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At Cambridge Assessment we've been looking at the successive revisions to the national curriculum

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and we're really quite concerned at the direction in which things have been going.

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What we've done is look at international research on national curricula around the world

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and that's given us pause for thought in terms of the direction of national developments here.

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At its introduction in the early 90s, the National Museum

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was considered to be really rather overblown.

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Since then there have been successive revisions of its content,

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each revision really oriented towards slimming down the content

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to make it more manageable.

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Any slimming activity should be really underpinned by evidence,

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should be driven by well-grounded theory.

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Our concerns are that the most recent versions of the national curriculum

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have not been driven by good theory.

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They've been driven really by an attempt to keep competing lobby groups happy.

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In the case of science, particularly in the 14 to 16 area,

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what we find is that National Creek Church

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has become extraordinarily vague. Yes, it encapsulates science, but it doesn't offer a clear framework for teaching.

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It doesn't really state with any precision the concepts which children need to grasp at a particular age.

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There's been a strong emphasis on the idea of the national curriculum being motivating.

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It's really quite odd. The national curriculum itself, the statement of concepts, should be neither motivating nor demotivating.

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It's about fundamental concepts like conservation of mass,

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constantly squeezing contemporary

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issues into the national curriculum in a vague attempt to try and make it motivating.

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Well, that's a really misplaced process.

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I mean, there isn't anything fashionable about gravity.

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You just have to grapple with it.

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There isn't anything trendy about conservation of mass, but it's fundamental to science.

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The national curriculum is and should be highly prescriptive in terms of these fundamental concepts.

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However, it's the professional role of the teacher to be able to turn this list of concepts

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into motivating activities, into a motivating curriculum in the classroom.

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Some of the contemporary criticisms of schooling and qualifications is that young people can succeed relatively well in education just by picking up discreet little bits of knowledge and not organising them well into frameworks of knowledge.

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Well, this is exactly what we're trying to tackle in our critique of the national curriculum.

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What we want to focus on is the fundamental underpinning elements of education

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and ensure that that's embedded in classroom teaching and enshrined in qualifications.

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are determined by the content of the national curriculum in respect to GCSEs.

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So we have an interest in getting it right.

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We subscribe in Cambridge Assessment to the idea of a common core of content

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for those in compulsory schooling.

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And what we want is assessments which strongly reinforce that common core of content.

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That's why we're so committed to getting the national curriculum going in the right direction.

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