Schools 'need more freedom'

February 15 2011

Schools need more freedom than they have had over the last two decades.

This is the opinion of John Coe, general secretary of the National Association for Primary Education, who said that most teaching professionals share his view.

"It has to be a compromise or a middle way between the state itself, which has a right to define the essentials of education for our children, but that has been far too pressing upon schools," he commented.

"The government has by stealth, almost in the last decade, moved from prescribing the content of education to prescribing, with the threat of penalties through Ofsted and so on, the way content is taught."

Mr Coe added that teachers should be free to exercise their judgement on how to teach the content they are given.

Education secretary Michael Gove earlier this year announced plans to overhaul the national curriculum and replace the current "sub-standard" one with a curriculum based on the best education systems in the world.

Posted by Andrew Jones

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