From Roman numerals and subordination in sentence structure to performing music in solo and ensemble contexts and understanding basic grammar in a foreign language, the current primary curriculum is, many teachers and leaders argue, simply “too full”.

Factor in the pressures of statutory assessment - there’s preparation for national tests on phonics and times tables, plus Sats to consider - alongside Ofsted deep dives to check the curriculum content that primaries are covering, and it’s not hard to see why some say that expectations outstrip the time and resources available.

Trying to cover everything, critics argue, risks damaging the quality of education: it creates a blizzard of tokenistic content that leaves no room for many important things that children need to know, while imposing unsustainable workload on teachers, who are forced to teach against the clock and rush through content to hit deadlines.

But is the scope of the national curriculum really to blame here? Is the primary curriculum “too full”? Or is something else causing the problems that teachers are reporting?

The ‘ambitious’ primary curriculum

The current national curriculum was introduced in 2014 during Michael Gove’s time as education secretary. Part of the aim was to provide a broader curriculum, shifting schools away from an ultra-intensive focus on English and maths and towards the kind of knowledge-rich curriculum advocated by education researcher ED Hirsch. 

In the eyes of ministers, the goal was to ensure that all children, regardless of social background, were equipped with the knowledge to succeed at secondary school and in life.

While applauding the ambition, many in the primary sector feel this has led to primary schools being deluged with content to cover, without the necessary funding, time and support to deliver it. 

“The national curriculum in primaries is unquestionably ambitious when it comes to the amount of content that schools need to cover,” says Andrew Rigby, national director of education at REAch2, whose 60 primaries make it the UK’s largest primary-only multi-academy trust.

Academies and free schools don’t have to follow the national curriculum. Nevertheless, the national curriculum still sets the weather for many of those schools, where heads might feel anxious about adopting curricula with lower levels of content than the national curriculum.

The biggest challenge with the scope of the curriculum, Rigby says, is “at a time of significant budget cuts and funding challenges…making sure that primaries have sufficient specialist expertise for subjects like MFL [modern foreign languages] or music, where it simply isn’t affordable for many schools”.

For Michael Merrick, diocesan schools commissioner in the Diocese of Lancaster and a former executive head at primary schools in Cumbria, the shift to a broader curriculum was a “noble ambition” but the way it has been implemented means that there is now just “too much going on”.

Where the problem “really hits”, says Merrick, is in the foundation subjects, where there is “an expectation around level of expertise and depth of knowledge” that goes well beyond an introduction to the subject. 

In areas like music and languages, Merrick explains, “the question really is: does a primary have the capacity to deliver these subjects at that level?…It’s very difficult to get through the music curriculum, for example, with the kind of music budgets and equipment that schools generally have, and the limited access to expertise they have, and give the kids the opportunities [schools] need to give them”.

‘You think, “Oh heck, how are we going to fit all of this in?”’

That creates a risk of “things becoming tokenistic”, says Teresa Ward, who teaches Year 1 and is key stage 1 phase leader and subject lead for English at Mayflower Primary School in Tower Hamlets, East London.

Taking the example of Spanish, she says that “lots of schools don’t have the money to pay for a Spanish-speaking teacher”, so that means a non-specialist fitting the subject in where they can - perhaps just for five or 10 minutes a week. 

“You can say you’re teaching Spanish, but, actually, how much Spanish is being taught and learned?” she asks.

Inequality in resources and in the experiences of pupils are other potential problems in the foundation subject expectations. Some primaries “can afford an iPad for every child and a range of musical instruments to deliver curriculum content in a way that other schools simply cannot”, says Rigby.

More on curriculum:

• Tim Oates: In defence of knowledge
• Deep dives: Ofsted’s favourite subjects revealed
• Michael Young: What we’ve got wrong about knowledge and curriculum

It isn’t just the foundation subjects that pose difficulties, though. Some also see problems with the expectations in core subjects.

English at KS2 is “a really good example of where we need to review things”, says Lekha Sharma, school improvement lead for curriculum and assessment at Avanti Schools Trust, and author of Curriculum to Classroom: a handbook to prompt thinking around primary curriculum design and delivery. That’s because pupils learn “things like the past progressive and very detailed grammatical technical stuff…then they go on to key stage 3 and very rarely need any of this information to succeed”, she adds.

