Yesterday we welcomed Michelle Donelan as Education Secretary and said farewell to Nadhim Zahawi after just shy of 10 months in the role, not even an academic year. Infact, Michelle Donelan was welcomed as the seventh Education Secretary in 12 years. Today she resigned the post.

These recent developments are a consequence of events linked to the Prime Minister at this time, nevertheless it is important to acknowledge that students finishing Year 11 this year have just completed 12 years at school, the first being Reception back in 2010-11 when Michael Gove was first welcomed to the post. Their continuous, coherent and progressive education taking them from Reception to GCSE is down to the work of teachers modulating the changing expectations so disruption to the students education is minimised. For this alone teachers deserve a pay rise – one that is long overdue.

It’s not just Year 11 who have been guided through. The ever changing situation impacts on all year groups differently. And now we have change again. Michelle Donelan has to follow up Nadhim Zahawi’s U-turn of the Schools Bill, the 2022 White Paper outlining the proposed vision for 2030. The students sitting their GCSE’s and equivalents in 2030 are in Year 3 now. How many more education secretaries, keeping in mind that their third was in post for 36 hours, will impact on their education during their time at school.

Planned sequencing is an integral part of successful learning. Imagine planning a route: when using satellite navigation you know the final destination and the most efficient options to get there from your starting point are presented to you. Continue the analogy to consider the impact that entering an uncertain destination or changed destination has on the route. This is how it is for students on their educational journey, their curriculum. At any point in time we can only really know where students have come from, what they have done, sequencing from there to where?

For now, the contents of the 2022 White Paper is the closest we have to an intended destination. Whilst the detail it contains is critiqued and ammended, it is important to keep in mind that students are already on their curriculum journey, that education happens now, and that the only certainty we have, in terms of sequencing, is that each new day of learning must build on the last.