The Impact of the National Curriculum on the Teaching of Five-Year-Olds

Theo Cox, Susan Sanders

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138321496
• eBook ISBN: 9780429846502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1994. One of the most neglected areas of research and thus writing is the world of the infant school child. Those who know it best are teachers who tend not to write. Those who write most are academics and even they venture rarely into this area. This book is based on research funded by the University of Wales. A number of teachers in a Welsh LEA were interviewed over time as the National Curriculum was being introduced up to Key Stage 1. The structured interviews covered a wide range of topics related to the anticipated and actual efforts of the National Curriculum at this key stage including curriculum planning, assessment, teaching methods, and organization. Teachers' attitudes to the curriculum were explored through a short attitude test. The resulting data provides in depth the first such examination and is a resource not only in itself but for all those researchers on change agents and restructuring.

Chapter 1

Introduction: The National Curriculum and the 1988 Education Reform Act

Since the 1944 Education Act, until the introduction of the National Curriculum primary teachers have enjoyed considerable freedom of educational thought and practice, and, in contrast to their secondary school colleagues, their work has not been constrained by the requirements of a national system of formal examinations. (The eleven-plus selection procedures did constrain the upper primary curriculum of some schools, it is true, but these procedures were largely abandoned in the 1960s.) Despite this enviable degree of autonomy, however, primary schools have been subject to a greater or lesser degree of control of their curriculum planning, teaching and classroom organization by the policies of their respective LEAs. At its best the influence of such policies has been of great benefit to primary schools in providing sound guidance and support, while respecting teachers’ professional independence. However, such influence has been damaging in those cases where the strong advocacy of a particular LEA philosophy or approach to primary teaching has foisted upon teachers practices which they have neither understood fully nor accepted into their own thinking (see Alexander, 1992, for example).

The passing of the Education Reform Act (ERA) in 1988 marked a strikingly new phase in education characterized by central government control of the content of the curriculum across the 5 to 16 year age range. This was coupled with a deliberate weakening of the powers of local government in educational matters through the enforced delegation of their responsibilities for management and budgeting to the schools themselves. Chitty (1992) provides a lucid analysis of the political background to the introduction of this Act. His view of the Act is summed up in the following statement:

It increased the powers of the Education Secretary to a quite alarming degree, and restored to central government a control over the school curriculum which had been surrendered in the inter-war period. While gathering more power to the centre, it simultaneously introduced important limitations on the functions of LEAs, who were forced to give greater autonomy to schools, heads and governing bodies. Above all, it effectively ended that ill defined partnership between central government, local government and individual schools which had been such a prominent feature of the educational scene since the settlement of 1944. (Chitty, 1992: 37)

However Chitty argues that the origin of the National Curriculum lay partly in Prime Minister James Callaghan’s celebrated speech in October 1976 at Ruskin College, Oxford, which launched the ‘great debate’ in education. Amongst other things Callaghan advocated the need for a core curriculum of basic knowledge, greater teacher accountability, and the direct subordination of the secondary curriculum to the needs of the economy (for a collection of papers written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of that speech see Williams et al., 1992).

As Chitty states, the major provisions of the 1988 Education Reform Act are:

1 the introduction of a National Curriculum for all state schools alongside a national system of assessment for pupils from 5 to 16 years. The Act defines mathematics, English and science as ‘core subjects’ (plus Welsh in Welsh medium schools in Wales), with a second group of ‘foundation’ subjects, namely: a modern foreign language (for secondary pupils only); Welsh as a second language for schools in Wales; technology; history; geography; art; music; and physical education.¹ Religious education was added later as a ‘basic subject’.

For most subjects the Act stated that there would be attainment targets for children aged 7, 11, 14 and 16, which would provide standards against which pupils’ progress and performance could be assessed by the individual teacher and also, through a national system of tests (Standard Assessment Tasks or SATs). The detailed content of the National Curriculum, including the attainment targets, was laid down in subject orders (often referred to as ‘National Curriculum folders’ by teachers), supplemented by non-statutory programmes of study for each subject;

2 the introduction of a system of local management of schools (LMS) under which school budgets for staffing, premises and services were delegated from the LEA to individual schools;

3 the creation of a new tier of schooling comprising City Technology Colleges (CTCs) and grant maintained schools. The latter would choose to opt out of LEA control and receive direct funding from central government. The Act allowed the governors of all secondary schools and primary schools with over 300 registered pupils to apply to the Secretary of State for grant maintained status.

