Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Joining us today are Lucy Crehan, an educational consultant who carried out the review of the NI curriculum; and Christine Counsell, an educational consultant who is undertaking the work of the curriculum task force. You are both very welcome. Thank you for giving your time to the Committee today to discuss the ongoing work following the review of the Northern Ireland curriculum.

I am not sure who will make the initial remarks, but I will hand over to you for initial presentations. I ask that they be up to 10 minutes, after which we will move into questions and answers. We have a really big agenda at the Committee today, so I ask everybody — members and witnesses — to try to stick to a five-minute timescale for each member's set of questions. As Chair, I will try to be respectful of that as well. I will hand over to you, Lucy, to start.

Ms Lucy Crehan (Curriculum Task Force Advisory Committee): Thank you for the invitation. I am delighted to be back with you all. We will share some thoughts, and I look forward to answering your questions on the progress of the curriculum reform. I will briefly recap on the reasons for the reform coming out of the curriculum review and some of the structural positions that we are taking as a result of that. I will then hand over to Christine.

As you will recall, the review was conducted last year over a period of six months and found that a significant and underlying problem with the current curriculum was a lack of specificity. As you will know, in the current curriculum, content is expressed in a high-level manner. It uses statements such as "change over time" and "place" in the world around us at Key Stage 2. That leads to a number of problems. The most notable — I know that it will concern all of you — is differing standards and opportunities to learn across schools; in other words, a lack of entitlement for children. There is also a lack of clear progression in schools, particularly across transitions, which is most obvious at year 8. Schools are concerned about that, too. Another problem is the repetition of content on account of there not being clarity about what young people should be learning. Therefore, teachers are teaching the same things over and over again, which, of course, can lead to disengagement or, potentially worse, omission of important content, because teachers might have to assume that children have done something when, actually, they might not have done that. Teacher workload is a big concern because it is difficult to resource something and to share resources across schools when what is being taught is so different in every school. Finally, there is difficulty in identifying where children are falling behind because there is not clarity at the moment on what children should be confident with at each Key Stage. The most significant difference that you will notice in the new curriculum framework when it goes to consultation is that it will be much more specific for all those reasons; setting out the knowledge, skills and experiences that all children are entitled to and doing so in a careful sequence that best supports learning.

My second main point is about skills. One of the strengths of the existing curriculum that educators and other stakeholders raised with me was that they appreciated its focus on skills. I want to reassure you that many subject-specific skills are included in the new framework; in fact, many more than are expressed in the existing curriculum. Stakeholders are also referring to the importance of broader skills such as critical thinking and creativity. Currently, those are expressly cross-curricular skills or thinking skills and personal capabilities, and they remain important. To address some of the challenges inherent in the way that they are currently represented, however, which I will not rehearse here but are in the review, we are reframing them in the new curriculum as being goals of the curriculum rather than content to be added in to subjects and to be directly and discretely taught. We are doing that by identifying a set of capabilities, drawing on what people have shared with us in consultations or with me during the review but also in consultations that we have run since, that express the important educational goods that the curriculum develops and shows how those things arise from the study of what is in the subject frameworks.

For example, critical thinking is more important in the modern world than ever, and many people express support for it being a goal of the education system. Cognitive research shows us that it is not a unitary skill that can be discretely and directly taught and that young people would then be able to transfer to different subjects or areas of their lives. It is domain-specific, and it arises out of knowledge of particular domains. It arises not only out of knowledge of particular domains and subjects but from understanding the ways in which different disciplines on which school subjects are based establish claims about truth: what is true, how can we question those claims and how do we revise those claims? Scientists update, test and refine theories, and they are only ever called theories. Learning the approach taken by disciplines — what is essentially critical thinking from different disciplines — such as history or science is what children need to develop as critical thinkers and to have a capability for critical thinking.

We have lots to cover today, so I will pass over to Christine, who will say a little more about what underpins that reasoning and its importance for inclusion and equity in particular.

Dr Christine Counsell (Curriculum Task Force Advisory Committee): Thank you, Lucy. Thank you, everybody, for inviting us to speak today. It is a great pleasure to be able to talk to you. I am chairing the curriculum task force, and it has been a privilege and very enjoyable to do that.

I will build on what Lucy said and loop back on a couple of points that she raised in order to emphasise what is at the heart of the curriculum reform: the issues of equity and inclusion. Everything begins and ends there, and it explains why curriculum has been chosen as the major driver. It is always helpful to think about the staging posts in a young person's development, such as when they are surfacing from primary to post-primary education or surfacing from compulsory education into the wider world or even just moving from one Key Stage to the next. At every stage, we need them to have certain things that will help them to access what comes next. We want them to have the vocabulary, reference points, abstract concepts and terms to quickly understand, say, a geographical discussion that they find themselves in or to read text fast enough to get its flow. That might be for pure literary enjoyment or to do with taking part in a discussion of a heritage issue, accessing a service to which they are entitled or joining in a political debate constructively and with equal access to a common vocabulary. Whether it is a classroom discussion in year 8 or a social experience as an adult, the heart of education is that its purposes are social. We do not want anyone to feel left out of others' discussions at classroom level or at societal or political level. Likewise, we want them to have fluent, mathematical reasoning and problem-solving, and enough knowledge of science to be able to describe and analyse the world, and so on.

In a truly just society, all of that has to be adequate for every young person to do whatever they want to do, be that in training, further education or employment. It also has to be adequate to allow them to do whatever they need to do when it comes to their responsibilities for making constructive contributions to civic society: for instance, engagement with environmental issues and knowing how to use the political process or knowing how to make their voice heard in any forum and how to disagree agreeably and knowing their rights and how to enact them. When we ask them what has gone horribly wrong for so many of them or what outcome has been unsatisfactory, the response can be summed up as being unequal access to those aspects of personal human thriving or to the social and civic goods. The answer is almost always that something went horribly wrong in their schooling; something got missed out. We focus on the curriculum because that omission — it is best to conceptualise it as an omission — was completely unavoidable.

