Opening Worlds Knowledge Rich Curriculum with Haringey Education Partnership

Since 2019, we have implemented the Opening Worlds humanities curriculum with 60 of our member primary schools across Haringey and Enfield. This has quite simply been a transformational piece of work for schools, for teachers and, most importantly, for children.

This project initially came about serendipitously following a training session for HEP headteachers on the Ofsted inspection framework with Christine Counsell. Establishing an immediate relationship and enthusiastic to work together, Christine and Steve Mastin set about developing teaching resources with half termly units and comprehensive training across Key Stage 2 history, geography and religion. Whilst HEP schools were the first to introduce the curriculum, Opening Worlds has now been taken up by clusters of schools across the country.

Opening Worlds is without question the best humanities curriculum resource available nationally. The scope, rigour, sequencing and coherence of the curriculum have pushed students’ knowledge and teachers’ expertise beyond what is available in even the most privileged schools. This is immediately evident from the materials themselves, but comes to life when speaking to teachers and students directly. Here is one example of the impact on Eldon Primary School in the highly deprived area of Edmonton.

Across our partnership of schools, we have seen the following:

• Opening Worlds is the single biggest lever to raise attainment – Haringey’s reading, writing and maths scores at KS2 have increased from near the bottom of London to the London average, with particularly strong improvement among schools with high deprivation and EAL
• Ofsted inspections have universally been strongly Good or Outstanding in schools with deep dives including one or more humanities subject with Opening Worlds; indeed, the quality of education findings have frequently singled out the impact of Opening Worlds
• The resources and training have been foundational for teachers (at any stage of their career) to develop a rigorous understanding of high-quality curriculum design and the associated pedagogy to support effective teaching and learning
• For school leaders, Opening Worlds has provided a way to get back in touch with excellence in the quality of education – knowing what the best looks like in teaching and learning
• The influence of Opening Worlds also goes well beyond the humanities, with a hugely positive impact on reading and writing as well as pushing up standards in curriculum and pedagogy across other foundation subjects.

Feedback from Headteachers in our member schools also reflects the excitement and impact:
“I just wanted to let you know about how mind-blown I am by the outcomes we’re getting here from the Opening Worlds curriculum roll out in years 3 and 4 – it’s so amazing! The vocabulary the children are coming out with (“population density”) and the confidence with which they can talk about their subjects after just a few lessons is amazing! I am so excited to get it rolled out across all year groups and subjects and see the impact it can have when children have had that high expectation set for them for a sustained period – it is going to be so good for their learning, understanding of the world and preparation for secondary school!”

“Opening Worlds curriculum training has been amazing and given us a clear way forward in adapting our own school curriculum. Staff have benefited from the training and in turn the pupils.”

Opening Worlds is one of the ‘crown jewels’ across our schools in HEP, and as such, we are continuing to further develop HEP curricula in the same vein of quality and rigour. Schools in our wider communities can now access Key Stage 2 science curriculum resources, which we have developed through the work of Brenda Hayles.

The science curriculum is being expanded to cover Key Stage 1 as well, and Key Stage 1 history units will also be added to the mix. Additionally, HEP has been working on art and computing curricula, which rolled out with the beginning of the academic year.

If you would like to discuss the curriculum further, please contact me any time at James.Page@haringeyeducationpartnership.co.uk.

James is Chief Executive of HEP. He was previously joint Assistant Director for schools and learning in Haringey Council and has worked in DfE and extensively in central government and consultancy. He is also a parent governor in the Borough.