Sound familiar? Controversial Conservative education reforms seemingly heading for Northern Ireland

Education Minister Paul Givan has introduced a raft of reforms drawing heavily on the work of Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, with well-known traditionalist educationists from England brought in en masse to offer their advice.

 

 

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The Northern Ireland government is implementing a host of education reforms which seem to be heavily influenced by the approach, highly controversial though it was, of the last Conservative government in England.

The Northern Ireland Executive’s Education Minister, Paul Givan, has brought in a cast of advisers from England, many of whom will be familiar to Education Uncovered readers. They are helping to enact changes across the curriculum, teacher education, assessment and accountability which lean on the traditionalist reform programmes of Nick Gibb and Michael Gove.

One source described the approach to curriculum and teacher education reform as Mr Givan attempting to “copy and paste” initiatives from England, with its hectic pace suggesting that Whitehall’s initiatives were being adopted wholesale.

This is denied by Northern Ireland’s Department of Education (although the terms of reference for the curriculum review state that it must be evaluated with reference to England and the Republic of Ireland.) However, a “reading list,” given last month to members of working groups who are devising Northern Ireland’s new curriculum, is dominated by traditionalist-leaning thinkers who were lauded by Sir Nick Gibb during his long tenure as England’s schools minister. It also features Sir Nick’s own recent book, as the only external “policy” text recommended for these groups.

These moves may suggest that the Gove/Gibb reforms are having an international after-life, with another foreign jurisdiction, Flanders, having also implemented changes, which are connected to those in England and Northern Ireland through one of its leading players, and New Zealand also seemingly influenced by the English experience.

There may thus be signs of the operation of an international policy development network, promoting ideas, such as “knowledge-rich” curricula, which were championed especially by Sir Nick Gibb.

But has the English experience of schools reform under the Conservatives really turned out so positive? Towards the end of this piece, Education Uncovered raises some questions.

 

The detail

Under the terms through which power is shared between unionist and nationalist communities within Northern Ireland, the political parties take turns to choose which departments each will lead. At the formation of the current Stormont government in February 2024, the Democratic Unionist Party selected the Department of Education (DE), with Mr Givan being appointed Minister of Education.

In October last year, Mr Givan then launched a review of Northern Ireland’s curriculum, as part of what was to become a dizzying, and super-swiftly implemented, array of reforms.

This built on a pre-existing Independent Review of Education which had concluded in 2023 and had highlighted problems including the need for greater investment in schools, as well as a need for curriculum reform.

Starting in November 2024, Mr Givan’s curriculum review was to report within only seven months, last June.

In what was one of what was to become multiple links to English education thinkers, the curriculum review was carried out by Lucy Crehan, author of the 2016 book “Cleverlands,” with a brief for it to be steered towards the concept of “knowledge-rich” education beloved of those on the traditionalist or conservative side of education’s traditionalist/progressive argument.

In March 2025, Mr Givan launched a programme called TransformED NI. This set out his reform plans more broadly, embracing measures including the curriculum review, teachers’ professional development, new national tests, qualifications reform and extending compulsory schooling to 18.

Through all of this, and as evidenced by multiple policy documents, the fact that Mr Givan’s initiatives are drawing heavily on the English education reform experience under Conservative-led governments from 2010 to 2024 shines through. Arguably, a clue to all of this is even present in the name “TransformED”. This carries echoes of researchED, which of course is the traditionalist-leaning organisation, championed by Sir Nick Gibb and run by his former behaviour adviser Tom Bennett, which promotes teacher engagement with some research

In January, Mr Givan visited the English traditionalist flagship, Michaela Community School in Brent, North London, tweeting a picture of himself with its charismatic though controversial head, Katharine Birbalsingh.

In June, he spoke at the national conference of the Core Knowledge Foundation (CFF) in Florida. The CFF was founded by the American education thinker ED Hirsch, who was identified by Sir Nick in his recent book as his intellectual guiding force and whom Mr Givan met at the conference. In a statement at the time, Mr Givan said that Professor Hirsch’s work had “helped inspire my TransformED strategy”. Sir Nick Gibb was also among the speakers.

