Top marks to the new curiculum

Kent Messenger - May 27, 2005

Innovative, creative and designed for education in the 21st century - the International Primary Curriculum has proved to be in a class of its own. Holywell Primary School in Upchurch, was the first British state school to use the system and now it has successfully emerged from its first Ofsted inspection after switching to the new brain-friendly, thematic curriculum.

Head teacher David Day, said that a few years ago he was becoming increasingly frustrated with the tick-box restrictions and formality of the national curriculum: "It had become repetitive and stodgy and it was death by worksheet." He has been at the school, which has 204 pupils, for nine years and the IPC is a major innovation. He began a trial on three classes, got excellent feedback from children and teachers and in January last year, the whole school moved to the new curriculum. Three afternoons a week, it switches to the IPC approach with such topics as the rain forests and it intends to develop localised topics, such as rural culture and the River Medway.

There is a two-year cycle of integrating normal subjects with global topics, and signs from Ofsted are that it is achieving good results.