that overstuffed ventriloquist dummy just doesn't have a clue does he!!!!!

That sounds like the sort of thing that used to happen before the Thatcher government introduced the National Curriculum in 1988.

Don't tell me that someone in the Tory party dares to suggest that she might have been wrong . . .

A "wiki" approach to designing the curriculum that would allow teachers and experts to collaborate in tailoring lessons for schools

How 'tailored' do the lessons get?

Anyway, what about Gove considering something like Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/ for Primaries, simple building blocks of code that can do a lot.
Get them interested before going to secondary school, if they arrive already understanding how programmes are put together then let the teenagers loose on things like Future Pinball http://www.futurepinball.com/ to code thier own games.

There's always the Lego stuff as well for both Primary and Secondary projects.

All politicians have been to school and, at some point presumably, seen a doctor.

This is no doubt what makes them such experts on education and health.

The result is a constant stream of reviews, reforms, changes, overhauls, re-thinks, new approaches, fresh ideas, restructuring and radical shake-ups.. also known as neverending chaos.

Politics aside, in essence it is a good idea, isn't it?

Universities that teach Software Engineering need to insist on candidates having a full A Level in Computing before they can apply. Until they do that, schools and parents will not take it seriously and the curriculum development won't happen.

Nobody would think it was sensible to have a class of undergraduate physics students where 50% of them had no previous experience of physics, but that is still what we are doing in Software Engineering even in our top universities.

"music lessons from Eton". Can we now expect the Holland Park Boating Song?

Blower is right about league tables being the problem. This isn't teachers not wanting to be held accountable, it's about stopping schools from doing all they can to jump through the arbitrary hoops set by the government. I wonder how many parents realise how much schools are keen to focus on c/d borderline pupils at GCSE at the expense of other children? All this to bump up the arbitrary 'GCSE pass rate'. Other schools put children on utterly unsuitable (and generally poorly run) Btec courses for the same reason. All the while, pupils are developing a 'learned dependency', they don't (for the most part) read for pleasure or for information, and require spoon-feeding all the way through to A-level. A lot of this is due to the 'literacy hour' and other such misguided initiatives from above.

Keep inspections to inform parents and to help improve schools. Put the responsibility for examination on employers and higher level learning institutions. Schools can focus on key skills, and pupils will have to motivate themselves to study and learn in order to succeed. It's this motivation that seems so sorely lacking in most of our youth. All this wiki stuff can be used to inform curriculum choice and teaching and leaning policy in schools.

I agree,it's a silly idea to go to university without studying the subject, or at least having some experience in it. It's the same with the Law courses. Can you believe that in this day and age some students go to university to study Law without having a grounding in A level Law!

I wish governments would leave education to the teachers.

Something advanced in education would be remove the politics from education and develop it like the law courts.

Maybe then they would stop messing the teachers around every 4 years.

Ventriloquist dummy? Surely Thunderbird puppet

We're not short of collaborative, online approaches to resources and teaching ideas, but there are lots of problems. There's no quality control, the best ideas have been funded by people with an interest in making money or, more successfully, by grants and charities.
Whilst schools are pitted against each other with the ridiculous league tables and OFSTED judgements where's the incentive for them to share their teachers' best ideas?

Computer science degrees with undergraduates with no computer science experience, Law degrees with recruits without law at school. Shocking

What about architecture, Acoountancy, medicine, sociology, psychology, criminology, housing studies, social work, teaching in fact universities have thousands of courses that are not studied at school.

I'm bereft as to understand how the whole thing doesn't fall apart.

I wonder how many parents realise how much schools are keen to focus on c/d borderline pupils at GCSE at the expense of other children? All this to bump up the arbitrary 'GCSE pass rate'. Other schools put children on utterly unsuitable (and generally poorly run) Btec courses for the same reason. All the while, pupils are developing a 'learned dependency', they don't (for the most part) read for pleasure or for information, and require spoon-feeding all the way through to A-level. A lot of this is due to the 'literacy hour' and other such misguided initiatives from above.

