Revising the national curriculum: a comment on the Secretary of State's proposals

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Abstract
The paper examines the UK Secretary of State for Education's proposed revisions to the national curriculum at the turn of the century. The author argues that the proposed changes towards a more flexible and less prescriptive curriculum framework are a direct attempt to address the significant problem of student disaffection, which is currently haunting educational policy-interventions aimed at ‘driving up standards’. He hypothesizes that the scale of the problem is much greater than the traditional indicators suggest and, whilst approving of the general direction in which the proposed changes are moving, questions whether they are radical enough to meet the challenges which social change is presenting to schools at the turn of the century. The author argues for a curriculum design which is more explicitly driven by pedagogical values and principles, and finds that the outcomes-based framework for citizenship education is a missed opportunity in this respect.

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