ABSTRACT
The structure of the school curriculum in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and to a lesser extent Scotland is the combined legacy of what was described in Chapter 2 as the ‘nationalised curriculum’ that emanated from the Educational Reform Act of 1988. Since 1999 the devolution of power from Westminster to national assemblies/parliaments in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, has allowed greater difference and distinctiveness to emerge across the UK. In considering the curricula which have emerged in the four nations since devolution, this chapter adopts a ‘policy historiography approach’ (Gale, 2001, p. 385) focusing on the substantive issues of policy, the nature of the curricula created and the place of professionals in this. Gale’s concept of policy historiography aligns with the idea of contexts of text production (Bowe et al., 1992; Ball, 1993, 1997) through which official policy, such as statutory curriculum documents, are produced.
