Reflections
Helen Murray
Since becoming a home educator, having worked in education policy development previously, I've always kept a casual eye on policy developments and am actually quite heartened to see some things that seem positive in this year's curriculum review (although how they'll play out in practice remains to be seen). I've summarised my reflections here in relation to Waymakers specifically.
The UK Curriculum Review (2025) seems to advocate for a clear shift towards a knower-rich approach to learning. Rather than prioritising skills of memorisation, it emphasises deep understanding, critical thinking (including media and digital literacy), and essential life skills such as citizenship, collaboration, and agency. The aim is not just academic attainment, but the development of young people who are able to flourish in their lives, communities, and future work. Things we certainly value at Waymakers and I think home educators do more broadly. How the government imagines that already time and resource-poor teachers in schools will be able to implement these well-intentioned aims without radically altering the very structure of how schools operate, I find it really hard to envisage though.
For facilitators, volunteers and parents involved with Waymakers, this to some degree, aligns with our guiding values which place less emphasis on delivering content to creating conditions for inquiry. While knowledge matters, so does process and the acquistion of knowledge is always so much stronger when sought rather than forced and when it is used as a foundation for exploration, reflection, and real-world application. Learning becomes something young people actively shape, with facilitators guiding, questioning, and modelling curiosity.
The curriculum review includes a stronger focus on oracy, an expanded understanding of computing and digital skills, and core enrichment through the arts, outdoor learning, and practical life skills. There is also an intentional balance between breadth of content and depth of mastery, inviting adults and children to think carefully about how knowledge is introduced, revisited, and connected to lived experience. One of my concerns about the oracy focus is how, as we know from home education, not all skills develop in all people on a rigid timelime and, thinking critically, it's not necessarily desirable that they do. For example, I was 'taught' to be a really good public speaker at school - my school applauded me for it and entered me for national competitions (which I won) but I now loathe it with a passion and have avoided doing as much as I might otherwise have done had I been allowed to come to that in my own time. That's therefore something I feel passionately about approaching gently at Waymakers. By aligning oracy with priorities like literacy and numeracy, we risk just adding to the list of pre-requisities for accessing learning which can make people feel like they are failing prematurely so it's good to see changes to assessment are also planned so hopefully we should a less burdensome assessment framework in future - something we should have done a long time ago.
Together, these proposed changes do in many ways align with Waymakers’ mission: supporting learners to make sense of the world, build confidence and capability, and become active contributors to their communities. However, as is often the case with policy, it can all feel a bit sledgehammer to crack a nut with language like 'making citizenship education and PSHE 'mandatory' and improving SEND with 'inclusive practice and adaptive teaching' - this just really doesn't have the same ring to it as 'creating welcoming, neurodiversity-affirming spaces for a wide range of backgrounds, abilities, and 'ways in' to learning that work in synergy with the diverse rhythms of home educators’ lives', so we'll be very much sticking with that form of words and sharing information, reflections and insights as part of how we support staff, volunteers and parents as we do our very best to model good practice, while remaining aware of and thinking critically about wider developments in education and SEND provision.
My previous experience and involvement in educational research demonstrated really clearly that change can't only happen through e.g. passionate senior managers, it has to involve the genuinely-sought consent and participation of the whole learning community and that's what we aim to model at Waymakers. To that end, thoughts, comments and discussion which start from a place of asking 'what do I and others need?' are warmly welcomed on these blog posts and through chats, whatsapps, emails etc any time and although our door is always open in that way, Kristy and I will also be working with facilitators to up our game in actively modelling seeking out views and input in how we plan and organise.