The curriculum is knowledge structured as narrative over time. If you miss a bit out or, worse, a subsequent teacher does not have a shared understanding of what the earlier part of the narrative was, you simply cannot guarantee the inclusion of every child as they move to each new stage. You are also left with an inefficient and demoralising approach of excessively late intervention for that child. Shared prior knowledge is what creates access to the next stage of the curriculum story. I stress that at the outset, because it will probably underpin all of our discussion.

Before I wrap up, I will give a quick example. Maybe a child did not grasp the particle theory of matter when they were supposed to, back in Key Stage 2 science, and, subsequently, they make error after error, without their teacher realising that a fundamental building block was missing. You get a compounding of errors over time. The child is disenfranchised, which makes catch-up almost impossible, and they are massively demoralised along the way. When I was chatting to post-primary chief teachers in Northern Ireland, I found that it is common for such children to slither into primary 5, say, not knowing their number bonds — one to 20 — or their times tables, and, therefore, they cannot find the denominator at speed that enables them to simplify fractions; or they find that they have no brain space left for the higher-order operations of data handling, and, because they are so lacking in basic number fluency, they do not know when they have entered data incorrectly. One thing compounds another. Therefore by not unlocking the cumulative power of knowledge, schooling becomes inefficient and deeply unfair.

When a society has agreed on the ultimate purpose of a curriculum — Lucy has talked to you about that, and I know that she has talked to you before about how we have established what the Northern Ireland community and sector wants of its curriculum — it is through the proximal purposes and how one thing leads to another that we start to understand the emancipatory power of curriculum and the frequent failings of curriculum, especially for the disadvantaged, those with any learning needs or any child who feels marginalised in any way. They are the losers.

I will finish by saying where we are in the process, and then I will hand over to you for questions. We have more than 90 teachers working closely in 13 subject teams.

A driving principle that I have set for all subject groups is that the specificity that Lucy recommended achieves its power cumulatively. Of course, while curriculum is a narrative, it is a very complex narrative. It is not always a linear, tidy narrative, and there are lots of interchangeable bits in it. There is huge scope still for flexibility. Our job is to make sure that that scope for flexibility and optionality works together still for that coherence and sequencing. Like any good narrative in a film or a novel, there is a lot of interweaving and diagonal connection across the piece. We are overseeing an interconnected whole, not a set of silos. The various teams of subject teachers have been given operating guidance to focus on, if you like, those core essences to which I have just alluded and how they build over time, whether it is the digital tech group thinking about

algorithms or system architecture or whatever it is.

So far, we are on time and on target. We are working to a very tight schedule, as you know, but, in some ways, it is quite a generous schedule, as these models go. I have worked in a number of international contexts, and, with this one, we have been as generous as we possibly could be in making time and space for teacher voice. We have an allowance of many days for discussion so that all teacher voices can be aired and problems can be reasoned out together without rushing and everything can be stress-tested, not only against the international evidence but against Northern Ireland teachers' practical, professional knowledge of what is realistic and what is already effective in their classrooms. In that sense, it is not about a complete pendulum swing; it is really about drawing on the strengths of existing practice but examining that practice very systematically with a core principle of giving all children their entitlement and making sure that nobody misses out.

I will stop there. Thank you very much indeed. We look forward to your questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you to both of you. I appreciate that you had a lot to get through and that there was probably more that you would have liked to cover in your opening remarks. Thank you for that.

I will start by picking up from where you left off, Christine, around the timelines and an overview of where we are at with that. Recommendation 21 of the curriculum review recommended staggered implementation and periodic review. It recommended that the ongoing review of the curriculum:

We are looking at a timescale where this is rolled out, potentially, in 2028-29. Christine, I will ask you to speak to the process at play. First, Lucy, do you feel that the current timelines that are being operated to are reflective of that recommendation on a staggered implementation? Across the Committee, we are hearing from teachers and school leaders in particular that they are concerned about the pace of change in the context of lots of other new initiatives that are coming from the Department at the same time.

Ms Crehan: To answer your question, yes, I do think that that recommendation has been taken on board with that projected 2028 start. It is also worth saying that it will not be all the subjects all at once in 2028; it will be implemented over a three-year period. In line with my recommendation, that will allow for time for different Key Stages in different subjects to start at different times, allowing for teachers, especially primary teachers, to not be trying to get their head around all of the new content in those subjects all at once. Of course, the specific detail on which subjects will start and that kind of thing is very much under discussion, and there are a few years to go yet.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): This may be for you or for Christine to answer. Christine, you said that curriculum is knowledge structured as a narrative over time, and you were really at pains to emphasise the interconnectedness of this. You cannot take this in isolated blocks or silos; it connects over time through a child's journey. On that basis, how challenging is it to roll out a staggered implementation of this? If it all connects but happens over a very long time, you could have kids at different stages of their journey who may never interact with all of the new curriculum for their journey. How do you address that challenge?

Dr Counsell: Thanks very much. That is a great question and a really important one. It is very much at the heart of what we are working on now in advising the Department on how it might do it. First, everything that Lucy said is exactly what is going to happen. The phased roll-out will begin in 2028, which has come as a relief to some teachers who imagined that it might have been earlier. From 2028, it will be phased over three years, and that phasing will be by subject and by Key Stage, with bespoke advice for each Key Stage, because it is quite different, as you can imagine.

You mentioned that it was complex: it certainly is. It is complex precisely because it is a narrative. There is a sense in which curriculum roll-out is always extraordinarily difficult because the optimal way to do it is to take 14 years. Clearly, we do not want to do that. There are two stages to it, and the first is about trying to get the best possible scenario across the three years of phasing to make sure that as many children as possible benefit as quickly as possible, while not overloading teachers so that they have time to build subject knowledge and to make the most of the resourcing and professional development that will be provided to support the curriculum.

