Lesson of starter main activity and plenary was

lesson of starter, main activity and plenary was suggested, content for each year group was
specified and organisation of lessons into episodes of whole class, individual and group work with
exact time limits apportioned to each were suggested (DfEE, 1998). Though the NLS was never
made statutory, schools were effectively coerced through school inspections and pressure from
LEAs into adopting it – few declined. The National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) followed a year
later (DfEE, 1999b) but whilst it defined teaching content and methods it was widely seen as being
much less prescriptive than the NLS. There was initial hostility to both strategies, seen by teachers
as a further attempt at yet more centralised control, but after a bedding in period whereby many of
the more draconian suggestions of the NLS were moderated by teachers, key elements of both
strategies appear to have been assimilated and accepted as good practice by many primary schools
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(Webb and Vulliamy, 2006). As was the case for content of the curriculum, mediation by teachers,
especially in the primary schools, seems to have played a key role in development and change in
the curriculum.
Pressures to change pedagogy had been focussed for almost three decades on primary
schools but in 2000, faced with successes of the NLS and NNS but criticism that standards in
secondary schools were still woefully behind targets set in 1997, the Blair government decided
finally to intervene in the pedagogy of secondary schools, the final corner of the secret garden The
Key Stage Three strategy (see recommended websites) extended ideas seen as successful in
primary schools such as the three-part lesson, clear objective setting, collaborative group work and
more effective whole class teaching using ICT to secondary schools. The strategy was delivered
through an extensively funded, locally organised scheme of in-service training supported by
‘Strategy Consultants’ appointed to work with schools in each LEA. The model of development
was therefore shifted more to one of persuasion through teacher development rather than by central
dictat, coercion and control. Evaluations of the KS3 strategy show that teachers have largely been
warm towards the methods and approaches promoted by training and glad of the high quality of
ideas and materials provided – themselves based on significant amounts of educational research
into ‘best practice’ (OfSTED, 2004). The Key Stage 3 strategy, now known as the National
Strategy, has been extended to all curriculum subjects and across the entire statutory age range of
secondary schools.
Towards a curriculum for the 21
st
Century
The pace and quantity of legislation and initiatives driving curriculum development over
the last twenty years might seem implausible to those from outside the UK system, but perhaps
there is now a general acceptance that there is no going back to a presumed ‘Golden Age’, if
indeed there ever was one. That changes have been for the better is debateable and dependent on
what is valued and used to evidence benefits of change. Whilst it is true that results in national end