This online trust leaders’ discussion event, led by Forum Strategy’s CEO Alice Gregson, drew trust leaders together to consider how trusts and their schools are innovating and adapting within and beyond the core curriculum to prepare children and young people to be healthy and thriving citizens and community members. This article summarises some of the main discussion points, with videos of inputs from the session also provided at the end.
Introduction
Alice began the session by setting out the current context for the overall discussion, outlining how the start to the current academic year has been one of the busiest of many years in terms of the volume of policy and research related publications – including the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR), Ofsted’s new Education Inspection Framework and toolkits, the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report and many more. Alice commented that, under the current government, there seems to be some positive indications from what they say, that they seek to see children and young people and their families in a more holistic sense (i.e. considering the wider factors that impact young people’s lives beyond academic attainment), with a consequent shift in some policy to represent this.
In terms of enrichment and supporting young people’s wider aspirations, the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review highlighted the need for schools to deliver enrichment provision (but acknowledged the difficulty of this for some, not least in the current financial climate). The Department for Education (DfE) has since responded to this by announcing that it will publish a new set of enrichment benchmarks for schools across five categories: civic engagement, arts and culture, nature, outdoor and adventure, sport and physical activities and developing wider life skills. The DfE has confirmed that Ofsted will consider whether schools are meeting the expectations as part of its inspections, with information around enrichment activity to be made available to parents through new school profiles. These new expectations do come, however, at a time when record numbers of schools are cutting extracurricular activities due to funding constraints and so far, there doesn’t appear to be further additional funding coming through to support in the delivery of these elements.
“the main focus of this discussion was to consider how we capture and build upon the positive work that is already being done across many schools and trusts to go beyond the traditional curriculum and include enrichment experiences and opportunities that our children and young people might otherwise never have had access to”
However, whilst this national backdrop is important to keep in mind, the main focus of this discussion was to consider how we capture and build upon the positive work that is already being done across many schools and trusts to go beyond the traditional curriculum and include enrichment experiences and opportunities that our children and young people might otherwise not have had access to. Alice commented that it’s important we don’t see this work as adding to an ever growing list of competing priorities in education, but instead see it as enabling our priorities and work; because when we prioritise this work as leaders, it can support improved attendance, support improved behaviour and mental health, engender a sense of belonging and connection and ultimately, likely support better outcomes and attainment. There are already a number of in-depth research reports which describe this type of work and its outcomes in action – a summary of some of these was circulated to attendees ahead of this session, to provide some helpful background to the discussion.
Next, Alice introduced Katrina Morley, CEO of Tees Valley Education Trust, and Matt Lees, Founder and Director at East Learning CIC, who had both kindly agreed to share the work they are doing around curriculum enrichment, to provoke and inform the thinking and to spark further discussion during this session.