A point that I will add, structurally, to what Lucy said is that, in advising the Department, we will need what are commonly known as transition arrangements. We need to accept that, in the short and medium term, not all children will benefit from all parts of the curriculum. It will be some years before a child in year 8 or year 9 has benefited from the power of the whole of the primary curriculum. However, they can benefit from a very good part of it. There will be transition arrangements to make it very clear how it can operate while it is still operating in the non-optimal phase.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I have another question that I want to ask, and I am conscious that we are up against it with time.

You mentioned 14 years as the optimal time. I doubt that anyone around the table advocates for 14 years, because we want children to be getting a consistent and coherent experience through their school journey. However, there is a big disconnect between 14 years and three years. Should we be looking at a middle path through this that is perhaps more realistic in being closer to optimal and best practice? I have a concern about the gap between 14 years and three years.

Dr Counsell: Exactly, that makes a lot of sense, and that is what I mean by transition arrangements. There is a middle path between the three years and the 14 years. That three years is when we make sure that every part of the curriculum comes on stream: when it will start, when the teachers will be ready to teach it and when the resourcing will be ready for them to understand how to practice it. When I said that it was not optimal because it was not 14 years, the point is that the full benefit of the curriculum cannot be realised until a period that is longer than three years. Of course, it will take time for a child to have had the benefit of all of that primary experience.

However, given that there has been a huge lack of specificity thus far, which has been problematical, particularly for the disadvantaged child, the child with special educational needs and the child who has been lower-attaining in any way, there is no doubt that the improvements for those children will be exponential. You need only one year of having better-specified curriculum to see quite a transformation. The benefits will be apparent pretty quickly, even though the full benefits for the child who hits year 10 having had the whole experience will inevitably take time.

The place where you want the benefit to be most heavily felt is in the early years — the foundation years that make a difference — and that will happen pretty quickly. In prioritising resourcing, Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 are crucial in making sure that children have the start that they need early. They are two-year and three-year chunks: foundation is two years, Key Stage 1 is two years and Key Stage 2 is three years. Those children can benefit quite quickly from the impact.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Christine. There is much more that I would like to follow up on. In particular, you raised early years, and I wanted to pick up on that. We will see how the time goes, and we may revisit that.

Mr Sheehan: Thanks to both of you. Lucy, let me say at the outset that I read your book 'Cleverlands', and I was highly impressed. I thought that it was written from a perspective of idealism mixed with pragmatism. If I were starting off with a blank sheet of paper to design an education system, your five principles would be the foundation stones of that. I do not disagree with any of that.

It is therefore all the more disappointing that you came in to review the curriculum and did not include the impact of academic selection, particularly on the primary-school curriculum. I am sure that you are aware that, in schools here, sometimes from primary 5 onwards, children are taught to the exam rather than to the curriculum. What do you have to say to that?

Ms Crehan: First, thank you for your kind words about my book. My position on selection is in the public domain. If I were starting from scratch, as you said, with an education system, I would introduce a comprehensive education system rather than a selective one. However, as we discussed at my previous invitation to the Committee, I was invited to look specifically at the curriculum and how it might need to change to improve education. We cannot start with a blank slate in Northern Ireland. Curriculum reform is a really powerful way to change life chances for young people, more so almost than any other kind of reform. The increased specificity of the curriculum that is being designed at the moment will not completely mitigate but will guard against some of the detrimental effects of that selection test on the skewing of the curriculum.

At the moment, schools have to teach very little that is statutory, so there is lots of space for the curriculum to be driven by the Schools’ Entrance Assessment Group (SEAG) test. Whereas, if you have a broad curriculum that specifies what children need to learn across history, geography and science, it will stand on its own two feet a bit more as a curriculum to ensure that children get that entitlement.

Mr Sheehan: Do you accept that, even if there is a new curriculum, it will be distorted by the fact that academic selection is here and, apparently, is here to stay for the foreseeable future, according to the Minister?

Ms Crehan: Yes, I think that it will still have an effect.

Mr Sheehan: OK.

In your book, you also spoke about the way that children and young people in Singapore and China have internalised the importance of education. There is an issue of culture here, and I wonder whether you picked up on it. Let me explain. When this state was established, it was established on the basis of a gerrymandered, sectarian headcount, which was aimed at giving unionism a permanent or perpetual majority here in the North. The upshot of that was that, if you were not a unionist, you became a second-class citizen, and there was institutionalised sectarianism and discrimination in practically every walk of life, particularly in employment. All the organs of the state were populated, particularly in the upper echelons, by people from the unionist community.

You will probably also know that educational outcomes in Catholic schools far exceed outcomes in the controlled sector. The reason for that, I would argue, is that there was a culture among Catholics of the importance of education, and the way to escape discrimination and sectarianism was by becoming educated. I know that the parents of people of my generation hammered that into them.

Have you taken account of all that when reviewing the curriculum here?

Ms Crehan: I do not disagree with you about the importance of education and the cultural impact on education and educational outcomes. However, I do not think that that affects, therefore, what should be in the curriculum. If anything, to make sure that society is equal, there should be a curriculum, or a curriculum entitlement, that all children are supported to reach, whether they are from a home environment in which they are supported educationally by parents who recognise the value of education, or whether the parents either do not, or do not have the time to, support their children at home. In the Northern Ireland curriculum — in a system-level curriculum — you need that entitlement to make sure that it is not a case of your home life determining your future outcomes. That is a really interesting perspective, and I am sure that that makes a difference to educational outcomes.

Mr Sheehan: Finally — I will be short, because the Chair is glaring at me — in your book, you talked about ensuring that politicians do not "cherry-pick" various issues. I feel that the issue of the curriculum is being cherry-picked. There seem to be quite large number of people from the island beside us, like yourselves, involved in constructing this curriculum. The final say will go to the central task force and then, presumably, the Minister. There is a fear that, as a result, the curriculum will be skewed in one political direction. How do you respond to that?

