SEND Huh: curriculum conversations with SEND leaders
Huh is the Egyptian god of endlessness, creativity, fertility and regeneration. He is the deity Mary Myatt and John Tomsett have adopted as their god of the curriculum. Their Huh series of books focuses on how practitioners design the curriculum for the young people in their schools.
The Huh project is founded on conversations with colleagues doing great work across the education sector. In SEND Huh, Mary Myatt and John Tomsett discuss curriculum provision for pupils with additional needs with some of the leading experts in the field.
Mary and John interviewed pupils, parents, teachers, headteachers, CEOs, educational consultants and lecturers. They then edited the transcriptions of those interviews to provide an ambitious, thoughtful, nuanced and challenging vision of what the best possible provision looks like for children with additional learning needs.
The challenging conversations that comprise SEND Huh paint an inspiring picture that is hugely hopeful for the future of SEND curriculum provision in our schools.
Primary Huh 2: Primary curriculum leadership conversations
Huh is the Egyptian god of endlessness, creativity, fertility and regeneration. He is the deity Mary Myatt and John Tomsett have adopted as their god of the school curriculum. Their first book in the Huh series focused upon how school practitioners design the Key Stage 3 curriculum. Its popularity prompted calls from many quarters for a similar book on the primary curriculum.
Supported by their primary colleagues, Rachel Higginson, Lekha Sharma & Emma Turner, Mary and John interviewed over 30 primary practitioners about how they design the primary curriculum. Considering the diverse nature of primary schools in this country, it’s not surprising that they were soon confronted with numerous context-dependent curriculum complexities. Designing the curriculum for small primary schools, for instance, means solving the conundrum of teaching the same subject at the same time to three different year groups in one class. The conversations confirmed that shaping a primary school curriculum is a tricky business!
Primary Huh: Curriculum conversations between subject leaders in primary schools
There’s plenty to do when planning the curriculum in primary schools. If it feels daunting, then one of the most helpful things is to talk to other people about how they have developed the curriculum for their particular subject or key stage.
This is what John Tomsett and Mary Myatt have done. After the secondary ‘Huh: Curriculum conversations between subject and senior leaders’ was published, they were flooded with requests to produce a primary version.
They enlisted the help of renowned primary specialists, Rachel Higginson, Lekha Sharma and Emma Turner to have conversations with primary teachers and key stage co-ordinators who are doing great curriculum development work.
Huh: Curriculum conversations between subject and senior leaders
Schools need to have purchase on the curriculum: why they teach the subjects beyond preparation for examinations, what they are intending to achieve with the curriculum, how well it is planned and enacted in classrooms and how they know whether it’s doing what it’s supposed to. Fundamental to this understanding are the conversations between subject leaders and their line managers. However, there is sometimes a mismatch between the subject specialisms of senior leaders and those they line manage. If I don’t know the terrain and the importance of a particular subject, how can I talk intelligently with colleagues who are specialists?
Back on Track: Fewer things, greater depth
There are a lot of redundant processes in schools. We need to take a hard look at these and consider whether they are adding value to the core purpose of schools.
We need to apply Greg McKeown’s ‘disciplined pursuit of less’ in order to create the time and space to do deep, satisfying work on the curriculum. This means that there will be some hard choices and recognise that if we cannot do everything, we need to move to a space which acknowledges there will be trade offs.
This is more than a workload issue, it is about focusing our efforts on the most important agenda item in schools today – the development of an ambitious curriculum for every child, in every school.
The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to coherence
'Inspiring and helpful in equal measure, this book is going to make a significant contribution to the work schools need to do to make the vision of a coherent curriculum a reality.’ Tom Sherrington, former teacher and headteacher; consultant and author of The Learning Rainforest
’Globally, new attention is being given to curriculum principles and curriculum practice. Mary Myatt's book is major contribution to this debate. She combines encyclopaedic knowledge of schools with crystal-clear description of curriculum principles and few books range so effectively across curriculum theory and day-to-day practice in the classroom. Mary does this with huge authority and extreme clarity. A must-read for all those involved in improving education.’ Tim Oates CBE, Group Director of ARD, Assessment Research and Development.
Hopeful Schools
'Hopeful Schools' is a breath of fresh air and reminds you 'why' we do 'what' we do, whilst making you think 'how' we go about it. Mary encourages us to consider what soulful schools; heart-based education and courageous leadership could and should look like. This book will nourish you and restore your faith in the future of our education system. It will reassure you that by being hopeful we can affect change.
High Challenge, Low Threat: How the best leaders find the balance
‘Mary Myatt's book is a treasury of leadership wisdom and guidance for everyone working in schools today. She provides the antidote to negative, fear-based, toxic leadership by describing ways in which healthy, people-focussed, positive, effective, appreciative and collaborative leadership can arise. Her powerful synthesis of complex leadership concepts and best-practice examples makes this a must-read book for anyone wanting to be an outstanding leader without sacrificing their values, good health and professional passion.’ Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE, Leadership coach and consultant, ex Chief Executive of 157 Group, Centre for Excellence in Leadership and Guildford College within UK Further Education. Named in Debretts 2015 and Women of Spirit UK 2016.