Curriculum Conversations (Episode 2): Cassie Buchanan on leading curriculum change

- Hello, I'm Emma McCrae and I'm head of curriculum design at Oak. Today, I'm joined by the brilliant Cassie Buchanan, who is CEO of Charter Schools Education Trust and was a member of the Curriculum and Assessment Review Panel. In our discussion today, we'll cover what the clearest messages from the review are so far. What young people may need more of and want in the future. How leaders can approach curriculum change across multiple schools, while still respecting local context, and also what subject leaders need to know and do ahead of the curriculum reform. Thank you for joining me, Cassie. Hello.

- Hi, Emma. This is very lovely, isn't it?

- It is a bit fab.

- Quite different from the classroom.

- Yes, definitely. Definitely. As a member of the Curriculum and Assessment Review Panel, what was the clearest message that you heard about what young people need more of?

- I mean, there were lots of messages, over 7,000 responses to the call for evidence, but the first thing we heard very strongly from teachers was that we have a really great curriculum already. So the jumping off point wasn't to dismantle the good stuff that was there. Teachers really value subject disciplines and having a really knowledge-rich curriculum. So that's a great place to start. That's a really good foundation. The second thing we heard, and it came through in our call for evidence, but also in the data that we're able to see, is whilst that really strong curriculum is working well for most children, young people, it isn't working well for everybody. So the disadvantage gap persists, children with special needs don't progress as well. So that's an equity question that if we have this really strong foundation, it needs to be a foundation upon which everybody can stand and succeed. And then when we heard from the young people, they talked a lot about the future and having knowledge and skills to equip them for the future that perhaps isn't explicitly there in the curriculum as it was. So that's about skills such as media literacy, critical thinking, climate education, sustainability, financial education, that came through really strongly, and oracy. So that was another theme, and there's a recommendation about that. So young people really wanting the opportunity to learn how to speak with greater confidence, to be able to master all of this knowledge and then be able to talk about it. And the written word is still important, but obviously speaking is as well. So it was a balanced message through that funnel of all of those many different and diverse voices. There were some pretty common themes.

- So what's lovely particularly to hear is that when you look at the curriculum and assessment review report, you see the voices of the young people in terms of some of these recommendations about the themes that hopefully will provide some horizontal coherence across subjects, but also speak to their needs in terms of what they want for their future. So that's really exciting. Let's talk a little bit about some of the more difficult choices that you might have faced within the panel, because curriculum reform always involves some sort of difficult choices and key tensions. Can you tell us a bit about what you wrestled with?

- Sure, I think the first one, probably the one that most teachers and leaders will be familiar with, is this tension between breadth and depth. And if we had all the time in the world and the 24-hour clock was no more, then you would want to and would consider it your gift to do everything, to teach everything, for that kind of knowledge to span as wide as the horizon. But in reality, we are constrained by how long children, young people are in school. So that tension between how much in terms of volume, so content volume versus depth of understanding was there and will always be there. And what we were really aware of because teachers told us is that that ambition in terms of volume of content, which we would want and we want sometimes got in the way or gets in the way of ambition in terms of understanding. And so one of the key recommendations or themes that threads through the review is this idea of mastery, which you're a mathematician, so you'll be very familiar with, but perhaps is new to other subjects. So giving every subject enough space and air so that people aren't racing to cover the curriculum, that idea of covering the curriculum is replaced by depth of understanding and feeling like children, young people have really learnt something. So that's the first one. Sounds great. I mean, it's hard to achieve. So that's the first one. But the second one I would say is this tension between a national entitlement. So wherever you live in the country, whether you're in Cornwall or London where we are today or up in Yorkshire that you, as a young person, that you have an entitlement that is the same. And that speaks to that equity question that we should make sure that there's a sort of minimum entitlement that is still super ambitious that everybody gets versus local, and I can never quite say this word, but specificity. There you go.

- I struggle with it too. There you go.

- Specificity. I'll say it faster now.

- It's a word. It's not us.

