Speech: The Inner Educational Life of the National Curriculum for England
The Seventh Cambridge Symposium on Knowledge in Education, at Jesus College, 2nd July 2024
Introduction
I recently chaired a panel discussion on the subject of knowledge and the future of the English school curriculum and I was very taken by three observations made by one of the panellists, Tim Oates, of Cambridge Assessment.
You can watch the discussion here.
Some of you know Tim, but for those who don’t, he was one of the chief architects of the most recent version of the National Curriculum for England, which was published amidst great controversy some eleven years ago.
Oates’ first comment was that whatever we might think about the National Curriculum, it remains an important national statement of all young people’s educational entitlement, and on this I really do agree, as a teacher, parent, but also as a citizen.
I also believe that this curriculum, of all the curriculums that exist in England, is the most sociologically significant.
At the debate, Tim also suggested that a review of England’s school curriculum was long overdue and here I again found myself in agreement.
Much has changed since 2013. The old new curriculum has now been implemented and tested and it seems likely if not inevitable that as a new British government is formed and then finds its feet it will want to leave its mark on the curriculum.
So at a time when we are all looking forward, I think it’s important that we also look back. The curriculum we have surely can be improved, it cannot be the best of all possible curriculums, but we won’t know if we are improving it unless we have a sense of its history and its past structures.
Tim also made a significantly more specific point, and this really did catch my ear, as it was directly related to my own research interests, which are mostly retrospective, rather than prospective and prescriptive.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say quite what Oates said before, so it came as a bit of shock.
Tim observed that since the National Curriculum for England was first introduced in 1988 there has been a remarkable degree of continuity across time, with the exception of one key period: 2007 - 2010.
At this point, he argued, the generally consistent structure of the National Curriculum was briefly disrupted, before the old curriculum norm was reestablished in 2013.
I found Tim’s last point especially interesting as it runs counter to the ways in which the recent story of the National Curriculum has been told. In the conventional version of this story 2013 was the moment of disruption and the ascendance of a radical capital ‘C’ political Conservatism within education.
The new curriculum, launched by the then Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in 2013, aimed to crush the agency of teachers and pupils and was motivated by the wider social objective of restoring tradition, hierarchy, deference and social order, some have claimed. It was, if you like, a form of symbolic violence. This new curriculum, it was argued, was no more than a restorationist project, a curriculum of the dead, designed to force England’s pupils to take the knee politically.
I have always thought that this line of thinking was a touch overblown. The new curriculum of 2013 certainly was traditionalist, and small ‘c’ conservative, in a cultural and education sense. And we can of course dispute the inclusion of particular details, many of which were a touch odd and perhaps old fashioned, but a quick glance at the actual documentation suggests a curriculum that was rather more mundane and narrowly educational in its motives than many of its critics have argued.
My main criticism of it would be that it was rather too detailed in some parts and somewhat partial in others. Why no philosophy? This really was a curious omission. The Conservatives missed a significant opportunity to raise English educational standards there, in my view.
My Research
My research does not make the case for any particular curriculum, as I said, it is retrospective, not prospective and prescriptive. Instead, it looks at how the actual National Curriculum has developed over time.
The NCfE, for those who do not know its history, has been written and rewritten in full five times. It was launched in 1988, rewritten in 1995, then again in 1999. It was then rewritten in stages between 2007 and 2010 and then again in full in one go in 2013.
In what remains of this introduction I am going to give a brief summary of what I have found so far in my research project. This hopes to answer two questions:
How might we explain both the continuities and the changes in the structure of the English National Curriculum over time?
What theory might help us to best explain this structure?
I am not sure I have the definitive answer to the first question - but I do think Tim was onto something.
Today, however, I hope to give a more definite answer to the second question.
I also believe that my partial answer to question one will at least provide supporting evidence for my more certain answer to question two.
On the second theory question, I like to begin by asserting that I have found Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device useful in explaining the changing structure of the National Curriculum for England.
My initial findings to the first question are presented in the table distributed (see below). This details my initial comparative study of the National Curriculum Subject Orders for English, looking at three critical points:
1988, when the curriculum was first established;
2007-2010, the point of significant disruption;
2013, when there was, to some extent, a return to the prior curriculum norm.
I have started with English as it is the most important of all the subjects in the curriculum, as a subject in its own right, and as the medium through which all other subjects are learned.
What does the Pedagogic Device Do?
Bernstein argued that his Pedagogic Device was a sociological tool for analysing cultural transmission and as such might be applied to a variety of institutions and contexts within and beyond education, including what Bernstein calls “repairing institutions”, like prisons.
For now, however, I will set this claim aside, which we may wish to pick up in the discussion.
What I can say of Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, however, is that it seems especially helpful in the analysis of the school curriculum.
What Bernstein’s theoretical construct does, I believe, is provide us with a specialised language for the description and analysis of the internal life of pedagogic institutions and as such it differs from many other sociological theories that have been applied to education.
The most powerful aspect of his theory, I believe, is that it works from the inside out, whereas many other sociological theories of education tend to be more external in their initial orientation, working from the outside in.
