Press Release

PAT  WELCOMES  NEW CURRICULUM

5 February 2007

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) has welcomed the new  11-14 curriculum  review announced today (5 February 2007).

PAT General Secretary Philip Parkin said: “PAT will study the proposals and give a detailed response as part of the consultation exercise.  We welcome the new modernised, broader curriculum, offering a wider range of subjects, and plans to teach issues across subjects.

"However, we are concerned that the curriculum may be too prescriptive and not give enough scope for teachers to use their own professional judgment. We do not want to see an overcrowded curriculum that does not allow sufficient time for subjects to be studied in depth.

"It is also essential that teachers receive the training and resources they need to implement these changes.

"It will also be a challenge to recruit and train enough teachers so schools can offer languages such as Chinese and Arabic.   Not all schools will have the appropriate language specialists so schools may have to pool their resources, sharing a teacher or perhaps using the facilities at local colleges, so they can offer a wider variety of languages to those pupils who opt to study them."

Interviewed on BBC TV News on Sunday 4 February about the proposed introduction of world languages, Philip Parkin said: "From the teacher's point of view, clearly we need people who are qualified to teach, we need resources for teaching these different languages and we need time to train people in order to do it properly."