, by small incremental steps, there has been a retreat (partly concealed from the public and the media) from such crass and inappropriate attitudes held inevitably by those who themselves have never taught. And of course, the literacy hour – that weapon of mass instruction – has vanished like so many other short-lived initiatives with which we have had to deal with and that too often got in the way of our work.