Enhancing wellbeing through broadening the primary curriculum in the UK with Open Futures

Abstract

Based on data collected when evaluating the UK Open Futures program, this chapter argues for altering school space to enable and imbed curriculum broadening to enhance student wellbeing. Such enriched school experience is under threat in the UK and elsewhere through curriculum narrowing in face of performativity and standardised testing, particularly in schools serving the most deprived communities. To counter this tendency, we investigate how the success of Open Futures in terms of impact on wellbeing can inform other school level change. Our analysis, based on student and teacher voices and our observations in school, suggests the importance of material changes alongside organisational and cultural developments. Changes that are powerful both pragmatically and symbolically, such as learning outside and developing spaces beyond traditional classrooms, can support changed relationships and the variety of learning opportunities that wellbeing literature promotes.However, alterations to curriculum, school organisation and the physical environment need to be held together through an overarching rationale that is articulated by school leaders and understood across the school community.