Opening Minds

Many educationalists have long believed that the typical secondary school curriculum is overburdened with factual content. Indeed, even the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) have agreed that, ‘constraining factors include content overload’ (2005).

In a modern, rapidly changing world, employers are concerned that young people do not have the skills necessary to adapt to a changing economic environment. There is now a groundswell of opinion that suggests that if we simply fill our students up with facts, as if they were empty vessels, and ignore the development of those skills which our students could transfer into the workplace or university, we will be doing them a serious injustice. 

So what can be done? Well, recently an intrepid team of four Sultan’s School teachers braved the Arctic conditions of central England to find out for themselves. By visiting three forward thinking comprehensive schools in the Midlands, the teachers discovered the power of ‘Opening Minds’, an innovative competency based curriculum. In these schools, teachers facilitate the acquisition and development of skills rather than swamping students with factual content.  A cross-curricular, project type approach is used to develop a raft of skills, such as time management, cooperation, empathy, the management of information and data handling, amongst many others. Immediate benefits of the programmes running in these schools, include less student absence, better behaviour, improved motivation, increased confidence, as well as the acquisition of the skills themselves. A competency based curriculum provides students with the opportunity to approach learning in a completely different, exciting way, rather than be shackled by a traditional but tired one-dimensional model of learning. Watch this space!        


Leigh Smith
Head of Secondary