The School Curriculum Ten Years Hence - UCET: Universities ...

we change course before its too late? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Spours, K. (1997) ‘GNVQs and the future of broad vocational
qualifications’ in Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (eds.) (1997) Dearing
and Beyond: 14-19 Qualifications, Frameworks and Systems
London: Kogan Page
The Future Curriculum - But don’t forget the Past
Professor Richard Pring, University of Oxford
1. Facing an unpredictable future
In his lectures to the College of Preceptors in 1966, entitled
Education and Change, Derek Morrell reflected upon the foundation
of the Schools Council, of which he was the chief architect, and
asked
Why educators, in all parts of the world, are finding it necessary to
organise a response to change on a scale, and in a manner, which
has no precedent … Why can’t curriculum modification follow the
simpler pattern of partial and piecemeal change which we and other
countries followed for so long?
Remember that this question was asked in 1966, before the
beginning of history, which, at the DfES, began in 1988. It was
before we had computers and the internet, before the recognition of
global warming and environmental disaster, before the vast
migration of peoples due to war, famine and economic hardship,
before there was such an obvious rejection of institutions which
were perceived to sustain the wider community and society. The
answers which Morrell gave were two, though closely connected.
The first consisted in the pace and unpredictability of change.
The many reasons … stem from the pace of change in modern
society. Its rapidity, and the extraordinary difficulty which we face
in defining its characteristics, and in communicating the implications
of change throughout complex systems of human relationships,
have destroyed or at least weakened the broad consensus on aims
and methods which was taken for granted when our educational
system took its present form.
Once there seemed to be general agreement about the values which
education should serve. But, with the changing social, moral and
economic context of education, such consensus has disappeared.
The second answer to the question, concerning the need to organise
a curriculum response to change of this magnitude, was the