Education, as I see it, is also too often presented in sociological theory as an effect of forces from without. It might be, it can be, but we should not assume that it always is.
What strikes me about education is the extent to which it often does not correspond with anything beyond it. Its forms are often unique and exist for educational reasons. Education, I suggest, can have an internal life.
Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device also directs our sociological gaze to the specific knowledge work of schools, prompting us to analyse the existence of boundaries between different types of knowledge within schooling and between the school and the world, whilst also considering the social relations through which this knowledge is both transmitted by teachers, acquired by pupils and finally assessed.
I should at this point state that I don’t think that studying the internal and external relations of a curriculum is a methodological opposition, as both moves, in my view, are necessary. And Bernstein’s theory suggests ways that the two might be linked.
Still, I do believe that we ought to first start our analysis with the internal forms of the curriculum, whilst also considering the educational principles on which they are based, before then proceeding to considering the external factors that might have also shaped them.
In short, we should first recognise the curriculum as a social object in its own right.
Often, but not always, an internalist analysis, which identifies the specifically educational reasons that a curriculum has been organised in the ways that it has, can generate an explanation that is sufficient to our analytical needs.
Curriculum Structure and the Pedagogic Device
In his 1975 essay On the Curriculum Basil Bernstein outlined two major modern tendencies within curriculum design and policy, which he called collection and integration.
Curriculums based on the principle of collection, he argued, have strong internal boundaries between different knowledge types, and often have a strong external boundary as well, whereas curriculums based on the principle of integration do not.
As Bernstein put it:
“Where we have integration the syllabus for a given content is subordinate to a general idea which itself is subject to change.”
(Bernstein, 1975, p73)
In relation to my first question on the structure of the NCfE, Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, as well as his integration / collection couplet, usefully helps us to develop Tim’s observation into something approaching an sociological analysis.
An application of the Pedagogic Device makes it clear that there has indeed been significant continuities in the structure of the National Curriculum for England over time and I would add that this continuity can be explained in terms of the persistence within English state education and curriculum policy of the principle of curriculum collection.
Yet the persistence of the curriculum principle of collection must itself be explained. My suggestion is that the persistence of this curriculum principle speaks, I believe, to a relatively stable, knowledge oriented, view of the purpose of schooling within English state school curriculum policy. Here education’s function has generally been differentiated from other socialising institutions, such as work, or the family. Knowledge transmission and academic education has been both valued and made a policy priority.
This view of education has been reinforced structurally in a variety of ways, the most important of which is that the NCfE has generally differentiated knowledge types from each other internally in its subjects, which have in turn principally, though not exclusively, taken the university academic disciplines as their content focus.
As such the relatively stable structure of the National Curriculum for England over time might be said to give voice in institutional terms to the following sociological observation made by Michael Young:
“From their earliest days, and increasingly in modern societies, schools have been established as specialised institutions, which can realise some aims and not others.”
Young adds:
“What distinguishes schools is that their primary concern, as embodied in the specialist professional staff that they recruit, and in their curriculum, is (or should be) to provide all their students with access to knowledge.”
(Young, 2014, p2)
At the same time, my application of the Pedagogic Device has shown that there was, as argued by Oates, a period of significant change within the National Curriculum between 2007 and 2010. At this point the NCfE’s typically collection-based, academically oriented, structure was altered, to some extent.
However, it is also important to note that no two versions of the National Curriculum for England have been identical or indeed pure in terms of their structure type. There have been five full versions, four of which are clear examples of curriculum collection, but each one of these collected in quite different ways, and the version that integrated content the most also collected. So the picture is complex.
I have provided a summary of the key comparisons in the table circulated. As I have said, my initial focus has been on the National Curriculum Orders for English.
Analysis
My analysis shows that in the period between 2007 and 2010 there was a moment of curriculum instability, or if you prefer curriculum change. At this point the principle of collection was disrupted, to some extent, and integration started to dominate.
How might this be explained?
I believe that this moment of disruption can be explained by the underlying differences in the views of education held by the two major parties which have governed the English state education system since the National Curriculum for England (and initially Wales) was first introduced in the third ministry of Margaret Thatcher in 1988.
The Labour Party, I believe my analysis demonstrates, has tended to have a stronger affinity with the principle of curriculum integration than the Conservative Party and this has been a consistent difference. But at the same time, this is not a straightforward difference. As I have suggested, there are elements of integration within Conservative curriculum policy, as well as elements of collection within Labour curriculum policy.
The reasons for this difference are no doubt complex and require further analysis. They might rest ultimately on differing views of society, and of the role of education within society, but one thing that does seem relatively clear is this. The principle of curriculum integration fits well with progressivist educational thinking, and progressivist educational thinking is commonly, though not exclusively, associated with the political left.
Progressivism, in my understanding of it, is something of a contradiction, as it elevates the agency of the learner, whilst also making their person the object of the teachers’ developmental gaze. It can be intrusive and manipulative for this reason, especially for the working class pupil, a point that Bernstein famously made in his essay on what he described as invisible (progressive) and visible (traditional) pedagogies.
