Rethinking curriculum: Designing for the future

‘Education is the thread that connects every area of my Trust’s activities. In all our education work, we aim to address challenges and lack of opportunities. Encouraging children’s abilities at a young age is essential.’

Lady Hamlyn CBE

The Helen Hamlyn Trust’s core ethos is to support the development of innovative projects which aim to effect lasting change and improve quality of life. As an independent grant-making trust, its principal focus is on the initiation of medium and long-term projects linked to the shared interests of Helen Hamlyn and her late husband, Paul Hamlyn. The Trust works in the fields of medicine, arts and culture, education and welfare, heritage and conservation in India, international humanitarian affairs and healthy ageing.

The Trust is delighted to support this collaboration with the Chartered College of Teaching and the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0 – 11 years) at UCL’s Institute of Education as part of its continuing work to build on its Open Futures – askit growit cookit filmit learning programme: www.openfutures.com.

Over 12 years, Open Futures engaged 164 Primary Schools across England, benefitting over 80,000 children and enabling teachers to create meaningful, impactful learning environments and experiences. Open Futures was designed by, with and for the schools we worked with. Together, we established a flexible framework and training programme that addressed each school’s unique needs and diverse contexts. Every child matters every teacher matters, and every school leader matters.

The Trust has initiated this vital collaboration with the Chartered College of Teaching and HHCP (0-11 years) to support school leaders and teachers’ agency to have the confidence, as experts, to be ambitious in their curriculum design.

Young children have a right to an education that is meaningful to them and makes the best use of the most formative period in their development, nurturing their academic and personal, social and emotional growth in equal measure. This is what teachers go into the profession to do.

We hope this initiative will inspire teachers and school leaders nationally to do what they do best – provide meaningful learning experiences that allow young children to understand why what they are learning is important to them so that they want to learn more!