Next week, Sir Nick is to be the first-listed speaker at a “Roundtable Event” in Belfast about TransformED, entitled “Delivering Reform,” at which Paul Givan will also speak.

Educators from England appear to dominate curriculum advisory group

Following the publication of Ms Crehan’s review report, it was announced that a “Curriculum Taskforce” was being established, to take forward its design and development. Chairing it would be Christine Counsell, the English traditionalist-leaning educationist and former leader of Cambridge University’s history PGCE. Ms Crehan was appointed as the taskforce’s deputy chair.

In August, a further list of advisers to the taskforce was published. Four of the 12 members are familiar figures from the English education reform experience of recent years, with these names listed before all the others in the DE’s official announcement. These English members are: Baroness Amanda Spielman, appointed as head of Ofsted in England during Sir Nick Gibb’s time as schools minister, who became a Conservative peer earlier this year; the assessment and curriculum expert Tim Oates, who led England’s curriculum review for Michael Gove as Education Secretary and was namechecked in Sir Nick’s recent book* as one of two individuals who was most key to the English reforms’ success; and Clare Sealy, head of education improvement for the States of Guernsey, who edited a book on the curriculum which was published under the researchED brand in 2020. Her official biography as adviser to the taskforce states: “As part of her work in Guernsey, Clare led the development of a more knowledge-rich curriculum.”

The fourth-listed member of the curriculum advisory panel was Professor Daniel Muijs. Now Professor of Education at Queen’s University Belfast, he will be known to some Education Uncovered subscribers as the former head of research at England’s Ofsted, serving there during Baroness Spielman’s time as chief inspector.

A Belgian national, he served as a professor at the University of Manchester and then Southampton over a 16-year period from 2005. He was also employed by Ofsted for three years from 2018, heading its research function as the inspectorate launched a new framework in 2019 under Amanda Spielman which put much more emphasis on the curriculum.  

The Spielman framework faced criticism at the time for siding with the “knowledge-rich” approach of Sir Nick Gibb as schools minister, while Ofsted had rejected claims – including by me in a blog I wrote for the National Education Union - that a research study it had carried out under Professor Muijs ahead of the new framework had favoured “knowledge-rich” schools.

 Education Uncovered also revealed, in November 2018, that Ofsted had held no selection process to recruit individuals to join its curriculum advisory group, which seemed to be leaning towards a traditionalist or “knowledge-rich” viewpoint. The group was chaired by Amanda Spielman and also featured Christine Counsell, Tim Oates and Daisy Christodoulou (see below), among eight members.

Several of Ofsted’s own subject-level curriculum research reviews during this period under Baroness Spielman were also heavily criticised for cherry-picking or even inventing research findings in support of a conservative/traditionalist agenda, though my investigations did not link this exercise to Professor Muijs. 

Returning to Mr Givan’s 12-member Curriculum Taskforce itself, most of the other advisory panel members are Northern Irish.

Separately, back in January Mr Givan’s department had announced the formation of another group: an “International Ministerial Advisory Panel,” also to advise on curriculum and assessment.

Four of the seven members of this group are English: Christine Counsell and Tim Oates, plus Hardip Begol, a former senior civil servant at England’s Department for Education who was its Director for Assessment, Curriculum, Qualifications and Accountability while its national curriculum was being reviewed under Michael Gove; and Daisy Christodoulou, Director of Education at No More Marking, and a former director of researchED who wrote the traditionalist-leaning book Seven Myths about Education which was lavishly praised in Sir Nick Gibb’s book.

In June, Mr Givan announced a third advisory group: an Independent Review of Assessment Panel. This has three members, two of whom are English: Mr Oates and Dr Mick Walker, a former director of England’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and Executive Director of Education at its successor organisation, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency.

At a conference on 8th May in the Ramada Hotel, Belfast, attended by more than 600 school leaders, put on by the DE and hosted by Mr Givan to discuss the TransformEd reforms, five of the eight guest speakers – including Ms Crehan, Ms Christodoulou and Mr Oates, who all gave keynotes – were from England.

