We Taught It. They Forgot It. We Moved On.

It is one of the oddest failures of modern schooling that so many pupils can say they studied something and yet cannot remember it. Algebra, grammar, geography. Whole disciplines sweep through a child’s life, vanishing like mist by the time the next test arrives. Ask a child what they learned last month and they’ll often pause, fumble, look puzzled. Not because they weren’t present in the lesson. But because nothing stuck. The curriculum forgot.

It forgot to return. It forgot to dwell. It forgot that memory is not a by-product of learning, but its very condition. Learning that does not last was never really learning, it was mere exposure.

Many curriculum documents are not really curricula at all. They are lists. Lists of what to “cover,” what to tick off, what to squeeze into the weeks allotted. But a curriculum worthy of the name should not behave like a conveyor belt. It should behave like a mind. It should have memory.

Memory is not a synonym for simply recalling. It is the architecture that allows ideas to connect. Without memory, there is no fluency, no reliability, no mastery. Without memory, we are building on sand.

This is why I argue that we must not aim for pupils to practise until they can get it right, but until they can’t get it wrong. That small shift in expectation transforms everything. It shifts our attention from exposure to permanence. From performance to reliability. From coverage to connection.

In my seven-stage model of development (awareness, inflexibility, flexibility, automaticity, fluency, connectivity, maturity) memory is not a step along the way. It is the very means of progression. Automaticity is memory’s muscle. Fluency is memory in motion. Connectivity is memory forming networks. And maturity? That is memory becoming wisdom; knowledge that has endured, accumulated, integrated, and now radiates insight.

Most curricula are not built this way. Most move too fast. They worship novelty. They are seduced by the thrill of getting through things. And so, they mistake momentum for meaning. Ideas are taught once, assessed quickly, then discarded like scaffolding on a house that was never finished. Teaching, too, is often confused with performance. But teaching is not simply standing at the front of a room and talking through content. Presentation is not teaching.

I often say: “teaching is a process that necessarily results in learning. If learning did not occur, nor did teaching. It was just presentation. And that’s not the same thing.”

Surely, we know better than that? We know that retrieval strengthens memory. That revisiting deepens understanding. That children forget and that this forgetting is not a failure, but a natural and normal process that presents an invitation to teach again, more deeply, more meaningfully. The best teachers don’t fear going back. They know that true progress lies in looping, spiralling, returning with purpose.

But a danger lies here.

In some schools, a lethal mutation has taken hold. What was designed to be a deepening spiral has become a shallow loop. It is known by many names – recap, do now, bell work – but is most commonly praised as a 'retrieval starter.' Its intent was noble. Its execution is often tragic. What was supposed to be a way of building memory has decayed into a five-minute trivia game at the start of each lesson, disconnected from the curriculum’s deeper goals. In too many classrooms, retrieval has been reduced to a low-level routine: a handful of questions on unrelated topics, repeated endlessly in the name of memory, but devoid of meaning and connection.

When thoughtfully aligned to long-term goals, retrieval remains one of the most powerful cognitive tools we have, but only when used with purpose.

A curriculum that truly remembers cannot be built on disconnected fragments. It must be architected with foresight. It must know what is foundational and what is not. It must bind new ideas to old and prepare for what’s to come. Most of all, it must allow time. Time to revisit, to rebind, to move from fragile performance to secure knowing.

Conveyor belt classrooms are typified by teachers who believe that the timetabled 'lesson' is a good unit of learning. As though, serendipitously, every single new idea requires precisely one hour to be learnt. Teachers who reject conveyor belt approaches know they are free to flex the amount of time spent on introducing and understanding a new concept. They have a pedagogical repertoire that enables them to respond to the circumstances in front of them and can orchestrate an environment suitable to the particular concept and the particular pupils. The other type of teacher, the one stuck on the conveyor belt, moves on regardless of whether a concept has been gripped or not because they have been inducted through their training to believe that teaching is a formulaic process, one that can be shoehorned into a 'lesson planning proforma.'

The conveyor-belt teacher follows the script; the wise teacher writes the next page.

Teachers in classrooms where the curriculum remembers are deliberate in their choices, refusing to leave learning to chance. They understand the relevant pre-requisite knowledge needed for the new concept and, crucially, understand how this concept will develop over time and the new concepts that will be built on top of it. They can bind the new concept to that already learnt and that to be learnt.

These teachers also operate with a very different mindset. Teachers working with the seven-stage 'Limitless' model I have argued for over the years, don’t see pupils as being split into those who can learn and those who cannot. They know every child can learn, and if a child hasn’t yet gripped an idea, they don’t blame the learner, they interrogate their own teaching. Assessment, to them, is not a judgment of the child, but a mirror held up to their own impact. Has my teaching worked? If not, what corrective teaching is now required? They do not give up until all have learnt well.

This again connects to time. The teacher does not treat the lesson as the unit of learning. They understand that learning unfolds in phases and that pupils move through these ascending moments of enlightenment at different paces. They are unafraid of taking the time needed to secure ideas in long-term memory.

But even the most thoughtful curriculum can be undone by structural incoherence at the level of assessment. What we choose to measure, and how we measure it, either supports or sabotages memory

In the UK, we use a model of terminal assessment known as compensatory grading. It allows pupils to underperform on some elements of a subject while still achieving a good overall grade. This helps preserve the illusion of stable national standards over time, but it detaches an individual pupil’s grades from what they have actually learnt. A pupil might earn a good grade without understanding crucial ideas at all.

And this approach leaks into classroom practice. Teachers chase scores. Schools chase metrics. Pupils are trained to perform, not to understand. Assessment becomes a game of arithmetic, not an inquiry into whether anything was truly learnt.

We need a shift. We need to reject compensatory and norm-referenced grading and embrace criterion-referenced assessment – an approach that asks: what has this child really got to grips with? This would not only produce fairer assessments; it would rewire teaching itself. No longer would teachers gloss over fragile knowledge because the average score was good enough to assuage their guilt. Instead, they would focus on deep, secure understanding of each idea.

A curriculum that simply charts all the content without guiding the route risks overwhelming learners with disorientation. But a curriculum with memory plots meaningful journeys, where each step reinforces the last and anticipates the next.

This is why I often hold a mental model of curriculum design as a kind of mapmaking. Not the kind where you draw every landmark and hope children can trace a path between them, but the kind where you guide them, step by step, along a few rich trails. Not every idea deserves equal attention. Some are destinations. Others are bridges. Some are turning points. Others are the soil in which future thoughts will root.

In a school where the curriculum forgets, only the most privileged children will remember. Those whose parents reinforce learning at home. Those whose dinner-table conversations echo the classroom. But for the rest – the majority – the curriculum must do the remembering. It must rehearse, recall, reconnect. It must keep its promises.

Because when a curriculum forgets, it isn’t just the child who loses. It is the society they might have changed. The family they might have lifted. The question they might have asked. The world they might have reimagined.

We owe them more than exposure. We owe them permanence.

We must build a curriculum with a memory.

The question is not whether children are exposed to knowledge, but whether knowledge echoes long after the teacher has stopped speaking. A curriculum with a memory ensures that it does. It loops back, it binds, it deepens. It waits until all are ready to move forward. And in doing so, it reshapes what school means. No longer a place of hurried coverage, but a place where understanding endures. Where learning, once won, stays won. And where every child – every single child, regardless of background – has the chance not just to know something, but to become someone because of it.