Outraged from Tyne and Wear

While catching up with Twitter this afternoon I saw some references to the Curriculum Review.  Now I've been waiting anxiously for the publication of the conclusions of the Review, mainly to see what the Coalition's plans will be for languages in KS2.  We had been told that we could expect it at the end of this year.  So now, in fact.  But I had seen no reference to it in the press or elsewhere.  I consulted one of the #MFLTwitterati:

I read the article with interest.  It concentrates on English and maths, and you have to read between the lines for the rest.  It was this paragraph that was of particular concern:


"The conclusions of the review had been expected in the new year, but wholesale reform of the curriculum will now be delayed by 12 months.

A final report by an expert panel is unlikely to be published until the end of 2012, with specifications in the core subjects to be introduced in 2014 rather than 2013."

So the timetable on the DfE website no longer stands, and we will have to wait  even longer for some kind of decision about the future of Primary Languages.  This is infuriating given its already precarious position.  I am also outraged by the fact that this information has come out via a newspaper article (no mention of the information is made on the DfE website) over the weekend and after most schools have broken up for the Christmas holidays.  This appears to me to be underhanded and cowardly on the part of the DfE and of course of Gove himself.  But then I suppose I'm not really surprised about this.  It's not like it's the first time it's happened.