Then, in September 2025, the DE put on another two curriculum conferences, one for primary and another for post-primary. According to the DE’s website, these featured speeches from Mr Givan himself, plus the DE’s deputy Permanent Secretary, Suzanne Kingon, plus five other speakers. Remarkably, all five of these were from England: Professor Counsell, Ms Crehan, Mr Oates and the history educator Michael Fordham, plus Heather Fearn, who was head of curriculum under Ofsted under Amanda Spielman, and who presided over its controversial research reviews.

A source said they had heard from several principals who attended that “these two days were not at all well received and that many principals left early in disgust.”

In November last year, as Ms Crehan’s curriculum review was getting underway, the Permanent Secretary at the DE, Mark Browne, was replaced – fuelling speculation that he had clashed with Mr Givan. In July, the BBC reported that an investigation had been launched into the circumstances around this. Six months later, no report has been published.

Core Content Framework

Another DE initiative is to introduce a “Core Content Framework” (CCF) – though this name is still to be finalised – for initial teacher education, which seems to be modelled on an identically-named policy which was launched, to much controversy, in England in 2021.

Under plans overseen by Sir Nick Gibb and the political adviser Rory Gribbell – now at Ofsted – the CCF was a central aspect of a reform of teacher education which also saw providers having to apply to England’s Department for Education for re-accreditation.

In England the CCF sets out what the DfE calls a “minimum entitlement of all trainee teachers,” in terms of what they should be taught, although both Oxford and Cambridge universities, which were highly critical of the plans and threatened to pull out of teacher education in response, described them as a “national curriculum for teacher education”. 

Cambridge said at the time that the group of five advisers who had worked on the plans was “narrow” and that the proposals lacked evidence. A key concern had been that, in the context of an ideologically-orientated DfE stipulating this mandatory minimum curriculum from the centre, trainee teachers’ professionalism was being undermined.

Oxford had described the reforms as “fundamentally flawed”; argued that they stood to damage the international reputation of English teacher education, being based on an “over-centralised model of teacher training based on limited evidence”; and said that they downgraded the concept of professional learning based on “critical engagement with research”.  

The Northern Irish iteration of the CCF is being spearheaded by Daniel Muijs. In a letter to teacher education providers dated October 28th, Professor Muijs wrote: “As you know I have been appointed to lead on the development of a core content framework (the name is open for discussion) for Northern Ireland…the process will run from 1 November to 28th February…

“The aim is that the proposed framework will establish a minimum entitlement for all student teachers, setting out the essential knowledge, skills and behaviours that need to be embedded in ITE [initial teacher education] programmes.”

The wording of this is near-identical to that which has been used by England’s DfE since 2019. This states that the CCF “defines in detail the minimum entitlement of all trainee teachers”.

Professor Muijs was appointed by Mr Givan to draft the CCF. He is also part of an advisory group on the policy, whose other members are representatives from each of the university teacher education providers in Northern Ireland.

Professor Muijs’s letter underlines the centralisation of this policy, under Mr Givan. It states: “The project operates under the authority of the Minister of Education. The Minister has ultimate responsibility in regard to all aspects of the framework.”

The curriculum review

Ms Crehan is perhaps not as obviously traditionalist-leaning as many of the other English educationists quoted above.

However, the terms of reference for her review indicate that it had been heavily steered towards a traditionalist conclusion in the way that it had been set up.

The review’s terms of reference referred back to the 2023 Independent Review of Education, as having stated that “Northern Ireland should adopt a knowledge-based approach to the curriculum using modern understandings of how learning takes place”.

However, the 2023 review itself had appeared to take a more balanced view, not using the term “knowledge-rich” at all, and stating that the curriculum must give learners “the knowledge, understanding and skills they require, regardless of their stage of education”.

Mr Givan had also, on announcing the curriculum review, stated: “I want to ensure that every child is taught a broad, ambitious and knowledge-rich curriculum.” He added, in an echo of a phrase from Matthew Arnold which had been a favourite of Lord Gove during England’s curriculum reforms, that: “All pupils…deserve an education in the best that has been thought and said.”

