After the initial flurry of responses to the publication of the curriculum and assessment review, there has been time and space for careful reflection on its implications and the Department for Education’s responses.

There are, of course, some practical steps that schools will have to take. Timetables will need to be adjusted to make space for the mandatory citizenship curriculum and core enrichment offering. I think we would all agree that these things are valuable and will enhance the curriculum for children.

But before we jump feet-first into action, it is worth considering some of the more subtle implications of the review.

Much has been made of the fact that the review and the DfE retain a commitment to a “knowledge-rich” curriculum, but there is a small but important difference. Instead of referencing the American educationalist ED Hirsch (whose work on knowledge was often cited by former ministers Nick Gibb and Michael Gove), the review draws upon the work of British sociologist Michael Young.

Conceptually, this is a significant change with implications for how schools might conceive of knowledge and the refinement of their curricula.

Powerful knowledge

In contrast to Hirsch’s concept of cultural literacy, where knowledge is a canon of facts and ideas that pupils should acquire, in Young’s view, the school curriculum should be centred around knowledge that is “powerful”.

Young makes a distinction between powerful knowledge and the knowledge based on experience that pupils bring to school and is tied to the contexts in which people live and in which it is acquired.

Knowledge is powerful “if it predicts, if it explains, if it enables you to envisage alternatives”, he explains in his book Knowledge and the Future School: curriculum and social justice. It is knowledge that enables pupils to look forward, rather than focusing on memorising established facts.

In this sense, Young is more interested in how the knowledge taught enables pupils to think abstractly and generalise.

He writes that powerful knowledge within “the sciences generates the power of abstraction and generalisation; the social sciences provide…new ways of imagining how people and institutions behave. The humanities…can show, in examples of great plays, films and books, how a character can represent something about humanity in general”.

In Young’s view, subject specialists will decide on the structure and nature of the powerful knowledge that pupils are entitled to acquire. This knowledge is context independent. The role of teachers is to enable the pupil to engage with the curriculum and move beyond their experience.

Teaching should ensure that pupils grasp the idea or the concept and can use it in any appropriate new context.

Equality of outcome and opportunity

Young’s concept of powerful knowledge is intrinsically linked with the fundamental principle that all human beings should be treated equally and the curriculum should be an entitlement to powerful knowledge, over and above the everyday “common sense” knowledge of the world.

This implies an equality of outcome and opportunity, rather than an equality of provision - according to Young, pupils all have the equal right to acquire the specialised knowledge that enables them to envisage alternatives.

This distinction is important for schools to recognise. The curriculum for each school should “take students beyond their everyday experiences”, and teachers should be concerned with a deep knowledge of the pedagogies that best support their pupils to learn.

The DfE has accepted this shift in conceptual understanding and agreed to further develop the specificity of much of the curriculum.

This suggests that rather than schools redesigning their current curriculum offers, it would be more profitable to spend time on developing strategies for identifying the scope and scale of the everyday knowledge of their pupils and considering the pedagogies that will enable all pupils to move beyond their everyday experiences and into a world of unknown possibilities.

Megan Dixon is an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University

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