Protecting the ambition of KS3 - Why KS3 matters more than ever.

Last night I attended a webinar with Mary Myatt and Catherine Priggs on The Ambitious Years which gave me another opportunity to reflect on just how important KS3 really is.

Mary’s description of KS3 as the “intellectual powerhouse of secondary education” is a powerful one. It has stuck with me since I first read her book "KS3 - The Ambitious Years" from cover to cover in a couple of days back in June. As Mary highlights years 7-9 should be far more than a waiting room before GCSE. KS3 is where pupils should encounter big ideas, develop their language and disciplinary understanding, make connections across their subjects and really importantly build the foundations for what comes next.

At this time of curriculum reform, having this discussion around the importance of KS3 is vital. As the new programmes of study and subject content begin to emerge, there is a real opportunity here to think much more deliberately about progression from primary, through KS3 and into GCSE and post-16 study. Curriculum must be the one driving assessment, not the other way round.

One of the tensions we need to consider carefully is what happens to pupils’ wider KS3 entitlement when more curriculum time is given over to GCSE study with some schools having moved to a three year KS3. For pupils who do not continue subjects such as Geography, History, RE or the arts at GCSE, two years of KS3 may represent almost their entire secondary experience of that discipline. That really makes this an issue of entitlement as much as curriculum design. As curriculum makers, we are gatekeepers to the knowledge, ideas and ways of thinking our subjects prioritise. We have the responsibility to protect that entitlement, not restrict it.

Protecting the ambition of KS3 also has enormous potential to do really important upstream work: building secure knowledge, vocabulary, conceptual understanding and connections over time. If we do that well, pupils are far better prepared for the increasingly demanding study that follows and we are likely to have a lower need for as much intervention at KS4.

Ambition does not mean simply making KS3 harder. As Mary and Cat emphasised in last night's webinar pupils can cope with rich and demanding material when they are properly supported: high challenge, low threat. It is also important we don't confuse accessibility with simplification. Coherence matters too.

KS3 cannot sit as a separate island between primary and GCSE, it is really important that it builds deliberately on what pupils already know and help them connect increasingly complex ideas across the curriculum as part of a full journey from KS2 rigth through to KS5.

I explore these ideas in much more detail in my latest Substack post, drawing on Mary Myatt’s work and thinking around The Ambitious Years.

Read the full article: KS3: Keeping ambition at the heart of curriculum change