ABSTRACT
The move to central control can be seen, to greater or lesser extents, and at varying speeds, across the other major English-speaking nations of the world. As evidenced in the Report on Subject Breadth in International Jurisdictions and the more specific report that focused purely on English, maths and science, curriculums of the major Anglophone countries – Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand – were explored but there was apparently no consideration of the work of our nearest English-speaking neighbours, namely the other countries of the United Kingdom. The English curriculum in Northern Ireland is certainly not a curriculum that bears the hallmarks of the centralist reform of England – either that of the New Labour administration or of their Conservative traditionalist successors. Arguments about what constitutes effective English teaching, and what the subject should look like, have been as fierce in the United States as in any other English-speaking nation.
