The Languages Company

The Secretary of State for Education has announced the Government's intention to carry out a review of the National Curriculum for 5-16 year olds in England. He has also announced the appointment of an Advisory Committee to guide the review and an Expert Panel which will "bring together the evidence base". A call for Evidence was launched on the same day. The general position of the Government is that the purpose of the National Curriculum is to establish what children should be taught in key subjects and that this is best defined in terms of "subject knowledge" (rather than skills for example). The Government also wishes to reduce the amount of prescribed content in the Curriculum.

The review will take place over 2 years and will be fully implemented from September 2014 . The detailed timetable is available here. The first stage of the review will be a Consultation ("Call for Evidence") lasting from 20 January until 14 April this year . It has already been decided that English, Mathematics, Science and Physical Education will remain subjects within the National Curriculum at all four key stages, and in the initial consultation views will be solicited on the content of the Programmes of Study for those subjects.

For all other subjects that are currently part of the National Curriculum, including Languages, the review will first consider whether or not they should remain National Curriculum subjects and if so at which key stages. It will also be an option to make a subject compulsory but not part of the National Curriculum. This would mean that schools would have to teach the subject but there would be no statutory Programme of Study in a given Key Stage.

There is every indication that the views of teachers and parents will be taken very seriously and it will therefore be very important that as many people as possible who have an interest in languages respond to the consultation. In the initial phase of the Curriculum Review key questions will be:

• At what Key Stages should languages be compulsory? There is an assumption that this must include KS2 and KS3, but what about KS1 and KS4?
• Are there Key Stages in which languages should be compulsory but not part of the National Curriculum?

In the next phase it will be critical to define more clearly what we understand by subject knowledge in relation to Languages.

Detailed information about the Review is available on the Department for Education website.

The on line consultation document is available here.