ABSTRACT
We have been studying the work of primary teachers in England and Wales as they responded to a specific set of changes imposed upon them by some of the provisions of the Education Reform Act 1988. In particular, we have been examining the effect of the imposition of the national curriculum and RE upon their work. ‘Imposed’ change in education is a problematic idea; all educational provision in the maintained sector is essentially imposed, in the sense that it is legislated for, and logically, therefore, all changes in provision are ipso facto imposed. However, the changes to the primary school curriculum after 1988 were imposed in one particular sense. Curriculum change before 1988 had been piecemeal and voluntary; it had depended upon the initiative of individual teachers, schools or local education authorities. These individual initiatives could draw upon development projects from major agencies such as the Schools Council or the Nuffield Foundation, but such projects had no power at the implementation stage and no right of access to the processes of teacher training at either the initial or in-service stages. Although this arrangement was superficially democratic, in that it was based on assumptions of teacher and school autonomy in curriculum decision-making, it was ineffective in bringing about general curriculum change (see Steadman, Parsons and Salter 1978, Salter and Tapper 1981, Campbell 1985). After 1988 curriculum change was, for all practical
purposes, universal and statutory, focused upon the delivery in every school of the national curriculum and RE. For the first time since 1944, the primary teacher’s autonomy in curriculum matters had been constrained by law. The constraint resided in the four components of the concept of curriculum embodied in the 1988 Education Reform Act, namely programmes of study; attainment targets divided into hierarchically structured criteria, called statements of attainment; assessment arrangements; and the nine-subject plus RE framework. The four components were established in law through statutory orders providing the enforce-able prescriptions by which teachers’ work on the curriculum was controlled.
