In the previous blog, I pasted up the Guardian article which tells us of how these proposals were engineered. It's not a new story. On several occasions governments have set up 'commissions' to produce reports on education, consulted and listened to experienced practitioners and decided to ignore what they heard. Instead, they hunted down a 'trusty' somewhere to lash up something that suited them.
Mostly, the dismissed commissions have gone quietly. Congratulations to Andrew Pollard for sticking his neck out and telling us what happened and why he disapproves of the present proposals. My own criticisms are in essence embodied in my previous blog 'Core Questions'.
The answer to one of these appears at first to be in the Guardian article. Tim Oates of Cambridge Assessment headed the 'review team'. and 'worked with the DfE' to produce it. Please note that Tim Oates doesn't appear from his biog at the Cambridge Assessment site to have taught in a primary school, nor ever taught English.
I notice also that he is robust in his defence of the job he and the anonymous others have done:
he says:
"The draft programmes of study are drawn from a rigorous research base, both domestically and internationally."
Hooray!
Hang on a minute, though. Where? Which research? Is it going to be published so that we can look at it?
And who else was in the team or teams?