- And giving enough time in the school day for teachers and to teach the stuff that is really important for their local context. So that's the school curriculum. And in addition to that, there being enough time in the school day and time is the thing that's coming through here for extracurricular stuff. So not the formal curriculum, but visits, clubs, those things that we know make a really special school experience. So that's another tension. And one of the things that came back in the call for evidence is this tension around volume. But then when you ask, well, what should we take away then? That's a harder question to answer. The third one, and this one obviously got quite a lot of headlines, is around the EBacc and accountability. The EBacc does some really good work. So it increased the take up of some academic subjects and that's a really good thing. But it came at the cost of reducing take up and constraining choice, particularly around creative subjects. So that's a challenging one because you want to sort of maintain the great work that's already happened. So that's why that recommendation there is to remove the EBAC, but to retain that academic core and hopefully that resolves some of that. And then the final one, which is always a tension in education, we all want to move it a million miles an hour, but we can't do everything at once, is that challenge around how do you deliver and put in place all these recommendations, but recognize that it's teachers and people in schools who are going to have to implement this stuff, right? So managing stability and making sure that the things that we've chosen were the things that were going to make the biggest difference versus lots and lots of change. And that's where Becky Francis' evolution, not revolution comes into play because every choice is a change and each one of those changes is potentially disruptive. Trying to keep the change to the things that are going to really make the difference. And when I say really make the difference, that's a child-centered difference. So who are we making the difference for? Those young people that we spoke about at the top of the conversation.

- Yeah, absolutely. What's really interesting about what you say is you can feel as a MAT leader or a school leader or a subject lead that those tensions play out in the school curriculum as well as obviously you've been wrestling with them at the national level as well. As a trust CEO, how do you approach curriculum change across multiple schools while still respecting each school's context?

- Oh yeah, that's a tricky one. I mean, I would say that I am a trust CEO obviously, but I'm also a teacher first, right?

- Yeah.

- And a head teacher second and then a Trust CEO third. So I would say that I've been really careful about this. So we don't at the Trust that I lead have one singular curriculum. We do have aligned curriculum principles. And so we thought really carefully about what makes a good curriculum. And at the heart of that is coherence, so vertical, horizontal coherence, being knowledge-rich, making sure that our curriculums reflect our communities. So there being curriculums that both include, that children can see themselves in, and also give children an opportunity to see beyond their own community. So that's really all of those sort of principles, and there are more, are really important to us, but we don't have one standardized curriculum. That's not to say that there aren't bits of our curriculum that are the same actually. So we have a shared reading fluency curriculum that is just the good stuff has moved around. We've got schools that use Oak for different parts of their curriculum because, and I guess that leads me into the next bit, that the subject expertise, that's where curriculum change needs to sit. And so my job is, as a CEO, is definitely not to dictate what's in the curriculum or how it should change, but it is to make the time, the space, the conditions for subject experts to have those conversations. And where, for example, and this can happen in primary, especially little primaries, where perhaps we don't have a subject expert in every subject to connect them to where that subject expertise might sit. That goes back to that time question.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- There are only so much time in a teacher's day. So some of our schools, some of our subject leaders then use the subject expertise that perhaps sits outside of their school that they can bring in and adapt. So the subject expertise I think is subject leaders, teachers is where that curriculum change needs to happen.

- What I want to just drill in on a little bit quickly, if I may, you said that your trust has a level of autonomy where schools don't necessarily have to have the same curriculum. And I wondered if you could share your rationale for that, because of course there are MATs where they kind of pool expertise. There's pros and cons, of course of having set curricula across all your schools versus what you have where you've got shared principles that underpin those curricula, but actually the curriculum themselves are different.

- So we've really thought about the things that we align, the things that we centralize, the things that we standardize as a trust, as a group of schools. And curriculum doesn't sit in that standardization box. Why? Because it's complex. School curriculum should reflect and support the community of children that it serves, all of our schools, although they're all in three-kilometer circumference with each other. All of those communities are all hyper local and they all have different needs. They have teachers and leaders who have particular skills and talents. So we have that national curriculum core that runs underneath. And then the school curriculum, what makes that school unique? I think should be unique to each school. And so it sits for us. And school curriculum, I think is something that is a complex decision and things that are complex are best decided upon by the people closest to those children, young people for whom it will impact. So that's our rationale. If you're going to do that, you have to have alignment in principles and those principles need to be really evidence informed. So being evidence informed is one of them because that pulls people together and makes sure that those decisions that subject leaders are making are decisions that are based on the very best evidence of what works both within their school, but also outside of their school as well.