Ms Crehan’s review report was duly entitled: “A Foundation for the Future: Developing Capabilities Through a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum in Northern Ireland.” The term “Knowledge-Rich” was championed in England by Mr Gibb, himself drawing heavily on the work of the American education thinker ED Hirsch, who has argued in favour of prescribing more factual content within lessons.

The Crehan review also recommended a move towards greater specificity in terms of the “knowledge and subject-specific skills” required by Northern Ireland’s curriculum, stating: “A focus on knowledge in general, and disciplinary knowledge and skill in particular, has immense power to transform the life chances of young people”.

The TransformED strategy document that was published in March also highlighted what were seen as policy successes from England: the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which was launched under Michael Gove and funds and analyses evidential studies in education; and what has been termed the “London Effect”, which has seen the UK capital achieve a turnaround in its pupils’ results. TransformED hints that the EEF could be a model for a new “education research function” of its own, while the London Effect was referenced as this document highlighted Northern Ireland’s launch of a new programme aiming to reduce educational disadvantage.

In the document’s section on disadvantage, ED Hirsch and the cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, favourites of Sir Nick and Lord Gove, were both namechecked.

Arguably the strongest evidence of the ideological influence on the Northern Ireland curriculum initiative, in particular, of the English reform experience under the Conservatives is the “reading list” set out in a document intended to guide those who are now tasked with writing the curriculum in detail.

English traditionalists dominate “reading list” for Northern Ireland curriculum working groups

This is advice for a series of “Subject Working Groups,” who have the task of drafting the detail of the curriculum in what seems a breathtakingly short space of time: starting from last week and to conclude by February 24th.

The guidance states: “In advance of joining the group, you may find it helpful to read some of the following…” with Mr Gibb’s recent book, written with Robert Peal, one of only three texts included under “Policy,” the other two of which are Ms Crehan’s curriculum review report itself, and the response to that from the DE.

Much of the rest of the reading matter then set out under “books” and “articles, blogs, papers” is from authors much-favoured by Sir Nick and Lord Gove and the traditionalist reform movement which sprang up around them. They start with ED Hirsch’s “Why Knowledge Matters,” something of a sacred text for Sir Nick, and include Clare Sealy’s “The ResearchEd Guide to the Curriculum”. Ms Crehan’s Cleverlands and writing by Professor Counsell and Mr Oates also feature.

Of the 18 texts which feature in these lists, other than the curriculum review itself and the ministerial response to it, I counted 12 of them which had English authors, with a further three on the list, by Hirsch, Willingham and John Sweller, having been regularly namechecked by Sir Nick Gibb and Lord Gove.

The hectic timeframe for all these policy initiatives suggests, to critics, that Mr Givan must be leaning heavily at least in part on an existing model – England’s – rather than working up more bespoke policies, or taking time to look more critically at the international research base.

In particular, the seven months for Ms Crehan’s curriculum review and the three months for the curriculum working groups and for the drafting of the CCF seem to underline this thought. The new statutory curriculum framework is meant to be in place by next autumn. There are now only 18 months before the next Northern Ireland Assembly elections, meaning that Mr Givan must move fast. Or “he is rushing everything,” in the words of one sceptical source.

Mr Givan himself is a prominent figure within wider Northern Ireland politics. He served as First Minister from 2021 to 2022. Last month, he survived a no-confidence motion in the Northern Irish Assembly over a trip to a school in Jerusalem. 

Criticism

One school principal, writing on condition of anonymity, sent Education Uncovered a detailed response to the situation in which they said that, while they loved “the concept of school reform,” this one filled them with “utter dread”.

Much of the education community in Northern Ireland was being “seduced,” partly through the use of consultants from England and other countries who were rumoured to be being paid a “King’s ransom” to speak at conferences, into believing in these reforms.  

