 If we want a simple definition of what schools must do, it starts with curriculum. This underpins everything that we do as teachers and as school leaders. After all, any deputy head will tell you if we get the curriculum wrong, your students are likely to be disengaged, misbehaving lessons and probably achieve weaker outcomes. And I mean this in the broadest sense, attendance, punctuality to class, participation and the exam schools. Arguably the purpose of a national curriculum is to make sure that there is some consistency in the knowledge and skills being taught in our schools so that every student is given the education they need regardless of which school they attend. But what should this education look like? Should it help students to get a job, to become active and useful as members of society, to acquire the skills needed to be successful to navigate the world or to learn the knowledge that acts as a precursor to further studies in a particular subject? And how academic should the curriculum be? How important is it that a curriculum allows for easy assessment? Everyone will have different opinions about these questions, I have mine, you'll have yours and I suspect many education ministers will want us to know what theirs is also. I've always believed that any curriculum intentions are impossible without supporting teachers to be the best that they can be to bring the curriculum to life and to make it coherent and tangible for children. Without good teaching, curriculum is merely paperwork. Unfortunately we now seem to be in a situation where data collection, marking and testing drives what most teachers do in a school classroom. The curriculum should drive assessment but a lot of the time it seems to be the other way round. Data collection, tests and assessment can make it feel like the purchase of the curriculum is to assess. You'll often hear a teacher say that they feel as though they are teaching to the test or a teacher might be teaching something because it's on the curriculum rather than understanding why it's important to know. If you follow the link attached to this video you'll get a resource on my site called Curriculum Planning. It's a series of reflection questions for all teachers, middle leaders and school leaders to evaluate their curriculum.