Have you no faith brother. Do you not realise all these problems will be solved by a GCSE in Computer Science

Sounds like an interesting idea, though. I cannot get from what he said (which may therefore be management-speak) what the final product might be, but I'm going to speak to a teacher friend of mine (vice-head of his department) to see what exactly could be wrong about this (besides its being a shameless attempt to save money actually creating textbooks).

How about we all stop thinking about 'facts' altogether? Life is far less about knowing things than knowing a) how to learn skills and b) knowing where to look for information. Success is not about whether you said the right thing on the form, whether you went to the right school, whether you know the (more-or-less totally wrong) school curriculum on a specific subject as whether you can find something engaging, stimulating and exciting to focus your life upon.

Most people with high level skills do not use anything they learned in school on any regular basis. Most people with advanced technical skills took years to perfect the hand-eye co-ordination necessary. These things cannot be taught in school. They are not reflected in how successfully you could tell the examiner the answer they wanted to hear.

The lessons we mostly need from schools are persistence, self-awareness/self-control and humility.

I think someone should briefed him about The Khan Academy? (http://www.khanacademy.org/)

I use a wiki to set up pub quiz questions - fine for 3 or 4 of us.

But every teacher - even if split up into subjects? It'll end up as a dog's dinner. It'll make the NHS computer system seen simple and reliable. And that's before the trolls start.

I think that there should be a National Curriculum - for ALL children. I've never understood the argument that some are exempt.

I'd like it written by real heads and educationalists, of real schools teaching real children.

Written with children's and the country's future needs in mind, written without political meddling, written without a backward nod to the 50s and their supposed ideal education.

The body that has produced the currently proposed one doesn't inspire me with confidence - heads of academies that don't have to follow it, heads that mostly work inside the M25.

There is a degree of confusion about what a National Curriculum, syllabus and lesson plans actually are and what the differences are.

Possibly best illustrated by Michael Gove exclaiming that the Geography NC made no mention of names rivers.

I expect to prepare my own lessons for my own children to suit their needs, my skills, equipment etc etc.

However if I did have access to this wiki I'd be tempted to troll...

Why, when today, the hot topic is about ICT, the country's future needs etc does the proposed NC state that all pupils study History and Geography to 16 but not Technology?

I'd love an answer to that one.

CP

Without descending to details, if Thomas Friedman thinks it a good idea, it's probably a gimmick for which the advertising has already been written.

This is incredible. Britain's education sysrem is to be turned upside down because Gove read something or other in a book the other day.

He's like ...... Whatever !!!!!!

It might be a good idea but it's not really a good use of a wiki, Methinks he's just used a trendy term to mean 'wider consultation'. If we remain fixated on learning focussed on assessment then a wiki isn't a good basis - it changes too often to be used as the basis for Gove's beloved exams. If we're going to examine students then at some point we need a fixed reference point to test them against.

Far better to let the students build the wiki and assess them on their contributions!!

The simple answer is to listen to people who know what programming is all about - not iPad toting Nathan Barley types.

Dagenham...

(as in, two stops past Barking).

"It struck me then that if we can have a wiki approach of those who have direct experience of the frontline, if we can do it in something as critical as the role of the military, then there is a huge potential to do it in education and other areas as well."

Hilarious; typical Gove. If the military proposed a European super-state, bringing back British Rail or a financial transaction tax, he'd probably support those too.

Glum on the naughty chair

Michael Gove read a book. Give him a sticky back star for his achievement poster.

I work as a lawyer with an English law degree and do not have one A level to speak of!

Ah, Michael Gove and his Plato. Gove is making it up as he goes along.

The next generation of Brits will be the most highly qualified rice farmers the world has ever known.

