It is easy to forget how bad things were when Sir Ron Dearing was appointed in 1993 as chairman of both the National Curriculum Council and the School Examinations and Assessment Council. At a time when conflict was rife in education, he made progress by emphasising the points of consensus.

In key stages 1 to 3, the consensus view was clear - an overcrowded curriculum, a lack of overall coherence and major problems with national testing and assessment. These points were spelled out in Dearing’s interim report, emphasised in his final report and refined further in the latest proposals. In 18 short months, Dearing had created a consensus curriculum at key stages 1 to 3.

There has been no such consensus at key stage 4 and the questions which Dearing raised in his interim report - and again in his final report - remain unresolved.

One of the major reasons why Kenneth Baker created a statutory, as opposed to a voluntary, national curriculum in 1988 was because HM Inspectorate was telling him repeatedly that there was a lack of balance in the learning programmes of 14 to 16-year-olds. With listening skills no higher than Level 1 (as we would later come to know it), Baker ignored the heads and curriculum planners in secondary schools, who told him repeatedly that it was not possible to have a 10-subject national curriculum at key stage 4, with GCSE as the sole method of assessment for 16-year-olds.

By the time that the ink was dry on the Education Reform Act, Baker was gone and his successors were left with a circle to square at key stage 4. John MacGregor’s solution was to pair subjects in exotic combinations; Kenneth Clarke made art and music voluntary, but it was clear that the problems had not been solved. The philosophical basis of the curriculum at key stage 4 was so shaky that the real problems were never addressed.

On one side of the debate, there were those who believed that it was not only desirable to have a broad and balanced curriculum at key stage 4, but that, with courses such as integrated humanities and expressive arts, it was possible to give such a curriculum to all 14 to 16-year-olds. on the other side, there were those who wanted to retain flexibility in the key stage 4 curriculum, believing that young people of this age could be better motivated if they were able to exercise choice over the subjects which they studied outside the core of English, mathematics and science.

Throughout the Dearing review, the argument has continued between those advocating breadth and balance and those favouring flexibility. In his introduction to the section of his final report on key stage 4, Dearing said that “there was no clear consensus on the nature of the change required”.

With no consensus to reflect and no firm philosophical foundation, the latest proposals are a fudge and should be postponed for at least a year beyond the planned implementation date of September 1996, so that the outstanding issues can be resolved. (Already, the Government has sensibly opted for a longer pilot of the General National Vocational Qualifications part 1 courses.) Several major problems remain with the key stage 4 curriculum: * the breadth and balance of the core learning programme; * the place of vocational education in the pre-16 curriculum; * the structure and accreditation of short courses; * accreditation for those with learning difficulties; * the lack of coherence in the 14 to 19 timeframe.

What do we mean by breadth and balance? And does it have to continue until 16? Some people believe that we should finish the broad and balanced curriculum at 14; others advocate planning for breadth and balance up to 18. None of these issues has been resolved; indeed, they have barely been debated during the past 18 months. Consequently we have a curriculum of percentages at key stage 4, with 45 per cent on English, mathematics and science, 5 per cent each for religious education, physical education and a personal, social and health education programme which is likely to include the compulsory sex education and careers education. Technology and modern foreign languages have a minimum 5 per cent each, bringing the total to 70 per cent. However, unless the problems inherent in the short courses are solved, most schools will offer full courses in technology and modern foreign languages, so that the total statutory minimum will, in effect, be 80 per cent, leaving 20 per cent for option choices to be made between history, geography, art, music, drama, other modern languages, classics, business studies and GNVQ courses. Regrettably, it will be the arts which will suffer most in many schools.

Dearing insists that the GNVQ Part 1 will not be a bolt-on extra. Yet that is exactly the way in which it has been planned. Designed to take 20 per cent of curriculum time, it will fit neatly into the two option blocks which will remain after the 80 per cent core has been time tabled. Although the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and the National Council for Vocational Qualifications have been working hard to map the GNVQ core skills of numeracy, communication and information technology against the national curriculum requirements for mathematics, English and information technology, there is a whiff of apartheid in the way in which the “academic” curriculum (the responsibility of SCAA) and the “vocational” curriculum (the responsibility of NCVQ) have been planned. Almost inevitably, the GNVQ courses in many schools will be taken by the so-called “least able” and we shall have replaced O-level and CSE with a system which divides academic sheep from vocational goats. What is required is a vocational dimension to the whole curriculum, not merely to a small part of it. That was to have been the real gain from the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative but, with TVEI at an end, the holistic vocational approach is in danger of slipping away before the process has been even half-completed.

The strongest reason for advocating delay in implementing the Dearing proposals for key stage 4 is the ill-considered structure and accreditation of short courses. During the past two years, short courses at key stage 4 have acquired a bad name with teachers, partly because they have been long and thin, rather than short. To do a subject for one hour per week for two years - particularly in modern foreign languages - is not sensible. Fortunately, in the new proposals, it will be possible to do a short course for 10 per cent of curriculum time for one year. This is an improvement, but it is not sufficient for two reasons. First, short courses should be available in a range of subjects, not just in technology and languages, so that schools are not limited to a language in Year 10 and technology in Year 11 as the only way in which short courses can be taken. We need a programme of short courses in non-core subjects as well, so that there can be some flexibility and imagination in time tabling. Second, the accreditation of short courses must mean something, not only to employers and university admissions tutors, but to the students themselves. Short-course credits must have currency and progression, so that these subjects can be taken up again later in order to complete, say, a GCSE or GNVQ qualification. (Incidentally, a proper system of short course credits could also provide accreditation for RE and information technology.) The new national curriculum at key stages 1 to 3 makes more sense for special educational needs pupils, but this has not solved the problem of their accreditation at the end of key stage 4. The credit-based model, which will be needed for the short courses, offers a possible answer to this problem, if the concept of credits is extended to other areas of the curriculum.

The section on key stage 4 in Dearing’s final report concluded with the hope that it would “make for greater coherence in education from 14 through to 19”. His final proposals do little for the development of a coherent 14 to 19 curriculum. More time for the reform of key stage 4 would enable SCAA, working with NCVQ (although it would be easier if they were merged), to produce a coherent, progressive curriculum, which solves all the problems. This demands a 14 to 19 timeframe.

Short-course accreditation points towards the need for a system of credits; so do the requirements of SEN students. Breadth, balance and flexibility are possible if there is a credit-based system which includes the concept of breadth over time. Crucially, the words academic and vocational - and hence the danger of first and second-class curricula - are removed if we think instead of knowledge and application, or theory and practice, in all areas of the curriculum.

With a 14 to 19 timeframe and a credit-based programme through these years, the emphasis on the GCSE hurdle at 16 is reduced and students can achieve their overarching diploma - general or advanced - at whatever age is appropriate to their abilities. This could be 15, 16, 17, 18 or 38. If qualifications were less age-related, the system would be based more on success, and less on the failure to jump particular hurdles at 16 or 18.

It is around proposals such as these that a consensus could be reached on the best way forward for the key stage 4 curriculum, in the context of a progressive 14 to 19 education programme.

John Dunford is head of Durham Johnston Comprehensive School,Co Durham and vice-president of the Secondary Heads Association