Increasing teacher workload

Squeezing in all this core and foundation content, some say, means less space for other important teaching, and intense demands on teachers.

Rigby says that “the struggle to deliver curriculum expectations can overwhelm what should be the sort of exciting, creative and aspirational learning at the heart of a primary education”, with “potentially significant implications for teacher workload”.

Sharma adds that the pressures mean it’s hard to find space for things like “personal development [and] character development”.

“Any of those things become very difficult to realistically and tangibly do with the way in which the national curriculum is currently structured,” she says.

But the curriculum isn’t the only problem that primary schools are grappling with here. There’s also the pressure of Ofsted deep dives, an element of inspections introduced in 2019 that involve inspectors checking on the content being taught in reading plus one or more foundation subjects, including scrutiny of pupils’ books.

“What that does is pit subject against subject, because everybody is fighting for their subject to have the time in the school day,” says Ward. “If you get a deep dive in your subject, then there’s a pressure that there’s the curriculum in the books, that teachers know what they are teaching, that children can talk about what they know confidently.”

Merrick agrees that the introduction of deep dives has compounded the existing issues he sees with the curriculum.

“Because of that formal accountability, maybe some heads have created expectations to work at that pace and do those things [in terms of curriculum content] in order to protect the school,” he says. 

“All of that together creates a sense of panic at how much [content there is], but also a sense of anxiety at how quickly you’ve got to do it. It’s that pace that stops you dealing with it in the levels of depth that are required - and that makes you think, ‘Oh heck, how are we going to fit all of this in?’ I know teachers feel that acutely.”

‘Everybody is fighting for their subject to have the time in the school day’

And there’s yet another pressure on curriculum in primaries, squeezing the time available further: statutory assessment.

“If you look at the curriculum in Year 6, for instance, in many schools, because of the pressures of the Sats, the curriculum experience for children is a diet of Sats practice. And a lot of the other curriculum stuff gets dropped,” says Mary Myatt, a former teacher, local authority adviser and inspector, now a consultant and author of books including Primary Huh: curriculum conversations with subject leaders in primary schools.

Is it fair, then, to point the finger squarely at the amount of content in the national curriculum for some of the problems that schools are facing? 

“The national curriculum is probably oversaturated; there’s a lot in there to cover,” says Sharma. However, she believes that with some “very mindful implementation by schools”, it is possible to make the current curriculum work. 

Ben Erskine, principal of Fulbridge Academy, a primary school in Peterborough, takes a similar view. He says that the national curriculum isn’t too full, but it “comes close to the brim”, particularly in English, maths and science. 

To manage this, his school does “a lot of prioritisation…to ensure the key areas are covered”. 

“There are things that children really need to know and there are things that it’s nice for them to know,” he says.

Prioritising essential content

This is a distinction that education academic Dylan Wiliam (who was on the expert panel for the 2014 national curriculum) has made: between “need to know” and “neat to know” elements of the curriculum.

For example, says Erskine, pupils are not going to fail maths if they go through the education system not knowing about Roman numerals.

“We do put some of the [non-essential] areas such as Roman numerals in our curriculum, but there’s a balance in how much time is spent on them compared with some other areas - such as time, which we use every day and is really important for the children to be able to do,” he explains, adding that other essential areas in maths include number bonds, doubles and halving.

Fulbridge has a “detailed structure and timetable across the whole year for every year group”, and leaders make sure that staff know “how much time is spent on what they are teaching, [for] each individual subject”, says Erskine.

While it’s often the case that primary schools timetable their English and maths in the morning, at Fulbridge the day could start with history or performing arts. That, says Erskine, is about “ensuring that children recognise that all subjects are important”.

But that process of reviewing the curriculum and prioritising essential content, followed by careful timetabling and structuring, requires leaders to feel confident in this work. 

“Leaders having the support around that is crucial,” says Sharma. “I don’t think leaders get enough support in terms of taking the national curriculum and turning it into a bespoke curriculum offer.”

At Mayflower, there are curriculum leads to oversee all curriculum content, which “takes away that conflict between subjects fighting for curriculum time”, says Ward.

