EDISON LAUNCHES CORE LEARNING SKILLS PROGRAMME

Unique Approach Maps Skills Development to National Curriculum

Colchester, UK: May 29th, 2005 ­ Edison Schools UK has announced a new Core Learning Skills curriculum designed to help teachers and children map learning skills to National Curriculum work in the Foundation Stage and Key Stages 1-3.

The Core Learning Skills curriculum forms part of Edison's Design for School Improvement, a holistic framework and programme for raising achievement in primary and secondary schools.

The Core Learning Skills programme provides a thorough and structured skills-based approach that balances the subject-based emphasis of the National Curriculum. By linking National Curriculum subject material to a range of learning skills, the programme helps point up the relevance of National Curriculum material to life both inside and outside the classroom, and provides schools with an effective framework for the development of more personalised learning.

The programme delivers a curriculum structured around the core skill areas of thinking skills, communication, literacies (numeracy, ICT and literacy), and personal and social development. These skill areas are integrated into the content structure of the National Curriculum to provide a manageable framework for the effective teaching and assessing of learning-to-learn skills.

'This is a very significant complement to the National Curriculum that advances classroom practice without diminishing the rigour of its approach,' said Paul Lincoln, Edison's Education Director. 'By focusing on learning-to-learn skills we are linking learning across the subject compartments, in a far more integrated approach.'

'In developing personal and social competencies such as teamwork, the programme answers the questions: what does working in a team look like, how can we teach it in a classroom and how can we assess children's capability as teamworkers?' Sue Kerfoot, Design Architect at Edison adds. 'We all know teamwork is important in education and in life, but the National Curriculum doesn¹t offer explicit help with it for teachers and learners. Here we have a programme for identifying, understanding and practising teamwork in the classroom, along with many other important life and learning skills.'

'Edison's approach has given us the impetus to move into a skill-based curriculum much more quickly than we could have done otherwise,' said Peter Terry, Headteacher of Kings Road Primary School Chelmsford. 'The staff are buzzing; this has given them ownership of the curriculum and that¹s very pleasing.'