“Despite curricular teams being created to chart this brave new world, there is a clear shift [proposed] in the method of delivery in classrooms that is anathema to the creativity, collaboration and criticality that has grown naturally” in recent years, they said. They added: “There is a high chance that the future of education [in Northern Ireland] will look like something Dickensian where we teach our children in huddles, hearing lectures in subjects that have no local context while engaging with pre-conceived curricula purchased en masse by the department [of Education] from third-party providers.”

You can read the full version of this reaction in a separate piece here.

Another source said that there was initially little awareness of the extent to which Mr Givan was drawing on English policymaking, as well as personnel, in devising Northern Ireland’s education reforms, although concerns were now being raised by many school principals. And yet the English experience has been far from uncontroversial, with plenty of questions about its alleged success (see below).

Initially there had been some enthusiasm among school principals, this source said, for the energy Mr Givan was putting into his reform programme, especially given the lack of activity and funding in this field in recent decades. This had been seen as dynamic. But such thoughts were likely to fade as the nature of what was happening became more understood.

My source said: “What some would see as a failed model from England is being implemented at breakneck speed on an unsuspecting audience in Northern Ireland….the quality of much of the expert knowledge that is being imported from England is very questionable.”

This source said that the advice being imported to Northern Ireland, largely from England, appeared not sufficiently balanced, with voices from “one side of the argument” – traditionalists sympathetic to Hirsch and Gibb – overwhelmingly represented. There was therefore, they said, “no room for any discussion” about the English policymaking experience.

They were also unimpressed with training which consultants from England had come over to offer.

And the source said that there is real concern that, with Professor Muijs appointed by the minister to lead the drafting of the Core Content Framework for Northern Ireland and with ministerial sign-off built in, it would amount to no more than a “copy and paste” of the controversial, prescriptive English CCF model.

Finally, this source said they had been shocked by the policymaking process overall. “I have never experienced anything like this,” they said. “There’s never been such an ideological, single-minded, it’s this-way-or-no-way approach.”

In a recent article on the Givan reforms for Fortnight magazine, the highly respected Northern Ireland academic Tony Gallagher, Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, wrote that “the evidence on the impact of the Gove reforms in England is mixed and contested” and that while the “knowledge-rich” approach may have worked for many pupils, “it left many behind, especially lower-attaining pupils and those who are struggling to meet rigid academic standards”.

“The adaption of the approach to Northern Ireland should take account of these concerns by not setting narrow parameters on practice or support, and ensuring that local voices are central to the development of delivery plans,” he wrote.

 

The Hirsch/Gibb/Gove model spreading…to Flanders and New Zealand

A quick search on Daniel Muijs’s name reveals that he was also recently the lead adviser in a revamp of the nursery and primary curriculum in Flemish Belgium – Professor Muijs is Flemish – along “knowledge-rich” lines.

The Brussels Times reported in July that the Flemish Parliament had approved new minimum standards for nursery and primary education, which had been introduced in June by Zuhal Demir, the Education Minister who is a member of the right-of-centre N-VA party.

The new standards, the newspaper reported, “draw on the English model, focusing on a knowledge-rich curriculum, effective teaching methods, and strong classroom management”. Christine Counsell was also involved, biographical information on her stating: “In 2025, Christine served on a Flemish government commission overseeing a major curriculum reform to introduce knowledge-rich learning in all Flanders schools.” 

 In March, Ms Demir had travelled to London to visit two traditionalist free schools there: Michaela Community School and the West London Free School, whose joint head teacher is Robert Peal, with whom Sir Nick Gibb wrote his recent book. Ms Demir was reportedly accompanied by Daniel Muijs and by Tim Surma, another knowledge-rich enthusiast and academic, based in Belgium, whose name also features on the reading list for the Northern Ireland curriculum review’s working groups. 

The visit was written up in the Spectator magazine, now edited by Lord Gove, under the headline “Why the English education system is so envied in Belgium”.  

Meanwhile, Sir Nick, the English experience and ED Hirsch appear also to be proving influential on the other side of the world.