Universities that teach Software Engineering need to insist on candidates having a full A Level in Computing before they can apply. Until they do that, schools and parents will not take it seriously and the curriculum development won't happen.

I object in the strongest possible terms to that. My school didn't even run a CS course, yet I was perfectly capable of getting a good EE/Computer Science MEng.

Curriculum development should be encouraged by government. Essentially banning several years of students from CS courses is not a solution.

Knows the buzzwords - doesn't grasp the consequences.

That sounds like the sort of thing that used to happen before the Thatcher government introduced the National Curriculum in 1988.

The article says that it would be finalised in law, but the process of creating the curriculum would use technology in a collaborative way.

I have been involved in wikis in the work place (for helping coders use a particular technology, funnily enough) and felt the approach worked pretty well in unifying different areas of knowledge between people.

The success of course is only as good as the participants.

Well at least we know now that Michael Gove likes to fly in the face of conservative policy.

Threatening the National Curriculum? O.o that was Thatcher policy and one of her best changes to the system. Admittedly, it would be nicer to see teachers and local communities having more of a say about what is taught but this is something the government is supposed to be doing anyway.

This is Gove trying to gain votes by stating what the government is already supposed to be doing. It is whitehalls job to go and collect this information but they aren't doing it, leaving the government to come up with what we have now from so called 'Education Experts'.

The phrase at the end by ms blower says it all, and should be at the focus of any reforms to the curriculum. I think key in the sentence is the concept of 'teaching to the test'....

"continuing with the system of league tables and unnecessary floor targets which can lead to teaching to the test, resulting in all creativity being knocked out of schools".

You make it sound as though your special. I'm assuming you took the Legal Executive exam and became a solicitor?

Also contrary to apparent popular belief, you do not need A-levels in order to attend university. Universities often run foundation courses with only GCSE level requirements. Heck if you're willing to pay a little extra and already have some experience in the field going straight into a degree is also an option.

I wish governments would leave education to the teachers.

And ...
I wish governments would leave law to the lawyers [no more Acts of Parliament!]

Mr Gove read a book and now he will talk utter bollocks. Just like he did yesterday about ICT . All I can say is leave our kids alone . I think what he can't understand is that he is not the only one in this world who has been educated in a school . If you want a better product, you invest in it not procrastinate about it !

oh dear ...

Where is the eject button ?

Gove is far too interfering and very statist in his approach to education. The English baccalaureate is a complete dumbed-down joke. Pupils should not be forced to take GCSE History,it is not a very important subject nowadays .Moreover most leading politicians in the UK have a poor grasp of political history thus they have not learnt the lessons of history themselves. I very much doubt that in 5-10 years the average Briton has any spare time to play computer games (they are a waste of time ). Sweden has an economy in surplus because the majority of Swedes go out at night (often in freezing ice and snow ) to do further education or training throughout their adult lives.) The Brits meanwhile are off their heads on drugs,booze,junk food or on a diet of moronic telly. Making any subject compulsory at GCSE may mean that pupils leaving school do not have a more vocational subject such as physics,chemistry or biology. The current pathetic crop of government ministers need to know their own recent history by finding out just how ill their monetarist and cheap UK labour policies of the 80's-90's made much of the UK population devastated by Thatcherism. Many have suffered ill health ever since,most of the welfare reforms will have the same effect.

I like the idea of a organic, fluid and blooming knowledge base, that centralised teaching success with a practical blueprint for repeating those successes. Totally agree about student involvement - you could have the two intertwined. So teachers and pupils can engage with a shared, ever-evolving project. I

I was thinking about a winning scenario, given as I am, occasionally, to optimistic thought.

@Greenimp

Pupils are not forced to take GCSE History. It is still an option as far as I am aware. You are asserting that history is not important and you are entitled to your opinion. However, I am going to disagree with you. History is STILL important. If you eradicate it completely then that is a mistake. A civilisation that forgets the past is more likely to repeat the mistakes other civilisations have made beforehand. Oh I know lets eradicate the unnecessary 'arts' as well (including English Lit) so we can descend even further into being philistines.

