Curriculum and Assessment Developments at Key Stages 3 and 4

Activities with student teachers

Again, an obvious pre-course task is to ask student teachers to familiarise themselves with the original and renewed frameworks by downloading them from the appropriate areas of the DCSF Standards website. If this is done in conjunction with a viewing of the new National Curriculum online, then immediately it should be clear to student teachers how the two documents are now much more closely aligned with one another.

In a session, tracking particular strands within the Renewed Framework by reading across the year related statements can open discussion about the model of continuity proposed. As well as comparing this with the continuity suggested by the Key Stage 3 and 4 National Curriculum Programmes of Study, it is also worth using an activity such as this to ask more general questions about the nature of progression in English. The year-related statements of the renewed Framework suggest a linear model of progression which may not be a particularly helpful way to describe the way that pupils make progress in the subject.

Given that, critically, the Framework, unlike the National Curriculum, is non-statutory, a key question for student teachers as they begin their placements is the extent to which their host department adopted the original Framework, and what their position is in relation to the Renewed Framework. It is likely that there will be a wide range of answers to these questions, with some departments taking a very 'Framework-based' approach to planning and teaching, others much less so. Student teachers can discuss these with their mentor and/or head of department and a taught session can shed light on the range of attitudes and approaches to the Framework – how it is used within lesson and scheme of work planning, for example, or the extent to which Framework objectives are explicitly shared with pupils. How quickly, and to what extent, English departments respond to the Renewed Framework will be a critical area.