“Knowledge matters, but education is about much more than memorising facts." Intense debate continues as Northern Ireland ploughs on with curriculum reform heavily influenced by England

Recent weeks have seen extraordinary developments, including minister withdrawing officials from scrutiny committee, a public spat with former Northern Ireland curriculum director, and news emerging of size of contracts awarded to consultants, mainly from England.

 

The development of a new curriculum for Northern Ireland, seemingly heavily influenced by ideas and personnel from England, has taken a series of extraordinary recent twists.

The Curriculum 2028 reform continues to excite bitter controversy, as a week ago opposition MPs passed a motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly criticising the initiative and urging – seemingly without success - the minister overseeing them to consider slowing it down.

The past six weeks have seen remarkable developments in and around the curriculum reforms, including:

-The minister responsible for them, Paul Givan, withdrawing officials from Stormont’s education committee over what he said was “unacceptable” questioning by a senior committee member;

-It emerging that Northern Ireland’s curriculum development body had been removed from curriculum working groups, with critics alleging that the review process had a pre-determined outcome;

-A public battle over the reforms developing, between Mr Givan and one of his leading critics, a former director of curriculum in Northern Ireland;

-Debate, including during the motion, drawing attention to the fact that six external consultants, five of whom are from England, had been paid a total of nearly £150,000 to work on the reforms, with the posts not having been advertised.

Consultation on the curriculum reforms, billed as “knowledge-rich” and having many links to the work and connections of the long-serving English schools minister Sir Nick Gibb, finished last Monday.

Mr Givan has said that the consultation showed “broad support” for the reforms. However, only 14 per cent of responses backed its proposed subject content for history, while in modern languages, the figure was 17 per cent.

Curriculum 2028 is part of overarching reforms collectively called TransformED, its name seemingly a riff on the London-based ResearchED organisation. The curriculum review which preceded it; a curriculum taskforce overseeing it; and a review of school behaviour policy have all been led by educationists from England, appointed directly by Northern Ireland’s Department of Education.