Hargreaves, Eleanore;
Quick, Laura;
Buchanan, Denise;
(2023)
National Curriculum and Assessment in England and the continuing narrowed experiences of lower-attainers in primary schools.
Journal of Curriculum Studies
10.1080/00220272.2023.2253455.
(In press).
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Abstract
A considerable body of global educational literature has examined how schooling policy based on measuring and managing performance has narrowed children’s access both to curriculum breadth and to diversity in pedagogy. This article approaches these curriculum dilemmas within the global concern for children’s wellbeing and social justice. In particular, it focuses on the experiences of children designated by this system as lower-attaining, which is a much under-researched aspect of these concerns. Based on an innovative five-year life-history study of 23 seven to 12 year-old lower-attaining school-children in the English system, this article examines how these children themselves depicted their schooling experiences. We conclude, drawing on term-by-term experiences narrated by these children, that the current curriculum and assessment arrangements narrowed their opportunities for participation in engaged learning, especially in comparison to higher-attaining children; which undermined their wellbeing and brought social justice into question. The children highlighted the negative impact of curriculum emphases on mathematics and English rather than on non-core and outside-school curriculum areas for lower-attaining in particular; and the emphasis on attainment rather than participation in learning. They had few opportunities to have their specific preferences validated, leading in some cases to these lower-attainers being excluded from participation in school-learning.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | National Curriculum and Assessment in England and the continuing narrowed experiences of lower-attainers in primary schools |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/00220272.2023.2253455 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2023.2253455 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Curriculum; social justice; narrowed; low-attainers; National Curriculum and Assessment |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176481 |
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