ABSTRACT
The issue of progression will be of central concern to any school attempting to design a drama curriculum. Without an agreed framework to chart how children get better at drama, you and your colleagues will find it difficult to plan for such progression over the medium and long term. A framework for progression should therefore provide guidelines in a number of key areas. First and foremost, it should offer a vision of what it means for children to make progress in drama, explaining the skills and knowledge they require and the kinds of experience they need in order to develop them. Such a vision will be of little use unless it can feed directly into your planning. A policy on progression therefore needs to indicate where in the school’s curriculum – in which year groups and in relation to which other curriculum areas – you might plan for specific kinds of drama work. This kind of framework will help you decide what you need to teach in order to extend children’s skills and knowledge and lead them into more enriching ways of working. It will thus avoid the problems of too much or too little challenge in the work that you plan. To do this effectively, you will need to know what children have already learned as well as knowing where you need to take them. Hence the reason why the words ‘progression’ and ‘continuity’ are so often voiced in the same breath; the one depends upon the other.
