Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency

Examining in greater depth the challenge posed to the curriculum by the need for greater personalisation and innovation.

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Niel McLean, Executive Director. Educational Practice, Becta
'The first step towards a personalised curriculum is to engage the users of the curriculum, ie the learners, in the description of that curriculum. It isn't something you parcel up and package to them and then your approach isn't personalised.'

Professor Jean Rudduck, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
'We need to respond to the kinds of things young people say they want in school, which is more opportunities for decision-making, more choice, more responsibility. And I think we have to recognise the skills that they have and that they often use out of school and make spaces in school for their needs, for their capabilities to be recognised and to be used.'

John Anniss, Headteacher, Chyngton School
'I think a technologically based curriculum could offer far more to pupils in terms of individualising their learning. Yes, of course, they will still gather as a community in the morning, much of the themes of their work will be community based, but it may be that certain strands better deliver each child's individual needs through recognising their learning styles, be they very left-brained or right-brained, whether they like particularly open-ended things, whether they like things very systematically presented to them. I think that can be adapted to meet the needs of that individual learner.'

Professor David Hopkins, Chief Adviser to the Secretary of State on School Standards, DfES
'Assessment for learning is a very exciting example of personalised learning in action because it involves young people in learning from their evaluations of their work, giving them greater skills to comment on each other's work to develop really helpful learning plans, which enable them to reach their potential.'

Tim Oates, Head or Research, QCA
'By changing the way in which we manage formative assessment in the classroom we can encourage pupils to think principally about how they are doing, not how they are doing in relation to other kids, but how they are doing in terms of what they are capable of. By encouraging the self-referencing you can encourage both the most able and the less able to improve significantly.'

Professor Jean Rudduck, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
'Pupil voice is actually supporting in an indirect way the standards agenda by helping pupils to strengthen their motivation, by their feeling that they belong and that they matter.'

Niel McLean, Executive Director. Educational Practice, Becta
'The most crucial development is how we rethink the nature of schools, the boundaries round schools; that's the boundaries of time and geography and culture, when does school stop, when does school start, does school stop at 4 o'clock? A whole set of things like that. Do we really want a timetable in September to set out what the timetable in May might be like? There's a whole set of innovations we're going to need to actually personalise this curriculum.'

John Anniss, Headteacher, Chyngton School
'I think an integrated approach, pulling in the various aspects of different subjects that fit the particular theme you're after is a very powerful one and I think leads to more efficient learning and more continuous learning. The skill then becomes juggling the bits of content that you feel are key, so that over a period of time, be it two years, whatever, that you have given children their entitlement to the basic coverage that is needed.'

Tim Oates, Head or Research, QCA
'I think personalised learning is about thinking about a core curriculum of those things that are going to be valuable for all people to progress on into society and then into work. And then use personalised learning to think about how you would deliver that in a way that is motivating for the individual so that they would engage with that content. It's not about an educational free-for-all in terms of delivering learning to young people. It's about thinking about how we can make the curriculum motivate.'

Disclaimer: This film is intended to stimulate debate. Views expressed are not necessarily those of QCA.