Ms Crehan: I will pass to Christine, because she is overseeing the history framework, which is probably the most relevant to that.

Dr Counsell: I will respond in very general terms, as an echo of what Lucy has said. I come with the perspective of having had a lot of experience of working in really quite diverse societies and cultures that have tried to address this. I found myself working in post-conflict societies such as Cyprus and Lebanon, where it is extremely difficult to agree on anything in a history curriculum. It seems to me that, in a curriculum in general, beyond history, the business of prior inequalities, whether they are baked in socially, institutionally or however, and whether they are economic facts, is the whole point of a curriculum. The point of a curriculum is to try to bring equity into that. In a way, that is the starting point for a curriculum. It is about saying, "We cannot have a situation where a child has a low starting point for whatever reason, whether it is one that is discernible and we can detect — a known injustice — or whether it is something that, perhaps, we have not detected".

That is why the emphasis on knowledge is so important. Academic knowledge — the knowledge that comes from somewhere outside school, from communities of practice, communities of disciplines and communities of experts, whether artists or scientists — is for everybody. It escapes its social origins, however it was created. That knowledge of science, history or art is for everybody. The curriculum there is designed to give power to everybody to enter into those conversations equally. That is its point. Really, my job, in overseeing it, is to make sure that everybody has a right to test those fundamental structures of knowledge — the knowledge that, as Lucy alluded to, is also provisional and revisable. Everyone has a right to say, "I think this historical claim that is being made is wrong, and this is my evidence for that". Everyone, as a member of the public, has a right to comment on how scientific knowledge is shared or used in public institutions, say, or on how public money is spent on the arts or whatever.

For every citizen to be able to comment on that equally, they must have access to a wide range of knowledge. The reference point is not a political position; it is my job to be alert to that, if it is. The reference point is the disciplines themselves, how they arbitrate about what constitutes truth and how children not only get enough reference points within that discipline — that they know enough and have substantive concepts, say within science or history — to join in the conversation but are given the tools to question claims for themselves and to learn multiple interpretations of their history —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Will you bring it to a conclusion, Christine? I apologise for having to cut you short. I know that there is probably a lot of material that you want to get out early to do a bit of scene setting. I understand that, given that it is such a wide-ranging area, but I ask everyone — members and witnesses — to keep really focused and to give succinct answers. Obviously, we want full and good evidence, but that approach will help us to get through the session.

Mrs Mason: Lucy, like Pat, I have read your book. It is absolutely fantastic. I very much respect a lot of what you say, because it is very informed by your travels and your studies. Like Pat said, I cannot disagree with any of the five principles. What concerns me is the Minister's direction. I wonder whether the Minister has read the book. His direction seems to run contrary to a lot of the things that you have said. Pat mentioned your reference to cherry-picking of evidence. It is important to lay out the context. In the book, you state:

I think that that will be stark for a lot of the very concerned principals and school leaders who have been in contact with us. We have been contacted by principals who are at absolute breaking point because of the breakneck speed with which all this is moving. Do you have anything to say about that? Do you feel that the Minister is cherry-picking evidence?

Ms Crehan: First, thank you for your kind words about my book.

No, I genuinely do not feel that he is. I support the various aspects of the TransformED agenda. There is something to address here, and I promise that I will be brief, Mr Mathison. There is the idea that a knowledge-rich curriculum is somehow associated with right-of-centre or right-wing politics. If anything, it aligns more with the left-wing view of the importance of equality and closing the disadvantage gap. I agree with the direction of the reform. I cannot identify any cherry-picking that Mr Givan has done.

Dr Counsell: I support entirely what Lucy said. It is an excellent question, and it is absolutely right to ask it. It is a question that I asked when I was invited to do the review. If I had felt that there was any cherry-picking of evidence, or any political direction, I would not have accepted the role. I agree, too, that the knowledge agenda is very much an agenda that has been espoused by the left, as it happens; not that it matters who espouses it. It originated very much as a social justice agenda, which also conforms with my political persuasions. I would have been extremely uncomfortable had things gone in a political direction. For what it is worth, I am a member of the Labour Party, not that that matters. The direction has not been driven politically at all. If it had, Lucy and I would have felt very uncomfortable about taking part in it. We reviewed the evidence. Our job is to comment without fear or favour.

Mrs Mason: I have to disagree: the very fact that academic selection is not taken into consideration contradicts your argument that there has been no cherry-picking. That is my view.

The Chair mentioned the early years curriculum. The review recommends that an early years curriculum framework be developed. It underpins our whole system. We hear about early intervention time and again. Why has that not been a feature of the curriculum review?

Ms Crehan: My understanding is that that is waiting in the wings. I had that question for the Department, but I think that it wanted to focus on one thing at a time. The initial focus has been on the main curriculum framework. I believe that the plan is still to take early years forward, so it has certainly not been ignored. As you can imagine, there is a lot going on. There is only so much that can be focused on and taken forward at any one time.

Mrs Mason: From what I hear from early years practitioners, there is a suspicion that this is being rushed through and done in such a short space of time that there is just not the time to do the early years curriculum at this stage. What would you say to the people who say that?

Dr Counsell: I would say that it is the other way around: it is precisely because early years is so important that it needs reflection. The right decision was made — it was made by the Department, not by us — to focus on the schooling years first in order to get a sense of the goals that we are trying to achieve. The Department is certainly looking at plans to do the 0-6 piece that Lucy recommended. That will come on stream in a slipstream as part of this, even though it is not being focused on first. It is much too important to rush.

Mrs Mason: Lucy, from your book, I know the importance that you place on early years. You referenced the system in Finland. It seems unusual that a Minister would instruct you to review the curriculum without considering the impact of early years and how important the 0-6 stage is.

Ms Crehan: I was not asked not to look at that, and I did take it into consideration. I did, as you know, write about early years and make recommendations on it in my review. It is fundamentally important. The Department accepted my recommendations on early years. It is just that not everything can happen all at once.

