'Chalk and talk' is fine for some, for others it's just academic

One problem is that we keep making new demands on what children should achieve and what schools should do. Over just the last few weeks, I have read calls for schools to spend more time on sex and relationships education, internet safety, academic studies, practical literacy and numeracy, work readiness, building self-reliance and moral development, money management, and on swimming and PE. All these important matters somehow need to be squeezed in. Since the national curriculum was introduced in 1988, people have wanted to make their own special interest a core part of what schools do, with every attempt to specify the curriculum in detail simply resulting in overload. To that extent, Education Secretary Michael Gove was right to make the national curriculum advisory, although so far only for academies, and even then Ofsted and the national attainment tables significantly constrain what schools can do.