ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to a number of elements of the national curriculum that schools need to integrate into their curriculum planning: the cross-curricular themes and dimensions. David Hargreaves argues here for a reformed curriculum that would both integrate subject experiences and make room for the cross-curricular themes. An argument for restructuring the curriculum was also put forward by the NCC in advice to the Secretary of State in January 1993. However, its argument was set in terms not of developing new curriculum structures, but of the need to reduce the curriculum in each subject to ‘an essential core of knowledge’. In reading this chapter, how far would you feel such proposals would help teachers in developing coherent curricular plans? How far would such changes support the moves towards simplified ‘testing’ outlined by Martin Skilbeck in Chapter 20?