Mrs Mason: It is just not important enough to do it at this stage.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I suggest that we pick that up as a follow-up with the Department on the back of this session. I wanted to raise that issue, but time was against me.

Mrs Guy: Thanks for the evidence. I will pick up where Cathy left off. Last time you were here, Lucy, we discussed school readiness, and you described it as "a ticking time bomb". In that context, it feels as if early intervention is where we can have the greatest impact. In the sequencing that we have discussed, it feels that it would make sense for early years to be the starting point, as, ultimately, that is where will make the most impact on outcomes for young people. Will you expand on the logic of not pursuing early years at this stage?

Ms Crehan: That is a question for the Department. It was not up to Christine or me what to focus on first and what to focus on next.

Mrs Guy: Do you have a view?

Ms Crehan: I completely agree with you about the importance of early interventions. I do not see that as being at odds with having started by designing the curriculum. Designing a specific curriculum for all those years of schooling will be a bigger job. There is no reason why early years interventions cannot be designed and put into practice in the years between now and the implementation of this curriculum. I do not see it as that ship having sailed or as a missed opportunity, or that this will necessarily happen before that. As I say, however, that is not up to me or Christine.

Dr Counsell: It is, as Lucy says, for the Department, and I would advise writing to the Department specifically to pursue that question. There is a logic to focusing on the schooling part of it straight away. We know from the international evidence that two things in particular make a colossal difference to later outcomes. The first is proper teaching of early reading and writing and using phonics, for example, appropriately and thoroughly to make sure that no child misses out on any of those building blocks. The second is early number work and fluency and automaticity in that. Those are vital pieces. So much of later inequity comes down to the fact that children missed out on both building blocks early, and then they were not consolidated properly. There is a logic to thinking about the schooling piece early, although you certainly want to think about what comes earlier. How do we get children ready for that? What are we getting them ready for? That is what you are thinking about. It is entirely sensible to ask, "What are our goals for the youngest children in terms of schooling?".

Mrs Guy: OK. I appreciate that.

I want to pick up on educational disadvantage. We will hear next week, I think, from Stranmillis University College about a really good piece of research that looked at high-performing post-primary schools in disadvantaged areas in Northern Ireland. Those are success stories in Northern Ireland right now. That research did not mention things such as a "knowledge-rich" curriculum; it focused on allowing the curriculum to be dynamic and responsive and to be tailored to the needs of individual pupils. It kind of rejected anything that looked like a one-size-fit-all approach. With the changes that are coming through here, will there still be flexibility for schools to be able to adapt to kids to ensure that they have the support that they need?

Dr Counsell: Yes, absolutely. One of Lucy's principles is flexibility. Flexibility is at the heart of one of Lucy's recommendations on inclusion, which the Government accepted. Trying to come up with a statutory curriculum is about working out what the absolute essentials are so that each Key Stage can take assurance from the previous Key Stage, and that each new teacher can take assurance from what has been learned earlier and build on it cumulatively, while ensuring that certain children are not allowed to miss out. Those are the most crucial things that make a difference, especially in respect of disadvantaged children and such things as the vocabulary gap.

A statutory framework is crucial, but it is really only ever a very small piece of the overall curriculum work that an education sector as a whole does. It simply specifies the parameters. It specifies the essentials. It identifies core essences. It is down to resource providers — whether that is textbook writers; schools and teachers producing materials; groups of schools collaborating; or, in particular, teachers — to actually design the detail of what they do. A wide range of optionality is possible within that. Really, our job is to find the sweet spot where we have enough of an entitlement to make sure that we deal with the inequity that comes from disadvantaged starting points by ensuring that everyone has a common vocabulary, which, we know, makes the biggest difference to literacy. At the same time, it is about making sure that there is enough space for those choices and that flexibility. Indeed, that is really important for teacher satisfaction, too. My background is as a teacher and as a teacher trainer. Unless teachers have that sense of agency and collective agency, they will not be motivated to be part of the profession. That is a critical part of it. It is about finding that sweet spot.

Mrs Guy: Thank you.

Mr Baker: Thank you. How closely aligned is your review to the curriculum reform under Michael Gove in England?

Dr Counsell: Thank you. That is a great question, and I am delighted to answer it. You may know that both Lucy and I are critics of many aspects of the Govian reforms, so there is no question of this trying to be some sort of a cut and paste of those reforms. Whilst Michael Gove and the reforms in England did espouse an emphasis on knowledge, I would say that there is a very significant distance between what we are doing and what was done there.

Mr Baker: Christine, did those reforms also take away coursework and modules?

Dr Counsell: That is not part of our review, because that is part of qualifications and assessments.

Mr Baker: Is that what those reforms did though?

Dr Counsell: There was a removal of coursework at GCSE, yes, but that is really not part of our remit or something that we will comment on.

Mr Baker: It goes back to the cherry-picking. You have just said that you are a critic of Gove, but his changes resulted in coursework being taken away and more pressure being put on through high-stakes exams. That is all part of TransformED. It is all coming together. It puts more stress on young people. You talked earlier about inclusion and listening to our young people. They all say that that is the wrong approach. The "knowledge-rich" approach will reduce creativity. It puts more emphasis on academic-type exams and subjects and moves away from art, design and music. That is exactly what Gove did.

Dr Counsell: Yes, exactly. I just want to make a couple of distinctions here. First, we are not overseeing the issue of qualifications. That is not part of our remit. That is a separate issue. I was talking more broadly about the national curriculum that comes before the examination years. Let me —.

Mr Baker: In England, GCSEs are very content-heavy, and everything has to be squeezed in before Key Stage 3, with many schools having to use year 9 to cover overburdened specifications. That would fall into the curriculum stuff, would it not?

Dr Counsell: I agree with that critique of England. Let me explain how that is germane to the process here. I said at the start that we are not unqualified admirers of the reforms that are being produced in England. In fact, we have criticised many aspects of them, and you are right that all the parts connect. I have been very critical, for example, of some of the teacher training reforms in England.

