The Public, the Personal, and

National Curricula: Reform in

England 1988 to 2010

Dominic Wyse
University of Cambridge
 Overview
• Latest news from England

• Exploring why we have reached this point

• Theoretical orientation

• New Labour, The NLS, and the rise of the regulatory

state

• Reviewing the Primary Curriculum

 Latest News from England
“Important information on the primary curriculum and
Key Stage 3 level descriptions ...

Ministers are committed to giving schools more freedom

from unnecessary prescription and bureaucracy. They
have always made clear their intentions to make
changes to the National Curriculum that will ensure a
relentless focus on the basics and give teachers more
flexibility than the proposed new primary curriculum
offered.

The Government intends to return the National

Curriculum to its intended purpose – a minimum national
entitlement organised around subject disciplines – and
will shortly announce its next steps.”
 Theoretical Orientation
• Globalisation as a spatial frame
(Ball, 2008)
• Politicians perceptions of risk; the rise of the
regulatory state; decline in trust
(Wyse and Opfer, 2010)
• League tables, target setting, high stakes
assessment as a “new imperialism”
(Tikly, 2004)
• Political ideologies - classic Conservatism vs
New Labour Project
• The personal and the public
Date Title
1997 National Literacy Strategy Frameworks for Teaching

Published 1999 for The National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers in
Implementation in 2000 England Key Stages 1 & 2
2003 Excellence and Enjoyment: A strategy for primary Schools

2006 March Independent review of the teaching of early reading Final Report,
Jim Rose, March 2006

2007 March, Published Early Years Foundation

2008 September becomes
statutory
2007 published National Curriculum Key Stages 3 and 4
2008 becomes statutory
2008, December The Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum: Interim
Report
2009, March House of Commons Children, Schools and Families: National
Curriculum Fourth Report of Session 2008 SO9 Vol. 1

Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum: Final Report

2009, June House of Commons Children, Schools and Families: National

Curriculum : Government Response to the Committee’s Fourth
Report of Session 2008S09
Third Special Report of Session S09
 New Labour, The NLS, and
the rise of the regulatory state

• Education Reform Act

1988 and a trajectory of
increasing government
control
• The Learning Game:
Arguments for an
Education Revolution.
Michael Barber
 The Learning Game
“Within the foreseeable future, Britain will need an
education service which is capable of providing higher
standards, to match those anywhere on earth ... “(p. 5)

“On the second of May [1997], I was appointed by

David Blunkett to lead the new Standards and
Effectiveness Unit in the Department for Education
and Employment. As a result, I find myself taking
responsibility for the implementation of the policy
strategy which I played a part in developing prior to the
election.” (p. 11)
•World class education system; standards;
national testing; target setting
New Labour, The NLS, and the rise of
the regulatory state
• 1996 The Literacy Task Force (chair Michael Barber):
International comparisons of children’s achievements in reading
suggest Britain is not performing well, with a slightly below average
position in international literacy ‘league tables’
• 1997 New Labour Government and the National
Literacy Strategy (NLS)

• Powerful ‘levers’ for state control

• Personal visions of Barber, Stannard and Huxford

(Stannard and Huxford, 2007)
• Lack of attention to the whole curriculum
(Boyle and Bragg, 2006)
Reviewing
the
Primary
Curriculum
 Reviewing the Primary
Curriculum
• Government commissioned ‘independent’
review

• The Cambridge Primary Review

• House of Commons inquiry

 House of Commons inquiry
1. The evidence that we received revealed a consensus that the
nature and particularly the management of the National
Curriculum is in urgent need of significant reform.

2. We would like to see the National Curriculum underpinned by

the principle that it should seek to prescribe as little as possible
and by the principle of subsidiarity, with decisions made at the
lowest appropriate level.

3. In order to keep the amount of prescription through the

National Curriculum to an absolute minimum we recommend that
a cap is placed on the proportion of teaching time that it accounts
for. Our view is that it should be less than half of teaching time.
 Government Response
Recent curriculum reviews have found overwhelming
support for the continuation of a National Curriculum and
the benefits it brings ...

Responsibility for curriculum development will remain

exactly as it is now.
There will be no substantive change to how the curriculum
is developed and monitored.

• Rose recommendations accepted by New Labour.

• New Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition
government deletes new NC and axes QCDA
 Conclusions
• New government proposals: Curriculum
freedom? But Subject disciplines; Relentless
focus on basics
 Conclusions
• New government proposals: Curriculum
freedom? But Subject disciplines; Relentless
focus on basics

• Who will be involved in future curriculum

development?
 Conclusions
• New government proposals: Curriculum
freedom? But Subject disciplines; Relentless
focus on basics

• Who will be involved in future curriculum

development?

• Need more rigorous and subtle balancing of

personal and public ownership of curriculum
 Conclusions
• New government proposals: Curriculum freedom?
But Subject disciplines; Relentless focus on basics

• Who will be involved in future curriculum

development?

• Need more rigorous and subtle balancing of

personal and public ownership of curriculum

• Other countries (including within the UK!) provide

useful models of curriculum development