“Too many schools focus on cramming information. In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world” 

Yuval Noah Harari - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century 

If the recent past has taught us anything, it is that the true purpose of education means much more than delivery of education. When we consider what education is for, it is increasingly clear it cannot be separated from community; our need to belong. At the heart of why we learn is an innate desire to connect, to make sense of our environment so that we are able to ‘meet the world’. In other words, human behaviour is continuously tuning in to other people. As Rutger Bregman argues powerfully, we are hard wired to mirror each other so that we better understand ourselves; our sense of self, place and time. 

This is something Deborah Osberg and Gert Biesta explore in a paper which positions education not as an instrument for something else, but rather, a unique entity which generates its own purpose. It introduces the possibility that instead of education being a slave to a desired outcome (what education should do), we should reposition education for what it actually is.  

Imagine for a moment that everything we thought about schools and the purpose of education was turned upside down. That instead of education serving another function like, for example, testing or preparation for work, it existed for its own purpose. How different might schools be? Consider how learning might be organised if the arts, performance, debating, and music were all cherished because of how it made us feel and think. What would school be like if the emotional connection between self and community was placed at the centre of education, esteemed as a central pillar of the learning process; engagement focused as much as outcome focused? If we designed principles of curriculum based on the head, heart and hands, rather than our obsession with logical, linear, cognitive domain learning, what would this mean for staff, children and parents?  

And guess what? The rest of the world are already telling us we have got it wrong. They are advocating curriculum models which place as much emphasis on vocational and tertiary learning as formal academic disciplines. The global think tank OECD, in their paper ‘The Future of Jobs’ argued that: 

“We need to champion a new kind of learning; one which values teamwork, creativity and the diversity of opinion held within our classrooms. We need to educate our children to think more critically, more ethically and become more geopolitically aware.” 

We are educating the first generation of children whose parents suffered from the education reforms of the 1990s which placed more emphasis on target setting, ranking schools and accountability. There are no surprises that they don’t like it; they don’t want the same for their children and they recognise that education has value beyond preparation for tests.  

Take the recent disruption of Covid-19 on GCSEs and A levels. Ofqual and the government grappled with what testing season would look like. Talk of ‘maintaining standards’ and ‘safeguarding progression routes' feels wholly inappropriate at a time when a large proportion of children were so adversely affected by the impact of lockdown - especially those from the poorest households. This misplaced emphasis on the product of learning being most important averts our eyes from the real challenges. It locates education as a service to accountability rather than a complex set of experiences and encounters from which we engage meaningfully. 

This highlights three key points: 

1. An obsession to measure education blinds us to what education could be. 

2. We have an unhealthy desire for ‘neat and tidy’ solutions which do not always acknowledge the complexity of learning. 

3. How little skin in the game policymakers have when it comes to understanding the real needs of children and the impact their decisions have without personal risk to them. 

Our Partnership curriculum design framework ensures pupils learn both the substantive knowledge (or vertical knowledge) required to connect the intricate pieces of learning sequentially, in a structured way, as well as the disciplinary knowledge which leads to them expanding learning broadly across subject domains. Learners require both to make sense of subject content, as well as opportunities to use this knowledge to deepen understanding.

We hope you find this a useful framework to conceptualise what learning could and should be for. Throughout, you will see references to the core beliefs that: 

1.The fundamental purpose of education focuses on people. 

2. Our aim is to ensure all pupils are prepared to meet the world but are not at the centre of it. 

3. Our promise to children needs to be lived rather than intended. 

4. We have responsibility to hold the most vulnerable pupils and families closest to our hearts. 

5. Curriculum design starts with our commitment to raise a whole community. 

6. Our challenge in reforming education is to take collective, professional responsibility for redesigning tomorrow’s schools. 

Finally, I cannot end this introduction without offering my sincere thanks to the wonderful staff from the Inspire Partnership for their willingness to share, their passion to teach and unwavering commitment to serve the lives of children through partnership and collaboration. This platform is entirely their work and this needs to be credited. Our hope is that you find this helpful in designing learning for your own school communities: it is not a script or policy document to be followed but more of a framework to be adapted and developed. We are stronger when we hike in teams.  

Thank you for your support and encouragement for the Inspire Partnership. 

Best wishes 

Rob Carpenter 

Trust Leader, Inspire Partnership

Waves of research over the years have identified four key factors which influence success in life:

• Poverty

• Family 

• Local community/area 

• Schooling 

Of the four factors, the quality of schooling, if we get it right, can be twenty times more powerful than the other three. 

Our Trust mission is to transform lives through partnership and collaboration. To help achieve this, we make great learning the focus of our work. Teaching quality matters. Across all our schools, we work, learn and develop together so that children and staff can benefit from everyone’s best practice. Our Trust Teaching Framework, along with our curriculum, plays a critical part in delivering our aspirations and chimes with our Inspire Partnership Values.

The Teaching Matters Framework incorporates our thinking on the leadership of teaching and learning, curriculum and behaviour. It is evidence informed, setting out five key strands and themes within each of these for what we believe makes highly effective teaching. It has been designed by a group of teaching and learning leaders from across the Trust to encourage a shared language for what great learning looks like across all our academies. 

The framework is constructed in a clear and concise way to make expert pedagogy accessible for all. Each of the five strands are broken down into themes with the core elements outlining to achieve success in that theme. The Inspire Partnership Coaching Curriculum breaks this down further into the small steps to build confidence of practitioners in each theme.