The Common Core Curriculum: The Key Issue for Government

Summary

In a recent paper Margaret Reid discussed the core curriculum debate, re‐examined some 1974‐5 NFER data, and concluded that ’there already exists a core curriculum in all but a handful of schools‘¹ despite the diversity of choice provided for the 14‐16s. Reid's discussion of the problem of defining the ‘core’ as distinct from the ‘whole fruit’ of the curriculum was comprehensive and informative, but her conclusion about the existence of a core curriculum is debatable, for it all depends how this term is defined. In any case proof of the existence of a core does not take us very far if the periphery of the whole curriculum is so large and diverse that the ‘whole fruit’ raises important issues of policy control.

In this paper I shall discuss a definition of ‘core curriculum’ that has more universal support, and report on the curriculum provision for some 6,500 pupils of 14‐plus in 25 large comprehensive schools spread throughout England in 1977. From the curricular picture which these schools furnish, I shall conclude that no core curriculum exists in the normal meaning of the term, and argue that the degree of diversity in the whole picture raises a serious issue for government, namely how to avoid the frustration of other government policies due to shortfalls of specific skills emanating from the school curriculum.