The Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) led by Becky Francis has now issued its Call for Evidence. The questions it asks focus on improvements in existing arrangements, having particularly in mind the needs of children disadvantaged in various ways, as their schooling tends to leave them less well prepared for life and work than those who are more fortunate.
All this is welcome. But some would say that the Review needs a wider vision. This may well be true of the National Education Union (NEU). It has urged Becky Francis to take note of the recommendations of its expert-led Education Renewed summit last June. Its first – and highlighted – core principle for a new national curriculum is that it should
serve some core purposes, including a statement about what the nation believes childhood and education should be. Clear purposes for the curriculum are to be articulated and differentiated to account for need (NEU 2024).
Among the fifty-four questions included in CAR’s Call for Evidence there is not one on what the purposes of the school curriculum should be. This may arise from the way it defines ‘the curriculum’:
When referring to the ‘curriculum’ we mean all of the content (both knowledge and skills) that pupils study during key stage 1, key stage 2, key stage 3, key stage 4 and 16-19 education. The detail of this is designed by schools and must include the content set out in the national curriculum programmes of study and the guidance on RSHE and Religious Education (Department for Education 2024, 13).
In pressing for ‘clear purposes for the curriculum’, NEU is not taking the content of the current national curriculum broadly as read, as is CAR. It starts further back at the level of purposes. It is from these that the curriculum is to be derived. So ‘the curriculum’ as the NEU understands it cannot be equated with the actual national curriculum. It must refer to something more general – to the learning that is to take place in schools, for instance; or perhaps, and more precisely, to what Mick Waters, one of the leading experts who attended its Education Renewed summit, has described as
The entire learning experience that we plan for our children during their school years. It includes what they should learn in lessons and what they should learn in the rhythm and routine of the rest of their school day, along with those events and opportunities that we provide for them beyond traditional school hours (Brighouse and Waters 2021, 170).
Unlike CAR’s definition, this one does not assume that the curriculum consists of a number of largely traditional discrete subjects.
Supporters of CAR may remind us at this point that it seeks small-scale, not radical changes to the status quo:
The Review will seek to identify the most significant and pressing issues facing curriculum and assessment. We will focus on addressing these without destabilising the system, making changes where things are working well, or where there is insufficient evidence to warrant change. In short, we seek to bring about evolution, not revolution (Department for Education 2024, 7).
To some extent this stance is understandable and defensible: the immediate task is to remedy glaring deficiencies. But what does it mean to favour ‘evolution, not revolution’? The phrase is a common one, not least in the corporate world. There it means making progress by slow and gradual stages rather than dramatic ones. You cannot make progress unless there is some kind of goal towards which you are progressing. If CAR is using the slogan in this sense, what longer-term goal or goals is it trying to reach?
This brings us back to NEU’s call for ‘clear purposes for the curriculum’. Either CAR has hidden goals – which is unlikely; or – more probably – it is using the slogan simply to reiterate its concern with immediate, pressing issues, without having any further purposes in mind.
This, as I say, is a defensible stance. But it is a world away from the curriculum policy adopted by the Labour government of 1997-2010, which delegated this largely to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). That worked for years – four of them under the leadership of Mick Waters – to refashion the 1988 National Curriculum it had inherited by basing it on a well-thought-through set of purposes. This culminated in the new National Curriculum of 2007, where the secondary curriculum was underpinned by a set of statutory aims enabling young people to become [1] successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve; [2] confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives; and [3] responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society. Each of these three aims was further specified in ten sub-aims. These aims were to shape the content of the National Curriculum, still – at least pro tem – largely arranged under the 1988 subjects with the addition of Citizenship. In addition, there were seven cross-curricular themes including identity and cultural diversity, healthy lifestyles and community participation. These mitigated the discreteness of the separate subjects.
I hope that Bridget Phillipson and Becky Francis see CAR as just the first step in a more thorough remodelling of the school curriculum which owes more to rational, aims-based planning than to traditional ways of thinking. If so, revisiting the 2007 curriculum might well be a way forward.
References
Brighouse, T., and Waters, M. (2021) About our Schools (2021). Carmarthen: Crown House.
Department for Education (2024) Curriculum and Assessment Review: Call for evidence. https://consult.education.gov.uk/curriculum-and-assessment-team/curriculum-and-assessment-review-call-for-evidence/supporting_documents/Curriculum%20and%20Assessment%20Review%20%20Call%20for%20Evidence.pdf
National Education Union (2024) ‘Education Renewed’, https://neu.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-07/Curriculum%20and%20Assessment%20roundtable%20statement%20of%20principles.pdf
