Professor Sally Elton-Chalcraft, PhD, Professor of Social Justice in Education at the University of Cumbria, was formally the regional co-ordinator for Cumbria and North Lancashire for the Cambridge Primary Review Trust. The CPRT has now been disbanded, but the resources can be found at the Chartered College of Teaching.
Work in the North Lancashire and Cumbria network led by Professor Sally Elton–Chalcraft was focused predominantly on Equity and Community.
The Cambridge Primary Review Trust existed to ensure that all children benefit from a primary education that is stimulating, empowering and grounded in the best available evidence.
It aimed to be a major player in the reform of primary schooling, working with both the architects and agents of policy and the teachers who invest so much in this vital phase of education. It aimed to help schools respond effectively and critically to the many demands made on them - be they political or professional, pedagogical or practical.
The aims were in three groups that echoed the title of the CPR final report –Children, their World, their Education. The first group identified those individual qualities and capacities which schools should foster and build upon in every child, in whatever they do, and the personal needs to which schools should attend. The second group included four critically important orientations to people and the wider world, reflecting discussion of the opportunities and challenges of life in the 21st century. The third group focused on the content, processes and outcomes of learning itself.
The aims were grounded in extensive evidence from parents, teachers, children, community leaders, international research and a wide range of official, professional and voluntary stakeholders.
Equity: Tackle the continuing challenge of social and educational disadvantage, and find practical ways to help schools to close the overlapping gaps in social equity and educational attainment.
Voice: Advance children’s voice and rights in school and classroom, in accordance with the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Community: Promote community engagement and cohesion through school-community links and a community curriculum that supplements and enriches the national curriculum, and by developing communal values in school and classroom.
Sustainability: Embed sustainability and global citizenship in educational policy and practice, linking to the UN agenda for global education after 2015.
Aims: Develop and apply a coherent vision for 21st century primary education; enact CPR aims through curriculum, pedagogy and the wider life of the school.
Curriculum: Develop a broad, balanced and rich entitlement curriculum which responds to both national and local need, eliminates the damaging division of status and quality between core and non-core, and teaches every subject, domain or aspect to the highest possible standard.
Pedagogy: Develop a pedagogy of repertoire, rigour, evidence and principle, rather than mere compliance, with a particular emphasis on fostering the high quality classroom talk which children’s development, learning and attainment require.
Assessment: Encourage approaches to assessment that enhance learning as well as test it, that support rather than distort the curriculum and that pursue standards and quality in all areas of learning, not just the core subjects.
