I will be taking on a new role next year as the head of department and one aspect I have to review and amend is the curriculum.
I've had two very different experiences when delivering the PE curriculum in International schools.
My first school used the IB system, so the PYP curriculum was very flexible with the MYP providing an assessment criteria but still allowed us to choose the activities. That curriculum changed slightly each year of my four years there with the feedback that we received. However, this particular school had 5 schools across Malaysia, so they requested us to standardise everything from lessons to assessments. We had a person responsible for each unit and everyone was expected to follow that lesson plan to the dot. I disagreed with this concept and was very frustrated during my time there.
The advantage to this was not all our teachers were trained, so at least the standardisation allowed each student to get something similar across campuses. However, simply following a lesson plan isn't as easy as it sounds. The disadvantage to this was that it never allowed personalisation and that's what I found frustrating. Each school had different facilities, equipment and students so a standardised approach was not necessarily the best.
Now, I'm teaching the UK national
curriculum where it is very flexible depending upon the teacher. The units are generic for example; invasion games, movement composition, net and wall games etc. however it is up to the teacher to decide what they want to teach that particular class and choose which strand they want to assess them. For example, we have three different teachers teaching the Year 3's and each one of us teach and assess our own way depending on the class with no standardisation of objectives/assessment at all.
The advantage to this is that the teachers can teach to their strengths and personalise it to their group of students. On the other hand the disadvantage would be those particular units being taught are not what is best for the students i.e developing physical literacy.
I am aware that there are more advantages/disadvantages for each method but I want to keep this post as short as possible.
I believe that the curriculum objectives/outcomes and assessment criteria should be standardised amongst the year groups and whatever journey is decided by the teacher/students to get to the objective is up to them. However, the problem at the international schools I have worked in so far is that the turnover is quite high, so teachers see out their contracts and move on. This is problematic for the students as a year 2 student could be taught football with one teacher and then again in year 3 by a different teacher and this does not develop their physical literacy. Currently our curriculum is very dependent on the teacher and for next year I want to change this.
I am proposing that the shift changes and that the curriculum ensures that each student is physically literate by the time they finish. So I want to create a curriculum that offers different activities/concepts that is progressive and applicable from Foundation to Key Stage 4, which is not dependent on the teacher anymore. I want to standardise the units across the year groups so that each teacher is teaching the same unit with the objectives and assessment strands being the same too, however the method and delivery of teaching is up to them. This way, the students will experience a wide range of units regardless of who their teachers are.
My worry is that some teachers will not feel comfortable with the units that they teach, but I believe I can support them in this with my experience of teaching a wide range. At the end of the day, we should be doing what is best for the students, not what is best for us?
Over the next 2-3 weeks, I will be reconstructing my curriculum so if anyone has any advice or has similar experience, please get in touch.