In a Substack post last month, the policy consultant Sarah Aiono wrote that the New Zealand Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, had become an enthusiast for Hirsch after reading his book “The Schools We Need” while on the beach. The article says Gove and Gibb had introduced a national “experiment” in implementing Hirsch’s ideas in England, but that this move had not been “uncontested”. LINK

It adds: “Erica Stanford has made no secret of her intellectual influences. Hirsch and Gibb are pillars of her thinking, not incidental references. Her ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’ package mirrors England’s reforms almost item for item: phonics screening, compulsory structured literacy, mandated knowledge-rich curricula, tight content sequencing, strong behavioural messaging, and accelerated implementation timelines.”

The writer was unimpressed by policymaking borrowed from England and the United States, arguing: “New Zealand deserves a national conversation about the future of our curriculum, not a unilateral import shaped by one minister’s holiday reading.”

Ms Stanford, who serves for New Zealand’s right-of-centre National Party, was pictured at the Core Knowledge Foundation conference in Florida in June, with Professor Hirsch, Sir Nick Gibb…and Paul Givan.

 

Analysis: Is England really a good model to follow?

Reform in all three of the jurisdictions mentioned above, all being carried out under right-of-centre governments, is predicated on the notion that England’s education reform experiences under the Conservatives, from 2010 onwards, were a success.

But were they?

Well, arguably this website has been digging into this question, from a sceptical perspective, since Education Uncovered’s foundation in 2017. So there is a sense of “Where to begin?” in seeking to answer it. But the answer in brief is that while the alleged evidence for the success of England’s approach can seem objectively quite thin, copious evidence has been quietly stacking up which points in a very different direction.

In Northern Ireland’s TransformED strategy document, England’s results in the OECD’s “PISA” tests are contrasted favourably with those in other parts of the UK. England’s trajectory, in all of reading, maths and science is certainly better than that of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But the differences can seem marginal: the gap between England and Northern Ireland in both reading and maths, for example, grew by only nine points on a scale centring around 500 in the period 2012 to 2022. In science, the gap grew by just six points. (As TransformEd acknowledges, Northern Irish students have continued to outperform those from elsewhere in the UK, including England, at GCSE and A-level.)

And in none of these PISA subject domains did England’s performance actually improve between 2012 and 2022, with results slightly down in all three: from 500 to 496 in reading; by 495 to 492 in maths; and by 516 to 503 in science. It is true that OECD nations’ 2022 scores were generally down, seemingly because of the impact of the covid pandemic, and that England’s scores for 2018 were slightly up on those of 2012 in reading and maths (though not in science). However, the bigger picture is that these seem very small movements, again on a scale centring on 500, on which to hang an entire reform programme.

It should also be said that, in Northern Ireland, even the TransformED document acknowledges that its primary pupils do very well, internationally, as measured in the PIRLS (Programme in International Reading Literacy Study) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science) assessments.

In England, other data which raises some serious questions about the success of recent education reforms seems much more stark than these small changes in international test scores

As Education Uncovered revealed in April, the proportion of English pupils saying they dislike school – in questionnaires carried out for the Trends In International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) – doubled between 2015 and 2023. The proportion of English 14-year-olds saying they disagreed with the statement “I like being in school” rose from 24 per cent in 2015 to 48 per cent in 2023. For 10-year-olds, the figures went from 14 per cent to 28 per cent. These declines were far worse than the international average and left our 14-year-olds in particular among the least happy with their experience at school, among those tested around the world. 

If small changes in international scores in England have been achieved at the cost of such large changes in pupil satisfaction with school, this could be seen as a high price to pay.

Meanwhile, PISA questionnaires have also found the life satisfaction scores of UK students falling drastically over the period 2015 to 2022, with our 15-year-olds now scoring among the lowest in the OECD. 

The Children’s Society’s annual Good Childhood Report also documents a pronounced decline in its “mean happiness with school” measure, based on surveys of thousands of 10- to 15-year-olds, between 2010 and 2023. 

Home Education rates in England have also been climbing rapidly, while a survey of 6,000 parents this year by the charity Parentkind found 19 per cent stating that their child was happy at school only “sometimes” at best, with pupils finding lessons “uninteresting” being the leading reason given. 

