Curriculum leadership: Responding to the challenges of COVID-19

CHLOE WARDLE, ASSOCIATE DEAN, AMBITION INSTITUTE, UK JOSH CARDALE, DEPUTY HEAD, JUBILEE PRIMARY SCHOOL, HACKNEY, UK At the peak of the pandemic, UNICEF estimate that a staggering 1.5 billion children were out of education (UNICEF, 2020). Establishing remote learning and supporting pupils who had different levels of engagement with it to ‘catch up’ has been a challenge for curriculum leaders over the last two years. Reflecting on how we tackled these challenges has brought us to consider what’s at the heart of curriculum design, not just in these exceptional times, but at any time. Although the scale of the challenges we continue to face is unprecedented, many of the tools that we have used to tackle them are familiar. Ambition Institute runs training programmes that support educators serving children from disadvantaged backgrounds. At Ambition, we have authored a set of 10 curriculum principles, drawing on what we know about how learning works, as well as recent discussio