‘Give us the freedom to teach’ was the smartly revamped Times Education Supplement front-page headline on Friday. A TES-commissioned poll of 600 teachers showed that two thirds of teachers believe the national curriculum to be overly prescriptive. Not a surprising finding – though perhaps that as many as a third of the teachers did not consider the curriculum to be too prescribed, is. Connected to this finding was that over half of the teachers polled thought that pupil behaviour would improve were schools allowed to set their own curriculum. [Again, what is surprising is the fact that nearly half didn’t think that the rigid curriculum related to the current epidemic of poor behaviour in schools.] Commenting on the poll’s findings, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers argued that both Conservative and Labour governments had made the same mistake of not giving teachers sufficient flexibility.
Read more about the TES poll’s findings here:
http://www.tes.co.uk/2308499