The Curriculum - WordPress.com

that of increased political control. The dominant ideology has indeed begun todominate.The early historical contextFrom the beginning of the school system in England and Wales, schools wishing toqualify for public funding had to demonstrate their efficiency, and this was monitoredby His/Her Majesty’s Inspectors, a body which came into being in 1839.This control of elementary schooling was strengthened by the Revised Code(1862) and the ‘payment by results’ policy then instituted on the recommendationsof the Newcastle Commission (1861), persisted until the last decade ofthe century. Even that extension of educational provision and broadening ofcurriculum which followed the passing of the Education Act of 1870 wassubject to similar funding policies. Thus, while there was no direct control ofthe curriculum, indirect control was exercised through procedures for studentassessment and school evaluation. And, as Matthew Arnold (1908:113) said ofthat time, ‘making two-thirds of the Government grant depend upon a mechanicalexamination, inevitably gives a mechanical turn to the school teaching, amechanical turn to inspection’. Plus ça change . . .Successive codes at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentiethcenturies led to the introduction of alternative forms of curriculum and theabolition of the annual assessment of pupils. ‘Having for thirty-three yearsdeprived the teachers of almost every vestige of freedom the Department suddenlyreversed its policy and gave them in generous measure the boon which ithad long withheld’ (Holmes, 1911:111). And the transfer of responsibility foreducational provision to local education authorities (LEAs) reinforced thispolicy of devolution.One can even detect a concern to avoid uniformity of provision, so that,instead of directives, schools and teachers were provided with regular issues of‘Handbooks of Suggestions’, and there is little evidence of any concern to dictateeven the subjects to be taught, let alone the content of those subjects. The 1926Code, for example, makes no mention of any particular subject – possibly, as JohnWhite (1975) suggests, through fear of what a possible future Labour Governmentmight do with powers to dictate the curriculum. And, in this context, it isimportant to remember that the 1944 Education Act, the work of the wartimecoalition government, offered no directive in relation to the curriculum otherthan the compulsory inclusion of religious education and a daily act of worship.The ‘Golden Age’The CurriculumThus the way was open for experiment and change, and the influence of the socalled‘Great Educators’ and of ‘progressivism’ generally began to be felt.Certainly, this is a feature of the major reports which were published during this164