Decoding England’s D&T Curriculum

This week’s episode is part of the Shaping D&T series, running from April to August 2024, where i interview a variety of people and discuss the current state and future of design and technology (D&T) education. This week it’s just me exploring the current   national curriculum for D&T in England, which has undergone several iterations, with the current version established in 2013-2014, making it the longest-standing iteration. The curriculum’s development involved expert review, led by Tim Oates, with a particular emphasis on aligning it with educational philosophies of figures like ED Hirsch and Daniel Willingham. However, the lack of a clear epistemology for D&T led to debates and criticisms, resulting in a revised curriculum that lacks external consultation. This has caused confusion and dissatisfaction within the D&T community.

The curriculum aims to develop students’ creative, technical, and practical expertise, preparing them for an increasingly technological world. However, concerns arise regarding the integration of cooking and nutrition, which was previously embedded in D&T but now exists as a separate entity, causing confusion and diluting the subject’s integrity. Despite flaws, the curriculum provides a foundation for teaching and learning, with opportunities for evolution rather than dramatic overhaul. Future episodes will explore various perspectives on the curriculum and propose potential changes to address its shortcomings.

Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?

What do you think? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. 

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 1:03

you're listening to the talking dnt podcast. I'm dr allison hardy, a writer, researcher and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode I share views, news and opinions about dnt. This week's episode is part of the Shaping D&T series that I'm publishing between April 2024 and August. I've got a whole series of different people coming on to talk about their thoughts about what needs to be shaped, why it needs to be shaped and what could be done and what should be done. But I thought it'd be useful to just take stock about what has been going on and what could be done and what should be done. But I thought it'd be useful to just take stock about what has been going on and what is the current situation in terms of the curriculum for design and technology in England at the moment. There will, throughout this series, be people coming on from different parts of the globe to talk about what design and technology education, in its many different guises and different names, looks like in different parts of the world. But this is really focusing on what's happening in England, so I make no apologies for that, but some people might find this interesting, even if you're not teaching in England. So in England there is a national curriculum and I'll put a link in the show notes for those of you who aren't familiar with that. It is the seventh iteration, I think, of the national curriculum.

Alison Hardy: 2:24

I've written about this previously and talked about it in previous episodes about the history of D&T, but it has evolved over time. Now this is the current national curriculum, which was 2013-2014. Which was 2013-2014, was actually the longest one that we've had in existence. That's been undisturbed or tinkered with or altered, I think you know we've gone from 1990 to 94 to 97, to 2000, 2004, 2007, to 2013-14. So you, you know this is 10 years. This one has lasted.

Alison Hardy: 3:06

Um, I'm just gonna have to apologize. Kip has decidedly wants to join in with this episode, so he's going to come and sit on my knee for a moment. So just turn away from the microphone. Just going to sit there quietly, aren't you? And so I think that says an awful lot about the fact that the government who is currently in power in England, that's, the Conservatives we're expecting a general election later this year have stayed true to their ideology about curriculum and they have said that they were not going to alter the curriculum while they were in power. They have a particular ideology and they have maintained that. Whether we agree with it or not is for another debate, but that is what they've done and they brought this new curriculum in after a review in 2011, where they brought together an expert panel.

Alison Hardy: 3:59

Now we can all debate whether they were experts or not, but it was chaired by Tim Oates, who I really do think is an expert around curriculum and when I've spoken to him briefly, he's a passionate advocate for design and technology. But in that review they were asked to think about what was the best that has been thought and said, about what should be taught as a result of that, and they were very much coming from an ED Hirsch and Daniel Willingham perspective. They're two education philosophers, leading researchers in America, who've had quite a lot of sway over who was then the school's minister, nick Gibb and Michael Gove. The expert panel reviewed the national curriculum kind of with those parameters to look at, and they came out with a review in 2011 that said that I'm just going to focus mainly on design and technology. Obviously, I could talk about the whole curriculum that design and technology didn't have a clear epistemology.

Alison Hardy: 5:05

So it's knowledge structure, it's where knowledge came from, how it was formed, how we identify whether something is true or not is contested and there's no clear way, whereas they would argue that in history and other subjects that there was a clear epistemology. So what their argument was is if there's no clear epistemology, then it hasn't got a strong foundation. If it hasn't got a strong foundation, then it's difficult to determine what is the best of what has been thought and said. I've written extensively about this in other places and I'll put some links in the show notes to do with this. Now that caused so the outcome was sorry of that was that their design and technology would therefore be part of what is known. They called it a basic curriculum, so it would be determined locally and it would be determined who would teach it, what would be taught and who would study it.