- Yeah, you must end up with these great kind of pools of expertise within your schools and probably more so in some subjects than others, different curriculum. How do you facilitate learning from each other in terms of, oh, actually this school in English has got this great unit on so-and-so.

- How do you move the good stuff around?

- Right. Exactly, exactly. And maybe the bad stuff out the window, but I'm sure there isn't any of that. No. I mean, schools aren't islands. Our schools definitely are not islands. One of the points for me being in a trust is that you move the good stuff around. So we have subject networks, so subject teachers, secondary leaders at primary, people who are just a bit interested, come together on a really regular basis to share curriculums. So whilst I say it's a school decision, what you will see when you go, well, you've seen when you go from one school to another school in our trust is you'll see the same curriculum or you'll see bits of the same curriculum and you think, "Oh, where's that come from?" So allowing and creating the conditions for teachers to work together, subject leaders to work together, and to be able to evaluate and think, "Why is this good? And why is this one better than this one?" And do that together, that is a sort of horizontal peer-to-peer choice, means that you do move the good stuff around, but that you give teachers and leaders the agency. So you spoke at the beginning about autonomy. I would challenge you to think about, from my perspective, we talk about agency. We want teachers in schools to make the best decisions based on the best evidence. I don't want them to work in complete isolation. It's balancing the two, isn't it? You want to move the good stuff around. When you see something really good, you want to kind of say, "Why isn't everyone doing this?" But at the moment at which I do that, agency goes and we want agency too.

- Yeah, and you want them to have agency in terms of this sharing?

- Yes.

- And actually you probably end up with a shared curricular to a certain extent whereby-

- It seems pretty shared, yeah.

- It's different in some parts, but actually the good stuff has been shared around which is what you want.

- The good stuff has been shared. Yeah.

- Perfect, let's talk a little bit about workload because clearly with curriculum reform comes quite a high level of workload, also opportunities for change, of course. What can schools do and leaders to minimize the impact that curriculum reform has on workload whilst seizing this opportunity for change?

- Okay. So I would say the first thing is time. So give back to that old time word again, give teachers, subject leaders time. And that isn't just time for writing. It's time for thinking, it's time for speaking. It's time for coming together to discuss both the curriculum review itself. So what do people think? Have people had time to read it and talk about it? And then once the national curriculum is published, then it's time to think about what they need to adapt in their own school or trust curriculum. So that first one is time. I think we forget the second one is clarity, really. Clarity about decision making. There's nothing worse than a teacher, and we've all been there, spending a long time making something very thoughtful and beautiful only to discover it wasn't within our gift. So clarity around decision making. So what is going to be, and we'll have to wait to see. So what is going to be at a national level just decided for us? What then are school trusts or groups of schools going to decide or trust or group decisions? And then finally, what is going to be within the gift of subject leaders in each individual school to then decide upon? And that will be a senior leadership bit of work that will need to happen in advance of letting teachers loose on writing school curriculums. And then finally, there's something about culture, isn't there? And that is around developing or when you have it, really maintaining and nurturing a professional culture that values teachers' professional expertise, their learning and their thinking and giving time for that. So that will be different in every context, but culture is pretty key to every change.

- Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to your point actually about there will be some instances where perhaps we talked earlier about a small primary school where maybe that expertise isn't there. So actually there's some careful thought to be done about who is best placed to do this work and how can we minimize workload through using other sources or sharing expertise locally or using Oak, for example, that are also quite critical, I think. Okay. Thank you so much, Cassie.

- Oh my pleasure.

- It's an absolute joy to talk to you. Thank you for coming and spending your time to geek out about curriculum.

- Always.

- Thank you. Thanks for watching. If you've got any questions, please pop them in the comments. And of course you can head to our website for more information.