Alternative curriculum 'shows improvements'

Greater collaboration is encouraged

It is claimed that a "radical" curriculum tested in a number of secondary schools in England can deliver better behaviour and exam results among teenagers.

A three-year experiment with the RSA "Opening Minds" curriculum is claimed to have shown improved student performance across all national curriculum areas - even though it does not use the traditional approach of having separate subjects.

Instead the youngsters pursue so-called "competences" - learning, managing information, managing situations, relating to people and citizenship - while still meeting all the statutory requirements of the curriculum.

According to the comprehensive schools involved, they not only do better on standard measures of achievement but are also more interested in learning and more mature - and teachers' morale rises too.

Fewer exclusions

At St John's School and Community College in Marlborough, Wiltshire, for example, those in the pilot group did 15% better than a control group in their maths, English and science national curriculum tests.

The Philip Morant School in Colchester, Essex, has seen better behaviour with a 90% fall in exclusions, no permanent exclusions and much less detention, and average attendance up from 83% to 92%.

The project director at the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is Valerie Bayliss, a former director of youth and education policy at the Department for Education.

"The pilot schools have experienced some stunning improvements in both student and teacher motivation, and seen real progress by students in developing the competences they will need for life and work," she said.

"Alongside this they have achieved better in conventional tests than students who were outside the project, so there is a double gain.

"They revealed all that we had hoped to see: teachers who were doing what they joined the profession to do, and students who relished their learning and came back for more."

The schools involved show a range of circumstances and achievement, from poorly-performing to "outstanding".

Co-operation

They have moved away from teaching in separate subjects to different degrees, merging, for instance, the teaching of English, business and foreign languages.

But the RSA says they all found students were more confident, better at teamwork, better motivated and better behaved.

Those who had been identified as "problem students" by their primary schools were showing big improvements in secondary school.

Co-operation between students, and between students and staff, had also improved.

RSA's head of education, Lesley James, said it had challenged traditional models of teacher organisation and behaviour and had not been easy for the schools to implement.

"This practical development work produced a radical change in the structure of teaching and learning.

"These changes were a result of a lot of hard work for the project schools but their hard work has paid off."

There is now wider interest in the RSA's work, which will be discussed at a conference in London on Tuesday.