However, I do agree that Gove's proposals are very hit-and-miss. Some may argue that a rethink of the curriculum change is not needed. Personally I think it does but not in this manner.

Gove is far too interfering and very statist in his approach to education. The English baccalaureate is a complete dumbed-down joke. Pupils should not be forced to take GCSE History,it is not a very important subject nowadays .Moreover most leading politicians in the UK have a poor grasp of political history thus they have not learnt the lessons of history themselves. I very much doubt that in 5-10 years the average Briton has any spare time to play computer games (they are a waste of time ). Sweden has an economy in surplus because the majority of Swedes go out at night (often in freezing ice and snow ) to do further education or training throughout their adult lives.) The Brits meanwhile are off their heads on drugs,booze,junk food or on a diet of moronic telly. Making any subject compulsory at GCSE may mean that pupils leaving school do not have a more vocational subject such as physics,chemistry or biology. The current pathetic crop of government ministers need to know their own recent history by finding out just how ill their monetarist and cheap UK labour policies of the 80's-90's made much of the UK population devastated by Thatcherism. Many have suffered ill health ever since,most of the welfare reforms will have the same effect.

I actually feel stupider for reading this borderline illiterate rant.

Has anyone worked out what the f*ck he's talking about?

@iamnotwise

Wikiwars and such like do happen in some schools especially in English Lit. The teacher would put a poem or text on the wiki and the students make comments about the poem on the wiki for other students to respond. Whether the same scenario would work on a nationwide scale regarding curriculum making is open to question.

Personally I would love teachers to have a basic skeleton curriculum to work from but they, not governments, not LEAs, not exam boards, not the headteacher and definitely not academy sponsors make decisions about what they teach their class. As it stands now, the curriculum is still to prescriptive from above. Teachers know their classes' needs. Let them have more say over what they teach

Very impressive. I think that Gove is one of the brighter thinkers of the right and Friedman is one of the brighter thinkers of... I don't think I would say left... but liberal US, ie New York Times.
Sounds like Twigg, the Guardian, everyone supports this.

Apart from the teachers of course, god forbid their performance would be measured by pesky things like exams.

Schools are there to teach kids, not employ teachers.

That said, teachers should be given much more power to discipline pupils.

I love that not one child in the photo is even looking at him.

But what is a supposedly mainstream politician doing, reading an extremist like Friedman? Next thing we know someone will be basing foreign policy on Samuel Huntington. Oh, wait ...

How in the name of god do you call Friedman an extremist! I honestly don't know what sort of extremist you are describing him as! Left wing? Right wing? I have read one of his books and plan to read more - he is certainly not a right winger hence he is a darling of the new york times and all the left liberal media in the US for example the Bill Maher show. However I would say he is not a leftie either, he supported war in Iraq and Kosovo, and he believes in things like competition.

Are you thinking of the right Friedman? We are talking about Thomas here. Maybe you were thinking of Milton or George?

True - not necessarily GCSE History.

But the proposed requirement for KS4 lists English, Maths and Science as NC core subjects. Fair enough.

Geography, History, MFL and PE are NC Foundation subjects. That'll mess up options for both pupils and schools.

Art and Design, Music "not required but can be taught by schools as part of Local curriculum' So these'll gradually drop off the options lists.

The Arts*, Citizenship, D&T, ICT are all part of the 'basic curriculum' - compulsory curricular requirements but schools determine appropriate specific content"

Which, if it follows many schools approaches to citizenship, means one day a term - or plain forgotten about.

p71 of report on proposed new National Curriculum.

True - History is important - but for all pupils?

CP

"at KS4 would combine art and music but also other aspects of the arts eg dance and drama"

I know where they won't have a "wiki" approach to the curriculum. In the private schools that send a disproportionate number of their students to Oxbridge.