It is important that I row back on a couple of things that you said there. The term "knowledge-rich" is often widely misunderstood. I can see why those misunderstandings can be worsened by the way that some of the Gove reforms were introduced and articulated. There are a number of problems with the way in which the statutory frameworks were produced in England. I do not think that they introduced what I would call a knowledge-rich curriculum. A knowledge-rich curriculum is not the same as an information-rich curriculum. An information-rich curriculum is content heavy. It is stuffed with facts, and it is overwhelming. It also makes the mistake — I would say that the Govian reforms made this mistake — of imagining that a curriculum can be knowledge-rich just by pushing a lot of content into GCSEs. You can give that specificity much earlier in the curriculum, where it is really needed. You can give those basics to much younger children. You can give broad knowledge that enriches the curriculum. That can be done in subjects beyond English and maths; you can place a really strong emphasis on the humanities, science, the arts and digital technology. If you get that tremendous breadth, which is absolutely vital for literacy later on, you will do much more to tackle the disadvantage gap in literacy. Where things goes wrong —.

Mr Baker: But you —.

Dr Counsell: May I just say —?

Mr Baker: We are running out of time. Christine, the problem with all that is that, when you get to GCSE stage, the pressure is on. There are high stakes, because coursework has been removed. When you move on to A levels —. I know that you will say that this is about qualifications, but every single part of it is connected. Michael Gove introduced the "knowledge-rich" curriculum. You are saying that this will be a different type of knowledge-rich curriculum, but, if you take the principles from that, which remove the aspects that help young people, it will fall flat on its face.

Dr Counsell: No, not at all. With respect, understandably, you are conflating "knowledge-rich" with the issue of coursework or no coursework, which is an entirely different issue that I do not want to comment on here. What really matters and what is at the heart of your very good question is the fact that, if you are not specific enough lower down the curriculum, a jurisdiction can easily imagine that the way in which to be knowledge-rich is to stuff your qualifications with information. If you are specific lower down, that renders redundant the need to stuff things with information higher up. You want the earlier curriculum to do the job of becoming, if you like, a strong tree trunk so that children can inhabit any branch. That is the first point. You should not be stuffing your GCSEs with content. You should not need to, because, earlier on, children will have gained the breadth and security that combats disadvantage and transforms literacy, in particular, for the disadvantaged.

Secondly, you need to keep —

Mr Baker: Christine, sorry: would you support —?

Dr Counsell: — the curriculum really broad. Another concern, quite apart from GCSEs, is that the danger of some of the Govian reforms is that they appear to play down the arts. The arts are absolutely crucial for human thriving in obvious ways. They are also crucial, more broadly, for such things as literacy. They are fundamental. Getting the arts right, properly privileged and properly supported in the primary phase and at Key Stage 3, is at the heart of this and at the heart of tackling disadvantage.

Mr Baker: Disadvantage will not be tackled when we have high-stakes exams. They come right at the end of it. The curriculum will take you to those exams. There will be no coursework, and there will be high-stakes exams, so what is the point?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We will leave it there. You will have to agree to disagree. That has been rehearsed back and forth.

Mr Burrows: Thank you, Christine and Lucy. That was really interesting. I will not go back to the start of the Troubles or to the formation of the state, because we have very little time.

What evidence is there to show that the outcome of progression expectations from a knowledge-rich curriculum are appropriate for children with special educational needs who are educated in mainstream schools and for children from disadvantaged backgrounds?

Dr Counsell: There is a wide range of evidence. It is very difficult to generalise about special educational needs, they cover a huge range of issues. I will not give chapter and verse, but it is very clear that the basics that give children fluency, that free up space in their working memory, that prevent cognitive overload, that give them automaticity so that they can think freely — those kinds of approaches and the kind of content that secures all of that — help children with special educational needs to access a broader curriculum.

I will give you a couple of references so that, if you want, you can explore the issue in more detail. Accessible references are the work of Peps McCrea or any of the recent blogs by Carl Hendrick, who pulls everything together and is working with us on the pedagogical principles.

It is very clear that what is good for special educational needs children is good for all. If you given children the absolute basics, you are therefore building steadily to make sure that they become secure in the foundational building blocks of phonics and numbers, freeing up their concentration abilities and building their confidence to be secure in making sense of structures and relationships, thus giving them opportunity to enter into reasoning, problem-solving and creativity in a structured way.

Mr Burrows: I am just conscious of my available time.

Dr Counsell: If you do that, you will be doing something transformational.

Mr Burrows: Time is very tight, so I will move on to my next question. Am I right in saying that this is one of the biggest curriculum changes in 25 years?

Dr Counsell: Yes.

Ms Crehan: Yes.

Mr Burrows: I have five minutes in which to ask you questions about it, which sums up one of the problems that we have in the Assembly.

Northern Ireland already performs strongly in literacy and numeracy. Ms Crehan, your review highlights some of the strengths of our curriculum. What therefore is the rationale behind moving to a knowledge-rich curriculum at this time?

Ms Crehan: There are strengths to the current curriculum. There are certainly strengths in this system, such as the quality of teachers, but I would not say that the curriculum itself is one of those strengths at the moment. For overall outcomes, it depends on what data you look at. If you look at GCSE data, Northern Ireland is often held up as doing better, because its pupils get more A to C grades than those in the other home nations. The exams are different, however, so they are not directly comparable. If you look at the programme for international student assessment (PISA) data for reading, maths and science, it tells a different story, which is that Northern Ireland is not performing particularly strongly, has stagnated over time and is performing worse than England and the Republic of Ireland. GCSE data has therefore given a certain impression that perhaps is not supported by all the data. There is so much scope for improvement and for providing further support for the system, and all the fantastic educators and young people who work and study within it, through the reformed curriculum.

