ABSTRACT
A national curriculum has much to recommend it. It gives the impression of common ground, a shared construct: it offers the prospect of an entitlement curriculum, outlining clearly the education to which all pupils have a right, the skills, knowledge and experiences that should be central to the processes of schooling. The difficulty starts, however, with the shift from the abstract principle of a national curriculum to the concrete manifestation of the National Curriculum: in its particularity, it is immediately subject to the policies of the time produced by the politics of the moment.