“You do need somebody, I think, to oversee the curriculum in general,” she adds.

‘I don’t think leaders get enough support in terms of turning it into a bespoke curriculum offer’

Myatt, meanwhile, feels that while there may be a problem with the level of content in core subjects, there is a need for more guidance in some foundation subjects.

Despite “perceptions that there is just truckloads to do, I would argue it’s possible to make that manageable”, she says. “But I don’t think it’s something that can be dropped on to classroom teachers; it takes a level of curricular understanding and decision making on the part of leaders to think this through properly.”

There may be a chance now for leaders to do just that. From September, KS1 Sats are no longer statutory, potentially offering schools more choice about their curriculum content.

“The removal of the KS1 tests brings more freedom to decide what [children] need to know and what is neat to know,” says Myatt.

What other steps could be taken nationally to support primaries and help them to find a better way forward?

For some, it is accountability pressures that are at the root of the issue, so tackling these must be a priority. 

Tiffnie Harris is primary and data specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders. She says the problem is not necessarily that the primary curriculum is overcrowded but that “Ofsted demands an intensive level of curriculum planning and delivery across all subjects, while KS2 performance tables create an intense focus on English and maths results”.

“Juggling these demands means there is very little time to revisit and embed learning because it is always a case of having to get on to the next thing,” she explains. “Funding and teachers are in short supply, and many schools are small. The accountability system must be reformed and the government must invest more in schools.”

Releasing the pressure

Others, meanwhile, are pinning their hopes on the idea of a curriculum review, as proposed by the Labour Party recently as part of its wider education “mission”.

Merrick, for example, believes there should be a “very thorough review” of the national curriculum, posing the question of “‘do we need all this in here?’ And hopefully [it would] come to the conclusion: no”. 

Erskine agrees that there would be merit in a review of the national curriculum, particularly for lower primary.

“I don’t think the major issue is the amount [of content], although there is quite a lot in there,” he explains. “I would say that reducing the additional knowledge and skills that are presented in the national curriculum in the earlier years would be of benefit for children.”

There is also, some argue, a need to reduce the levels of prescription within the curriculum.

Andrew Pollard, now an emeritus professor at UCL Institute of Education, was appointed by Michael Gove in 2012 to the expert panel intended to help draw up the new national curriculum, and he had concerns about the levels of prescription from the start.

In fact, writing in a 2012 blog, Pollard explained how three of the four-strong expert panel, himself included, subsequently withdrew, after the panel’s advice to organise programmes of study on a two-year basis was rejected by Gove in favour of “Hirsch’s very detailed year-on-year model”.

Pollard also warned against the degree of prescription proposed in core subjects for primaries in particular, as “during the primary years, when establishing good attitudes to learning complements the achievement of excellence in basic skills, micromanagement of classrooms by curriculum dictation from Whitehall would be a serious error”.

‘The removal of the KS1 tests brings more freedom to decide what children need to know and what is neat to know’

So, could the root of the current discontent with the primary curriculum be a failure among policymakers to consider the specific context of primary schools?

Merrick certainly thinks so. The concept of the knowledge-rich curriculum was “quite heavily influenced by secondary expectations and culture…but without the accompanying context of what other things teachers have to do as part of a daily routine in a primary classroom”, he says. 

Primary teachers “don’t just get a set-piece, one-hour lesson to do this topic with no interruptions and therefore get through content”, he says.

“The curriculum is not a silo in the way it often is at secondary. Primary teachers also have to manage their class of 30 kids, often with profound needs…and get through the topic, and they’ve got assembly and they’ve got swimming and there’s a school trip, whatever it might be.”

Myatt agrees. She says that while she is sympathetic to Gove’s drive for rigour, she doesn’t think “the consequences [of the new curriculum] were thought through in terms of…teachers trying to do this work and children on the receiving end of it” in primaries.

This should all be food for thought for Labour, if the party does succeed at the next general election and decide to push ahead with a curriculum review. A “rich and broad” curriculum is something that almost all primary teachers would welcome. But that’s only if the practicalities of implementing it are carefully considered, and the right support is in place to help leaders and teachers deliver it.

John Morgan is a freelance writer