The Crisis of Curriculum Change

The article works with an historical methodology derived from the French Annaliste School where the Annalistes work with three levels of time. As we have seen, they argue, following Kondratiev’s (1984) study of economic cycles of change, that beyond the recognisable short cycles of change there are long waves of change which often cover fifty to sixty year cycles. At these points, they argue ‘conjunctures’ emerge where macro-economic transformations coincide with major shifts in educational reform.

The past decade has been such a conjuncturalist moment, where free markets have triumphed and educational reforms have echoed the stratifying and differentiating efforts of globalised markets. This has been a time where the engines of global efficiency have existed alongside a growing pattern of social inequality. Schools have become less engines for equality and compassion, more engines for efficiency and differentiation. Making schools of this kind more effective has an oxymoronic connotation for those concerned with socially progressive policies concerned with issues of social justice and equity.

This having been said, the full force of free market deregulation has, I believe, run its course, and the social downside of this is now increasingly being confronted by new political, environmental, social and educational movements to take one instance from Britain. Here, free market initiatives driven by Margaret Thatcher’s regime began soon after global deregulation in the early 1980’s. There has been a range of initiatives pushing marketisation of education, tighter accountability structures, a clearly specified national curriculum and a general push for assessment, testing and inspection. The famous focus on ‘Standards not Structures’ - a political and linguistic delusion, if there ever was one.

The evidential results of the push has been Janus-faced. More children are achieving better results at one end of the educational spectrum. But, increasingly, the other side of the push for standards is evident - namely a rising tide of dissatisfaction and failure as assessment structures are tightened. Those who do not succeed in a standards regime are more and more visibly stigmatised and marginalised. The figures of school withdrawal and truancy fill a clear story of the downside of a headlong pursuit of marketisation and highly regulated curriculum and assessment reform. The major force of government alarm is that the new underclass emerging in schools is providing an army of disaffected young people who are causing a rising crime wave in the country.