The primary school national curriculum needs an urgent reboot

National curriculum reform: The gap between the current state of scientific knowledge and what is delivered to children in the national curriculum is growing ever wider. 

Take, for example, children learning about and learning how to look after their body (1), their emotions (2) and their mind (3).

(1) Physiology scientists know more about the body, yet the national curriculum focus is not on the knowledge and the skills children need to be genuinely supported in learning about and looking after the body. 

(2) Psychologists know more about how to develop emotional resilience (EQ, if you like), but the knowledge is not applied to the learning set up in a consistent and intentional way so children are not getting the emotional development they could be getting.

(3) Cognitive neuroscientists know so much more about how the brain learns and therefore how teachers can facilitate learning so that children can learn the way the brain works – and yet it is not happening

Given the urgent challenges facing individuals in today’s fast moving and everchanging society, the sooner the national curriculum gets its act together the better.