Primary Science in the Mid-1990s: Grounds for Optimism

One of the main and, to some, the most exciting impacts of the National Curriculum in the UK has been its effect on science teaching in primary schools. Prior to the National Curriculum, introduced in 1989, science education was left for the most part to secondary schools. Provision at the primary level was somewhat haphazard, ranging from little more than nature study in many schools to some inspired science teaching in others. The effect of the National Curriculum is that now, in the mid-1990s, science is a more or less well-established, but certainly accepted, part of the curriculum in every primary school in the UK.