Through choice allow students to pick subjects that they want to choose. Have breadth and depth to the KS4 curriculum. Allow the academic rigour for students that wish to go onto the traditional universities, but also allow the rest of the rest of the students to succeed at school.

We need to get away from the comparing apples with bananas, that is the current trend when it comes to the outcome for students. From my point of view the most important thing is to allow students to succeed, no matter what their aspirations are.

Views of what “engages” can be as narrow and rigid as views of what is actually worth knowing. Dumbing down is usually justified by talk of “engagement”.

“If we’re to make education relevant and useful to the professional and personal lives of future adults, it has to become more inter-disciplinary/cross-subject, more practical and more bloody attractive to learners at all stages and from all backgrounds!”

That’s the direction the curriculum has been moving in for about 100 years.

At what point is this usefulness going to emerge?

As for the traditional vs non-traditional subjects, methods and systems debate – I just don’t believe that the full range of young people will be engaged fully by narrower, more rigid options. If we’re to make education relevant and useful to the professional and personal lives of future adults, it has to become more inter-disciplinary/cross-subject, more practical and more bloody attractive to learners at all stages and from all backgrounds!