Suspensions and exclusions from English schools are running at much higher rates than they were before the pandemic, with the number of suspensions as of autumn 2024 more than double the figure for the same period in 2018. 

Statistics on pupil engagement with school seem particularly problematic in the English secondary sector, with Professor John Jerrim of the UCL Institute of Education having conducted analysis, based on the TIMSS data, which shows that children’s emotional engagement with school drops off more sharply between primary and secondary in England than elsewhere, “suggesting that disengagement is not just a symptom of age, but something atypical happening in our context”. 

The proportion of pupils “severely absent” from school also rises dramatically between years six and seven here, from roughly one in 100 pupils to one in 50. 

Sir Nick’s reform of the English teacher education system, including the introduction of the Core Content Framework, was also hugely controversial at the time, with some higher education leaders arguing that they believed the government was trying to push universities out of teacher training. 

In a pamphlet published this year, the university educators Professor Viv Ellis and Dr Ian Cushing, having assembled 42 university-based teacher educators for focus groups, found them having “expressed physical and emotional distress at having to negotiate state policies,” including the Gibb reforms.

And, while Paul Givan, in announcing Lucy Crehan’s curriculum review last year stated that “a knowledge – rich curriculum has been demonstrated to reduce inequality in education,” in fact the Department for Education’s recent Curriculum and Assessment Review in England found that attainment gaps had changed little between 2010 and this year.

It said: “A stubborn attainment gap remains between those that are socio-economically disadvantaged and their peers…while children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) make less progress in comparison to those without SEND.”

It could be argued, overall, that England is facing a crisis of pupil disaffection with school, and especially in relation to secondary schooling, despite what Sir Nick and those backing his approach will tell you about those small movements in our international test data. Other countries considering going down the English route – perhaps especially a Northern Ireland Department of Education whose current Corporate Plan strapline begins with the intention that “Every child and young person is happy…” - might be well-advised to think and investigate deeply before seeking to replicate the experience from England.

 

Response from Northern Ireland’s Department of Education

I put detailed points on this to Northern Ireland’s Department of Education.

It said: “TransformED is a response to Northern Ireland’s specific education needs, as identified in the 2023 Independent Review of Education: persistent attainment gaps, concerning PISA performance in maths and science, significant variability in school performance and structural inefficiencies.

“The strategy draws on evidence from multiple high-performing jurisdictions including Singapore, Finland, Canada and England, because international benchmarking is standard practice in education reform. However, Northern Ireland’s specific priorities drive the agenda…

“Teachers and school leaders from Northern Ireland are at the heart of this process through subject working groups and advisory panels, ensuring reforms are designed for the unique context and challenges here.”

On the number of advisers from England, the DE responded: “TransformED advisory committees include international experts and local practitioners from diverse backgrounds. While some members have worked in England**, others bring perspectives from the Republic of Ireland, Belgium [Professor Muijs?] Australia and New Zealand, and all draw on wider international evidence.

“The Curriculum Taskforce Advisory Committee is supported by subject working groups made up of Northern Ireland teachers and specialists, ensuring classroom realities shape decisions.

“The Strategic Review of the Curriculum incorporated extensive consultation, including 149 submissions, 70 focus groups and teacher surveys. Recommendations reflect recurring themes from Northern Ireland educators based on evidence of what works, not ideological positions.

“The Department is not following England’s approach. TransformED is designed specifically for the Northern Ireland context…Reform is driven by evidence that Northern Ireland’s current curriculum lacks clarity and progression. These issues have been confirmed by local teachers through extensive consultation and supported by international benchmarking across multiple high-performing systems, including England.”

 

*Sir Nick Gibb’s book is called Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools have improved since 2010 and How This Was Achieved.

**”Some” may be understating matters: by my calculations 12 of the 24 advisory posts across the Curriculum Taskforce Advisory Committee (including its chair and deputy chair); the International Ministerial Advisory Panel and the Independent Review of Assessment Panel were filled by people from England. This is exactly half, with advisers from England outnumbering those from Northern Ireland on the first and third of these groups.