Mr Burrows: Thank you for that answer. I have a final question. I am not opposed to a knowledge-rich curriculum per se. Rather, I am asking questions to try to address some concerns that I have. The Minister's proposed direction of reform goes further than your review in a number of ways. You make recommendations, yet the direction of reform goes further. Do you have any view on the some of the reforms that go further than your recommendations?

Ms Crehan: Within the scope of the curriculum, what we are doing is very much in line with my recommendations. The curriculum that we are overseeing the design of is being designed to support the principles that I recommended. That is the case, unless you are talking about broader, system-level reform, but, as was rehearsed earlier, I was not commissioned to review the whole education system, simply the curriculum. In that respect, however, I do not think that what we are doing goes further than —.

Mr Burrows: What about teaching language in primary school? Is your recommendation not much lighter than what is being implemented?

Ms Crehan: What will go forward there has still to be decided. I suggested that it was a consideration and that time be built in for it to be trialled as something optional. I therefore do not think that it has gone further than what I recommended.

Mr Burrows: Thank you for your answers.

Mr Martin: I have only one question. For transparency, we have to say whether we have read your book, Lucy. I am afraid that I have not read it, and I hope that does not get us off on the wrong foot.

Ms Crehan: You are forgiven.

Mr Martin: I do like the glass that you are drinking from. I am sure that my daughter has one exactly the same.

I am going to talk about left and right as well, although, thankfully and refreshingly, not in a political context. Rather, I am going to ask about left- and right-brain dominance and the predisposition of children to use the left brain or the right brain. Recommendation 6 is on pedagogical principles, and there are a few interesting lines there. Does the current curriculum favour left- or right-brained kids? Will the changes that are being brought in change the answer to that question?

Ms Crehan: As you know, I did not refer to research on left- and right-brained kids in my review. If, by that, you mean children who find linguistic reasoning easier than children who take a more spatial approach do, I will say that the point of education is not to lean into and further strengthen what children already tend towards. The point of education is to help children access other sides of potential reasoning and ways of thinking, doing and being to which they may not naturally be predisposed. All children should therefore have access to a wide range of subjects that will further develop different cognitive capabilities. I would always caution against having the type of curriculum that identifies what a child enjoys or is good at and then does more of that. If anything, that approach puts that child at a further disadvantage, because children should have a grounding in all things. Psychological research suggests that there is a huge amount of neuroplasticity and that we are all capable of remarkable things with the right input and training. Naturally, trying to strike a balance is therefore the best approach. Christine may —.

Mr Martin: Christine looks as though she is about to say something.

Dr Counsell: Very quickly, we do not have scientific evidence to show that individuals are left-brained or right-brained and therefore dominant in one hemisphere. We do, however, have evidence that people use both hemispheres equally. Although there are some specific brain functions that are lateralised, if you like, such as language typically being on the left side, the two sides of the brain work together. As Lucy said, if the curriculum is to bring about equity, it is about dealing with deficits. Even if someone does have that tendency, that is all the more reason to make sure that they can use all their potential and that their brain is working optimally. We also know that the thing that makes the biggest difference, particularly to creativity, is the range of reference points and frameworks that we have, which is a powerful example of how the two sides of the brain work together.

Mr Martin: I probably disagree. You use the word "neuroplasticity" to mean the ability to use both sides of the brain to a certain degree, and I accept that. I believe, however, that there is not enough research to suggest that some children are more left-brained and learn in certain ways, while others are more right-brained and learn in other ways. I will make a general point, which is that, whatever the curriculum, it needs to allow children who are predisposed to using one side of the brain or the other the ability and the capacity to learn, because the curriculum is for all children. I am not saying that the current curriculum favours one over the other or that the reformed curriculum will. I will leave it there. It was more of a statement than a question. Thank you.

Ms Hunter: I thank the panel for appearing before us today. We know that the North's curriculum has among the fewest hours focused on languages. When compared with the South, our young people are being left behind when it comes to learning languages. Over the past 10 years, the number of pupils studying French has dropped by more than 40%. Will you talk us through some of the changes we can anticipate for modern languages?

Dr Counsell: That is really concerning, and we have looked closely at the data. Some of the disparity across children's performance in languages correlates with aspects such as disadvantage, which is even more concerning. There is no reason that the overwhelming majority of children should not gain joy and pleasure from learning languages, as well as all the access that it gives them to many aspects of the social functioning of language. We have therefore made it a major priority. The Department is still looking at the question of whether, in the longer term, languages should be compulsory in primary school, so it has set the direction. Nonetheless, we are building an optional language awareness course for primary schools in order to test the water and see whether schools will adopt it. We hope that the course will be attractive and begin to establish proof of concept about the value of doing preparatory work in primary school. We are simply following the direction that the Department has set.

In post-primary education, we are building a very systematic programme. We have an excellent group of really experienced modern languages teachers. As is necessary with modern languages, to enable pupils to learn construction and become secure in it, the programme will be highly specific and very systematic. To loop back to an earlier question about GCSEs, the purpose of that is to bring about equality of access to GCSE. It is not acceptable for children to hit year 11 and feel they cannot take a GCSE examination because they are not good enough. The answer lies in getting it right in years 8, 9 and 10. We are therefore taking a very thorough approach, whereby children will become secure in construction and gain fluency early on. It is a huge commitment and a personal determination of mine to deal with the inequality of access.

Ms Hunter: That is brilliant and very helpful. The Committee has engaged with school leaders, and they feel that the curriculum review and the changes that are to be made have been fast-paced. They want to see a phased and sequenced implementation that aligns with teacher readiness and training availability. Do you have any further comments to make or details to provide on the training that may be necessary for our school leaders to facilitate their understanding of the changes to the curriculum?

Dr Counsell: That is a really good question. Again, it is helpful to loop back to the earlier questions about phasing. You are trying to handle the tension between not implementing the changes too quickly and therefore causing an overburden and not making them so slowly that children do not benefit from the reformed curriculum as soon as possible.

It is part of the remit of the curriculum task force advisory committee to make suggestions about how resourcing and professional development might be done and to develop a set of pedagogical principles to support initial teacher education. That is not part of our remit, but it is connected to that.

