ABSTRACT
As originally conceived and introduced, the National Curriculum was seen to include little consideration of the need for flexibility and relevance arising from the diversity of pupil attainments, abilities and needs. The difficulty of resolving these tensions has meant that the introduction of the National Curriculum raises with new force the issue of universal aims for the education of all children. One possibility which has been suggested is that there should be an alternative curriculum for those not yet operating at a notional 5-year old level – which would include all pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLDs), and no doubt a good many others. Pupils would transfer to the National Curriculum when they reached the appropriate level. The 1988 Education Act and the National Curriculum as part of it, therefore, has the potential to provide pupils with PMLDs and their peers with and without SENs with a curriculum which is both broad and relevant.
