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Aims-based school curricula

This blog post is about an aims-based curriculum and its place in the English school system. It may seem odd to talk about ‘an aims-based curriculum’. Few human activities are aimless. Nearly all have some purpose in mind. Waving to one’s neighbour affirms a relationship. Buying a chair is to have something to sit on. Constructing a school curriculum of any sort requires having some purpose in view.

In the present context, aims-based curricula have the wellbeing of a democratic society in mind. They include preparing individuals to live a fulfilling personal life, and to be knowledgeable and responsible citizens equipped for economic life and informed about issues of sustainability and climate change. ‘Curriculum’ includes all the ways in which a school can promote learning – discrete subjects, interdisciplinary activities, school ethos, out-of-school activities.

European perspectives

A brief web search reveals that many European democracies have aims and curricula roughly like these (unlike Russia and Hungary where patriotic aims are promoted). This is most notable among northern countries such as Finland, Norway, Estonia and Denmark, but is also seen in some southern countries such as Spain. In the UK, aims-based curricula are now in place in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. England, however, remains an outlier.

For most of the time that England has had a national curriculum it has not had an aims-based one. True, its national curriculum, introduced in 1988, did have aims, but the following vapid statement falls short of the account given above:

Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which:

• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.^[1]

The heart of the 1988 curriculum was a list of discrete subjects. This had been laid down by the Conservative Education Secretary, Kenneth Baker, and differed little from the list in the 1904 regulations for (fee-paying) secondary schools (Aldrich, 1998). Its aims did not generate the 1988 curriculum: they were simply tacked on to what by that time had come to be thought of as a ‘traditional’ curriculum – one that, via its connexion with the matriculation examination, had met the aspirations of the growing middle classes of the 19th century and later (White, 2011).

‘School examinations mainly test knowledge acquisition. They especially suit affluent pupils and parents with their eye on good credentials.’

The rest of that period of Conservative government, from 1988 to 1997, began a process of tying pupils’ learning to examination results. This accelerated after the Conservatives returned to office in 2010: aims introduced in 2014 highlighted ‘the essential knowledge [pupils] need to be educated citizens’.^[2] School examinations mainly test knowledge acquisition. They especially suit affluent pupils and parents with their eye on good credentials.

Labour in power

Labour has been in power for only 14 of the 37 years since 1988, from 1997 to 2010 and from 2024 to date.

In remaking the curriculum in 1997, the Labour government’s priority was to decide what it was for. Via its Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), between 1997 and 2010 it made two attempts at introducing an aims-based curriculum (White, 2025). The second began in 2007 but before it could be rolled out, the Conservatives were back in office.

When Labour won the 2024 general election, the earlier tentative moves towards an aims-based curriculum could have been built on. But – so far, at least – this has not happened. Under the banner of ‘evolution, not revolution’, Labour’s favours worthy but piecemeal improvements. At least one of its 12 members is firmly opposed to aims-based planning. In a recent ½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog post by Zongyi Deng, Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy at University College London, he describes this as:

the ‘theory-instigated’ approach to reform – one that begins with a vision of individuals, the world or knowledge, and then calls for revolutionary changes. In this approach the complexities of the education system and challenges in curriculum and assessment are ‘swept away in the name of a single vision’…

Why the difference?

Why have the policies of the two Labour governments been so different? A full answer would be complex. But one consideration is that in 1997 the national curriculum was only nine years old; by 2024 it was 37. Could it be that in 1997 it made sense to respond to growing criticism of it by starting afresh, while by 2024, thanks partly to post-2010 Conservative policies, the non-aims-based national curriculum had become so entrenched that it was thought to need only smaller-scale improvements?

I don’t know if this is part of the answer. Meanwhile, many children are turned off learning. Beyond primary school, . School should be an absorbing experience, but the present national curriculum is an obstacle to this. We cannot wait another 37 years before this is removed.

[1] See: Ìý±è.1

[2] See: Ìý

References

Aldrich, R. (1998). A curriculum for the nation. In R. Aldrich & J. White (Eds.), The national curriculum beyond 2000: The QCA and the aims of education. Institute of Education.

White, J. (2011). The invention of the secondary curriculum. Palgrave Macmillan.

White, J. (2025). Contribution to curriculum and assessment review. Ìý