Progressivism within education, I’d suggest, has been a significant feature of the Labour Party’s collective educational mind for many, many years. So it is hardly surprising that in the third term of a Labour government, and in a period when Gordon Brown was in charge, the curriculum was taken in a more progressivist / integrationist direction.
It might also be the case that there are other macro political reasons why Labour’s curriculum policy took this direction and these must also be considered.
However, I do think that looking at the educational ideals that have generally dominated within the Labour Party gets us some of the way down the road to understanding the changing form of the curriculum, especially between 2007-2010.
So what seems key, to me at least, is that Labour Party curriculum policy made the person of the learner the object of pedagogic attention. In its curriculum the Labour Party sought to fashion future citizens, workers, as well as the knowing subject that is more typically and indirectly addressed by the academic collection curriculum that has been promoted by Conservative administrations.
Underlying all of this, I think, it could be that differing forms of solidarity have been expressed within English state education. Bernstein, following Durkheim, once made the point that the differing forms of the curriculum might be understood using Durkheim’s organic and mechanical solidarity couplet. He added, provocatively, that whilst the integrated curriculum might promise organic solidarity, as every pupil appears to be treated as an individual, it in fact delivers the opposite, or mechanical solidarity, as pupils taught using an integrated curriculum become subordinated as persons to a single governing ideal.
Overall my suggestion here is that the Labour Party’s vision of education and schooling, and of the curriculum, is one that has differed from that of the Conservative Party, at least within the period that has been the focus of my project. Integration, combined with collection, seems like an apt description of the leading tendency within Labour Party curriculum policy.
By contrast the Conservative Party has more consistently favoured curriculum collection and of the three versions of the National Curriculum written under Conservative direction it is notable that the 2013 Gove version was the purest example of academic collection. In this sense the Gove curriculum was a departure from all prior versions.
Where does the PD Come From and What Does it Seek to Achieve?
In Volume 3 of Bernstein’s collected essays his Pedagogic Device was not fully formed, but the core aspects for my purpose are present and are perhaps presented more clearly in this volume than in those that followed.
In particular, his presentation features the concepts of classification, or boundaries, and framing, or relations. In the table I refer to these using EB and IB for external and internal boundaries and PR for pedagogic relations. I have used a plus or a minus where I see them as strong or weak.
In the collection Bernstein explains that with his classification and framing couplet he attempted to bring together notions of social structure (or classification) and agency (or framing).
He also suggests that his theory is content independent, which is why it could be applied to multiple contexts, including the school, prison and family, and he acknowledges that this might be one of the weaknesses of his construct, or an area to be developed. This is certainly an issue for Bernsteinians to consider.
Overall Bernstein argues in Volume Three that his focus is on the processes of cultural transmission, not origination, and he makes the point that the forms of transmission he identifies could convey a variety of rival ideologies, ranging from the radical to the conservative.
In the revised version of Volume Five Bernstein developed and simplified his presentation of this point when he clarified what his theory brought to the sociological table: “ … most studies have studied only what is carried or relayed, they do not study the constitution of the relay itself.” (Bernstein, 2000, p25).
Conclusion
An internalist analysis of the curriculum, such as that prompted by Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, certainly provides us with a specialised language for identifying, analysing and explaining the distinctive features of the curriculum.
In particular, the Pedagogic Device draws our attention to the changing ways in which the NCfE has organised knowledge for pedagogic purposes, whilst also suggesting how its internal structures might be explained with reference to the immediate and wider social contexts of its generation.
In this presentation I have offered a description and explanation of the NCfE which is primarily internal. I have identified how the curriculum has changed and I have initially attempted to relate these changes to the persistent educational ideals of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, as opposed to wider ideological currents and forces.
I have argued that if the formally stated knowledge and skills that pupils acquire within schooling is our primary concern, as well as the curriculum structure in which they sit, then future sociological studies of the NCfE should first adopt an internalist approach.
This starting point, I have suggested, prompts us to both recognise the structure of the curriculum as a social object in its own right, and to also consider the specifically pedagogic character of the contexts in which this object has been generated and developed.
But our analysis does not have to end there, nor should it.
At the same time, I have argued that it would be a mistake to draw an absolute distinction between internalist and externalist modes of sociological analysis, as both are important.
I have proposed that an adequate analysis of the NCfE requires that we consider both its internal structures, as well as its immediate and wider generative contexts. These contexts include those that are pedagogic and specialised, as well as those that are ideological and more general.
With these points made, I’d like to end with the observation that implicit within externalist and internalist modes of analysis there might be rival images or theories of society. Narrowly externalist studies of the curriculum would seem to take as their starting point the assumption that the institutions of education simply reproduce power structures from without, whereas internalist studies seem to assume the opposite. In studies such as these, education has an isolated internal life.
Perhaps education is something more than a relay for forces from without, perhaps it is a context which is generative of its own symbolic reality. Or as Bernstein has it in Volume 5, education might just be the place where we at least sometimes get 'to think the unthinkable” and the “yet to be thought' (Bernstein, 2000, p. 31).
References
Bernstein, B (1975) Class, Codes and Control: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions
Bernstein, B (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique
Young, M (2017) What is a Curriculum and What Can it Do?
Table: English Subject Orders Compared Over Time