SMARTcurriculum® Update Issue 7

New features and developments within the SMARTcurriculum® App for Summer 2020 Latest webinars and User tutorials.

Only the brave

I would like to invite you to take part in something that, after 35 years in the education profession, I see as one of the most exciting programmes I have seen. We are looking for school leaders who would consider adopting this approach for developing your learner’s resilience and leadership skills. Chris Jones CEO CJ […]

What will be normal?

So much change within the passing of weeks; the use of ‘unprecedented times’ has been over-used perhaps but we are certainly in unusual times and only time will tell its long term impact. Do you remember the video that did the rounds in the early part of the new millennium ‘Shift Happens?’ If ever we […]

Returning to School

Return to school after the COVID19 lock-down may not be as simple as any normal after holiday break. Here we consider some of the things you might want to discuss and resolve.

Generalism to specialism

In considering the purpose of curriculum design methodology I often describe three stages of design in the following way. Initially, learning is generalist in characteristic. What I mean is that all learners experience the same spectrum of disciplines as a foundation for future learning. How long does this stage last? Within the UK system it […]

Mind the Gap – Bridge the Gap

Within the education world, to the educators, the driver is that education is for the good of the learner. Within the business world the key is efficiency- the best we can get for the least investment, the ratio of output to input within any system. The educator and the business leader narratives and purposes apparently opposed and there lies a difficulty.

The three Es of curriculum modelling

Over the past 10 years of reviewing curriculum design, I have tried to make a clear distinction between curriculum design in terms of the elements that make a broad and balanced curriculum, teaching and learning strategies and structural analysis. All are important but each should not be confused with the other. SMARTcurriculum® focuses on is […]

Travelling Light?

When creating curriculum models for September 2020, Chris Jones discusses the system wide impact of over-staffing strategies and the impact for us all.

SMARTcurriculum Update Issue 6

After a year of development, we are now entering our second year of licences and those who have been using the app will see some major feature developments that will be released in September 2019. Three features will be the curriculum model feedback, the staff expenditure chart and the staffing analysis. The Curriculum Model Following […]

The Eleventh Hour

We have observed, while analysing curriculum design over many years, that school leaders tend to invest time and resources at particular thresholds in a learner’s journey throughout their education. Over recent years much has been said about intervention strategies, which in layman’s terms means that we throw time and resources near to examination thresholds to […]

The Magnificent Seven

In an attempt to define Integrated Curriculum Finance Planning (ICFP), the Department for Education (DFE) originally outlined 7 measures that would make a significant difference in managing an establishment budget. Today this has been extended to 10 planning checks (Link here). You may be familiar with other systems that use a combination of these metrics outlined […]

A balance of three

For the past 10 years I have been working on school efficiency, particularly in the area of curriculum design and provision. As a result of that work I would suggest that there are three characteristics of curriculum design that need to be held in balance at every phase. Efficient (can we afford it?), Effective (does […]