Alison Hardy: 6:04

Now you know it was a review. It wasn't a white paper. That was going out for consultation, so it meant that people could respond and critique and there was quite an outcry, as you can imagine, from the design and technology community. So what we did a number of us were then pulled together to create or to respond to that. So I'm kind of missing a whole whole thing out here. I'm slightly distracted by kip wriggling around on my knee. I do apologize. Let me get the time orders. I've got the review. Basic curriculum weak epistemology outcry. Um, eddie norm, norman and Ken Baines put a book out Design Epistemology. I wrote a chapter for that and David Spendlove who's coming on the podcast later, you know really spoke out very vehemently about this, as did many others.

Alison Hardy: 6:54

And then what happened is a new national curriculum for all school subjects was created, but the one for design and technology had, as far as we can gather, no external consultation. It was it was just created and it was. It was shockingly bad. Um, it's kind of quite difficult to find it online now, but, um, it was really bad. It was written by somebody who had no understanding of the subject and then, as a result, a group of us were pulled together about 40 of of us, I think came together by invitation to the Royal Academy of Engineers and during the course of a day and they'd been to preliminary work and there was some work afterwards, this current national curriculum was, or a draft version was, put forward that then had to go to the then schools.

Alison Hardy: 7:37

Minister Liz Truss, if you're in England, that name might send shivers down your spine after she was prime minister in England, in Great Britain, for a while well, not for about, not for a while at all, but anyway I am rambling here, sorry. I'm trying to kind of put all these pieces together that people can understand how we are in this situation in terms of the curriculum, that these things don't just appear, they evolve and they demonstrate what people think of the subject. So this current version was created by a committee, one might argue, in a building that was the Royal Academy of Engineers, which has a particular remit. Obviously it's about engineering, but it is a royal society so it has more power and authority than some other groups that might not have that, that status. So it was good to have them on board as an advocate. But then obviously there are tensions within that around what the subject is.

Alison Hardy: 8:36

So draft curriculum put forward to Liz Truss, big tensions around food and around where it should sit. Previously it had been a material that was completely embedded in design and technology. Again, there's a whole history around that which I talk about in a previous episode, and this time it was decided to put it as a kind of a sub-subject, one might say, within the national curriculum, which caused confusion, lack of clarity for all sorts of people. Their vocational tension is preparing people to do jobs in that sector, enabling children to live a flourishing life, so to live independently, autonomously. So we can see where food sits along that. And you know, design and technology has had those tensions. The utilitarian value, let's say so. We've got the vocational, leading to jobs, that design and technology, maths, science. The utilitarian we can see how maths, science, english, design and technology and food do that. And then we've got this other section which is about what contribution does a subject make to a child's general education. That is unique and that's where the subject's epistemology comes in. What is makes it unique and essential, the best of what has been thought and said, and I think that's the general. So we've got vocational, utilitarian and general.

Alison Hardy: 10:19

And what was going on nationally around food politically was around the utilitarian and the obesity crisis. And there's a chapter in the debates book, does Food Fit, where they give some of this history around it and some of these tensions. It's worth a read of that chapter. So there that led to food being kind of pulled out into this sort of subgroup and I'm kind of using that word, sub in a in a very winceworthy way, because I am not saying that cooking and nutrition is a sub, but it didn't seem to have its own distinction and also it was taking away from the fact that food had been, in many schools, a very clear material for children to use as part of design and design developments as part of a general education. So it's it.

Alison Hardy: 11:21

There's all these tensions around how the national curriculum is structured, where it was done by the academy of engineers who was around the table, who'd been invited, who wasn't invited, where food as a material sat and food as a subject. And again, if you've got politics policy uh, people with own their own agendas having a stake in that, then that um affects how that then comes into being in the national curriculum. I think that's how we've got to this place that we have in terms of, we've got a design and technology curriculum with this sub subject again, I'm using sub. You know it's almost a subject embedded within, but not it's discrete. So that makes it very confusing for people, I think, who don't understand the nature of design and technology. So that's where we've got to in terms of if you look at the document of the national curriculum, there was debate when the national curriculum as a whole was reviewed about whether there should be aims for a subject.

Alison Hardy: 12:27

I wrote quite strongly that I think there should be aims. There's lots of tension around that. The national curriculum review was influenced quite heavily by Professor Michael Young who talks about epistemology. He kind of comes from the Basil Bernstein if you're interested in research school, of thinking about the structure of subjects and strong boundaries and weak boundaries Design technology, they claim, have weak boundaries. Michael Young is not an advocate of an aims-based curriculum. His counterparts at UCL University, college London, michael White and no, yeah, michael Reese and John White I think I'm getting my names wrong are very strong advocates for an aims-led curriculum. So there's all sorts of debate about whether education should be aims-based or not. And at that point Michael Young and his work and it is really good work I mean I'm not saying either of these arguments are better or worse, but they give a different perspective and they have had at that point different leverage in terms of policy. And Michael Young's work around knowledge could be aligned to ED Hirsch and Daniel Willingham, which I mentioned earlier in the podcast, which I mentioned earlier in the podcast.

