Peter Wilby gives his help to “sluggish schooling” as promoted by means of Mike Grenier (Eton master who desires students to learn very slowly, 13 August). A little-known truth is that Michael Gove’s expert panel for the national curriculum evaluate in 2011, of which I become a member, also advocated “a focal point on fewer things in greater intensity”, and on “making sure that each one student have the proper expertise of key elements previous to moving on to the next body of content material”. Unfortunately, Gove and Nick Gibb took little notice of this key advice, derived from evidence from excessive-acting nations, whilst finding out the overloaded and unbalanced national curriculum that we have. Our document is still to be had on the Department for Education website.
• How I wish that Mike Grenier would restrain his shudders at the thought of “baby-centered schooling”. As a trainer of young youngsters within the Nineteen Seventies, I locate a lot in commonplace along with his “gradual training motion”, and want that he would take a bit time to recognize the character of getting to know via discovery at the primary college stage. It, in reality, wasn’t a free-for-all as he contemptuously indicates. Any skillful teacher at that point turned into geared up to capitalize at the exhilaration she had engendered, leading children to research greater at the same time as interweaving vital abilities into this manner. The only distinction might be that we offered the shape after the initial idea, and no longer earlier than.