I will give you an outline picture of the essence of our recommendations. Our view is that, first, resourcing needs to support schools in multiple ways. It needs to provide exemplars to enable schools to see what it means. It is tricky to translate a high-level statutory framework, which is necessarily lean and stark in its expression, because it must not be overwhelming, into a rich classroom experience. It is therefore extremely important not only that you have pedagogical principles to elaborate the framework but that you have sample resourcing to show what it looks like in the various school years. There is an exemplification function for resourcing.

Secondly, over time, the Department needs to develop some complete curriculum programmes so that schools can adopt some full programmes. That will reduce the workload. Thirdly, and most importantly, in a well-functioning education system, curriculum development and teacher development must be properly aligned. They need to serve each other.

Teachers are not being developed if they are not getting a chance to think about the curriculum and exercise some collective agency, nor will the curriculum be good if teachers are not involved. The two have to come together.

A starting point for that is the subject groups that have been working on the curriculum frameworks. They are the genesis — the little acorns, if you like — that will develop into working subject communities that can support resourcing and professional development. Our recommendations will be about making sure that resourcing and professional development are linked. No matter how good we make a curriculum, it must not ossify. It cannot become fixed. It cannot even wait until the next curriculum review. Instead, it needs to be enlivened and constantly renewed at the level of curricular outworking, and doing that requires active, lively, voiced communities of teachers who are specialists in those subjects saying, "This is how we can make it work".

Our core advice, at the level of principle in the Department, is that teacher development and curriculum development have to be kept linked and that those communities of the best subject teachers have to be invested in to drive that forward.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Christine.

Ms Hunter: That is really helpful. Chair, do I have time for one more quick question?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): There is not time for a question. We are way over time, but if you want to make a final comment, that is fine.

Ms Hunter: Thank you for your time today and for answering my questions. In engagement that I have had with teachers and young people, they have talked about the value of learning for life and work (LLW). They really want reform of that subject to be as effective as possible when teaching young people about finance, healthy relationships, bereavement and so on. I want that to be noted.

Ms Crehan: It is absolutely noted.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): David, you wanted to come in quickly.

Mr Brooks: Thank you very much, Chair. I have two questions. You dealt comprehensively with some of what was asked about your engagement with colleagues across the way. The idea that this is an ideological intervention has been pretty well dismissed as what is often referred to as Gove's straw man, or, as may be the case for colleagues across the way, bogeyman.

I read your recommendations on learning for life and work. They are very interesting. Perhaps you can speak to them. My concern, based on some of the other work that the Committee has been doing, is that there are many issues of great merit about which we want to teach children in order to ready them for the future. There are, however, a lot of them, and, relative to mainstream subjects, learning for life and work is not something that has a great deal of time devoted to it. How therefore do we make sure that that subject is one in which pupils are taught quality over quantity so that it does not become too crowded or a dumping ground for any particular trend that people think that our kids should be learning about at the time? Such things may have some merit, but they cannot all be taught through school.

Dr Counsell: That is a great question. I will hand over to Lucy, who is currently overseeing that aspect of the curriculum.

Ms Crehan: Yes, it is a live issue and definitely something that I picked up when doing my review. In part, it is about being clear about what is statutory and then making sure that we identify, in a lean way, the core issues or ideas that we want children to study as part of the school curriculum, making sure that that is not an overcrowded space.

We are replacing LLW with a subject that will be similar in content but that will see more progression made between primary school and secondary school. The working title is personal, social, civic and careers education, or PSCC. It is partly about making clear that, although various issues will be stated, there will be flexibility in there, and more so than in almost any other subject. It is really important that there be flexibility in there to address issues to the required level of depth. Each of the content items will be statutory, but it may be the case that a school, if it does not have an issue with a particular thing or something is not relevant to their community, will spend just one lesson on it, whereas if a school has, for example, a big drugs problem, it may choose to go into great depth on that issue. There is therefore a level of flexibility in there for a school to cover something briefly or in greater depth.

Moreover, we will make it clear that what is in the statutory content is the only thing that is statutory. Providers, including the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, will produce high-quality resources, potentially in great volume, but schools are not obliged to use them. The depth to which it goes into various topics is at the school's discretion. I hope that that answers your question.

Mr Brooks: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. You touched on some of the digital elements, and I really like the suggestion about schools linking up with IT companies and benefiting from the burgeoning cybersecurity and IT sector in Northern Ireland.

We have talked about under-attainment. Some of the primary schools in working-class areas of my constituency are really keen to make sure that their pupils who do not have parents working in those fields have such options put in front of them. That sits alongside with what you said about ensuring that young children are not closing doors but can instead understand the choices that they are making and where those choices can lead them. How can that be done for children at younger age, and what more can be done?

Ms Crehan: What will really help with the curriculum that is in development at the moment is that there will be a subject and a framework specifically for digital technology that sets out the specific knowledge and skills content to which young people are entitled. All children will have that entitlement. At the moment, it is at quite a high level and is not an area in itself but a cross-curricular skill. That has led to very variable practice.

A lot of it is also currently dependent on individual teachers' knowledge, whereas, when we have a clear framework that sets out what children need to know and be able to do, we can organise professional development for teachers so that they are clear about what it is that they need to know and be able to do so that they can ensure that their students can do the same.

Mr Brooks: That is key. It also goes further up the chain. When educating children about their choices and the pathways that are available to them, there is a need to try to change the culture of university always being seen as the gold standard. The earlier that that can be done, the more informed that their choices will be at a later stage.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you for your time, which we really appreciate. We have covered a huge amount of ground in just over an hour. I would not rule out the Committee wanting to hear from you again as the process evolves. Lucy, you may feel that there is no escaping the Committee since you took on the review, but we will see how it goes. We will follow up with you on some of the discussion points.

Ms Crehan: Thank you.

Dr Counsell: Thank you.