As enshrined in the ERA the content of the National Curriculum, although not its principle, has been the subject of considerable criticism (see, for example, Chitty, 1992; Lawton, 1988). Certainly, at the primary level, its strong subject orientation seems incompatible with the view of the curriculum expressed in the Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council for Education, England, 1967). This argues that the extent to which subject matter ought to be classified, and the headings under which such classifications are made will vary very much with the age of the children, with the demands made by the structure of the subject matter to be studied, and with the circumstances of the school. Pointedly the report states that ‘Any practice which predetermines the pattern and imposes it upon all is to be condemmed’ (para. 538). The report goes on to suggest that for young children the broadest division of the curriculum is suitable, e.g. language, science, mathematics, environmental studies and the expressive arts. For older children (9 to 12) more subject divisions can be expected, although ‘experience in secondary schools has shown that teaching of rigidly defined subjects, often by subject specialists, is far from suitable for the oldest children who will be in middle schools’ (para. 538).

As recently as 1985 HMI proposed a curriculum model for children aged 5 to 16 which was based upon areas of learning and experience rather than traditional subjects, as follows:

aesthetic and creative;

human and social;

linguistic and literary;

mathematical;

moral;

physical;

scientific;

spiritual;

technological. (DES, 1985, para. 33)

These areas were not suggested as discrete elements to be taught separately and in isolation from one another and were not equated with particular subjects, although it was acknowledged that some subjects would contribute more to some areas than others.

The National Curriculum guidance document entitled A Framework for the Whole Curriculum 5–16 in Wales (CCW, 1989) puts forward a list of eight ‘elements of learning’ which correspond closely to the areas of learning just listed. It is advocated that the discrete subjects of the National Curriculum should be subsumed within these elements which should facilitate planning on a cross-subject basis and ‘help to break down a still prevalent tendency to develop the teaching of individual subjects in isolation from others’ (CCW, 1989: 5). However, the fact remains that this document, together with an equivalent document published by the National Curriculum Council (1990) is for guidance only while the full legislative weight of the ERA is channelled through separate subject orders.

Despite the fact that it seems somewhat at odds with earlier, alternative curriculum models, the National Curriculum could still be said to represent a careful analysis of the knowledge, skills and understanding which children need to learn, albeit within a narrow subject framework. It does not prescribe how this content should be taught so that, at the primary level, for example, it should be possible to teach it through a thematic, topic approach to some extent. Indeed the guidance document produced by the Curriculum Council for Wales (CCW, 1989) states that the primary curriculum will be designed in an integrated manner and often implemented through topic or thematic work (but see Chapter 9 of this book on this question).

Further, it was not intended that the National Curriculum should constitute the whole of the primary or secondary school curriculum. Indeed the National Curriculum Council (NCC) argued that the National Curriculum alone could not provide the broad and balanced curriculum to which all pupils were entitled; it identified five broad themes which underpinned the curriculum, particularly at the secondary school level. These were: economic and industrial understanding, careers education and guidance, health education, education for citizenship, and environmental education (NCC, 1990). In addition, this NCC document stressed the importance of the dimensions of equal opportunities for all pupils and their preparation for life in a multicultural community as underpinning all teaching in schools.

In his recent interim report on the revision of the National Curriculum Sir Ron Dearing (NCC, 1993b)² proposes to increase the amount of teaching time available for discretionary use by the teacher. Such a move would clearly allow schools more scope to teach beyond the confines of the National Curriculum.

