Michael Fordham, Principal of Thetford Academy, explores what the government curriculum review really means for schools and explains how the National Curriculum works in practice.
The last National Curriculum came into being in 2014 and reviews tend to follow a political cycle – when a new party comes to power, it generally wants to do a review of the National Curriculum and the exam specifications, and the current government decided to do the same.
However, I think what the public think a National Curriculum does is quite different from how one works in reality. For example, it is commonly assumed that if something is mentioned on the National Curriculum then it is taught, and if it is not mentioned then it is not taught. This is a perfectly reasonable assumption, but it is not really true. Let me give you a couple of examples to show what I mean:
Let’s start with an example from the primary history curriculum, which (currently) says all children should be taught “Ancient Greece – a study of Greek life and achievements and their influence on the western world.” Now what does that mean? Does this mean that a primary school spends a couple of hours on Ancient Greece, or a couple of terms? Do children just study Athens, or do they study Sparta, Corinth and Macedonia?
Or did you know that in English Literature in secondary school, the only named author children have to study is Shakespeare? And it’s up to schools which plays they choose.
So in practice, schools have significant freedoms to determine what children study. We do not really have a National Curriculum: instead, we have a set of broad guidelines that suggest what kinds of things schools might teach, rather than what they must teach.
It is worth keeping this in mind when you read news headlines about the curriculum review.
Michael Fordham
Principal, Thetford Academy
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