A central element of the National Curriculum was an elaborate system for the assessment of children’s performance and progress. This was designed to provide both formative information, which would enable teachers to match the learning tasks more closely to individual’s level of knowledge, skill and understanding, and summative information, which would provide a summary of a child’s level of achievement in a given area of skill or knowledge. Formative assessment was to be carried out by the teacher using a self-designed or school-designed system, while summative assessment was to be carried out by means of nationally prescribed Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs). These were designed to reflect normal teaching practice as far as possible, and were to be given by the class teacher, but they were standardized in their method of administration and scoring and would yield results that were comparable from school to school. As such they could be used to provide overall pupil performance data for the national ‘league tables’ of school performance which were introduced by the 1988 Act.

This assessment system was based on the work of a Task Group on Assessment and Testing set up by the government under the leadership of Professor Paul Black. Their recommendations were contained in a main report (DES/Welsh Office, 1988a) and three supplementary reports (DES/Welsh Office, 1988b). The overseeing and subsequent development of the National Curriculum assessment system was entrusted to the School Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC) set up by the government at the same time as the National Curriculum Council (NCC) in England and the Curriculum Council for Wales (CCW). (NCC and SEAC were merged into a new body called the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority on October 1st 1993, while the CCW is being replaced by a new Assessment and Curriculum Authority for Wales from April 1994.)

It could be argued that the time scale for the phased introduction of the National Curriculum and its associated apparatus for assessment was very tight in terms of allowing teachers sufficient time to adapt to each element as it came on stream. At Key Stage 1, for example, the full National Curriculum, comprising nine subjects, plus Welsh for schools in Wales, and religious education, was introduced during the period 1989 to 1993. However the demands placed upon the teachers at this key stage were significantly increased by a succession of changes to existing subject orders and assessment arrangements which took place during this period. One example is that the mathematics subject order was revised in 1991.

While these additional changes were likely to be very frustrating to hard pressed teachers trying to get to grips with the essentials of the National Curriculum it has to be said that, in some measure, these changes were made by the present government in response to concerted action by the teachers themselves. This was especially so in the case of the national assessment arrangements which are currently being streamlined.

The recent post hoc changes to the National Curriculum have now culminated in a full scale review of the whole system which has been entrusted by the Education Secretary to Sir Ron Dearing, currently Chairman of the SEAC, and also to the Chairman of the Curriculum Council for Wales. The overall aim of the review is to achieve a slimming down of the National Curriculum and its assessment procedures but, in the course of conducting it, Dearing is raising a number of key issues upon which he is inviting the views of teachers in a commendably frank and consultative fashion (see his series of five articles in the Times Educational Supplement commencing 17 September 1993 (Dearing 1993 a, b, c, d, e)). He has already produced an interim report (NCC, 1993b) and is to make his final recommendations in December 1993. In one of these articles he states his view that teachers wished ‘to take time to get things right and, meanwhile, put a brake on the rate of change’ (Dearing, 1993a: 21). Accordingly he has recommended that no further curricular changes should be made before September 1995. He has made it clear that he is seeking to lighten and rationalize the present over-cluttered structure of the National Curriculum without going back to the drawing board. He is keen not to jettison those elements which teachers have worked so hard to implement to date.

Studying the Impact of the National Curriculum at Key Stage One

The aim of our research study, which was funded by the University of Wales, was to study the impact of the National Curriculum upon the teaching of 5-year-old children, i.e. those in Year 1 of this curriculum, as judged by the teachers themselves. We decided to focus upon this age group in particular since they were the very first to experience the National Curriculum. The study was conducted in a representative sample of the primary and infant schools of a South Wales LEA from 1989 to 1990, with a short follow-up study in 1991. The focus of the study was upon the National Curriculum as such but, inevitably, the responses of the teachers at interview were partly coloured by their perceptions of the effects of other innovations introduced by the ERA, including LMS.

It is important to bear in mind that the study was carried out in Wales, which has its own independent body, the Curriculum Council for Wales (CCW). There are certain differences between the National Curriculum in Wales from that in England which, taken together, constitute a distinctive ‘Welsh dimension’. The most important of these i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction: The National Curriculum and the 1988 Education Reform Act
• Part I: The Study
• Part II: Selected Issues Arising from the Study
• Appendix 1 The Teachers’ Attitude Scale
• Appendix 2 Additional Tables and Figures
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index