Alison Hardy: 13:43

So there was a debate do we have an aims-based curriculum? And I think if you look at the GCSE specification. There are no aims anymore. I think, personally I think that's a real loss because then we don't understand the grounding of the subject. What is the purpose of this GCSE? What is it doing? What's the aim? What are the young people going to walk out of, if they kind of get the whole thing? What they're going to walk out as as a complete person in design and technology? But they're not there in the GCSE, which I think is a real shame. But they are there in the national curriculum and they are there for design and technology. They're there for every subject and there are these purpose statements. On reflection, it's a bit of a hodgepodge.

Alison Hardy: 14:24

I was involved in the debate around the purpose of study for design and technology. I've critiqued it elsewhere, but there is a purpose. It's got a mention about math, science, engineering, computing and arts because again, that was and this is not to take the angle of that the subject is cross-disciplinary. There was a call from government, from Department of Education, that maths and science influenced and shaped subjects like design and technology, and also there was an argument around subjects being academic and so one of the ways that design technology was enabled argued to be put into that box discussing academic invocation as a whole. Other podcast episode was to draw on maths and science, which again, I think, kind of waters it down and leads to this idea about this weak, epistemological, blurred boundaries between design and technology and the subject. So it's there. Should it be there? What does that mean? Um, you know, I think it's difficult then sometimes to argue about the uniqueness of design and technology when even the purpose statement talks about drawing on other subjects and there isn't a clarity about what we mean by this broad range of subject knowledge which it talks about in the purpose.

Alison Hardy: 15:47

But there are four aims. They are there and that's, I think, what the curriculum, when we're teaching it in schools, when it's being taught in schools, needs to drive what is being taught, why it's being taught. So those four aims are clearly there around developing creative technical and practical expertise, perform every day task confidently to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. Well, that's the first one. I think there's actually two in there and I think that hints at the reason why design technology is an important part of a general education designing and making high quality products, building and applying a repertoire of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to design and make high quality, prototypes and products for a wide range of users. That's design and technology capability, critique, evaluate and test of ideas and products and the work of others. Again, that's about that links to me very much.

Alison Hardy: 16:39

That aim, the beginning, creative, technical and practical expertise. Perform everyday tasks, conflict, participate successfully. If you're going to participate successfully, I think, an increasing technological world, you have to be able to critique, evaluate and test and understand and apply the principles of nutrition and learn how to cook. Again, there's two aims in there, but it's just written as one, so there are from there. There's content listed for lower primary key stage one, upper primary key stage two and lower secondary key stage three and key stage two and lower secondary key stage three, and then the same for cooking and nutrition. So that's where it's at.

Alison Hardy: 17:18

It's broken down in the design and technology section into design, make and evaluate and technical knowledge. Government directive was to keep it light, not to be too prescriptive, but then that kind of if we don't, we don't hold on to the aims, if we don't articulate the aims, and it's very difficult to understand what knowledge we're selecting to teach. So I think that's where the national curriculum document sort of starts to struggle. And it's not, it's the interpretation of it that is key in terms of the context to me, of what the aims are, of the subject. I keep coming back to that the aims, the purpose. There are flaws in this document, but they are there to start thinking about what. What we're doing, why are we selecting this knowledge now? Why are we teaching these skills, these procedures, now and not later? What we're doing now that they're drawing on that they've taught and that they've learned before? So this, this curriculum that's here, um around design, make, evaluate and technical knowledge. They aren't discrete. They are written as discrete um.

Alison Hardy: 18:21

I'm going to talk in a later podcast about some of my views around the subject's knowledge structure. Um, but it's presented here in the national curriculum design, make, evaluate and technical knowledge as four discrete areas, and in cooking and nutrition it's just under the three key stages, but about principles of healthy and varied diets, preparing and cooking, understanding ingredients and having a range of techniques. So the skill then is for a teacher is to take those aims and to take that knowledge and think about how they're, how and when they're teaching that knowledge in such a way that is building towards children achieving those aims, and those aims kind of grow over time. It not like you say okay, we're going to do all of this key stage one, key stage two, and bang, they're all going to suddenly appear at the end of key stage three. That's not how it is, but it's a real skill of a teacher to take all of that to think okay, it's an, it's an incremental, it's emerging over time. How are we doing that? How are we structuring teaching this knowledge?

Alison Hardy: 19:26

So, so I think, understanding the origins of this current version, where it's come from, understanding some of the policy, research drivers behind it, coming to here and then starting to think, as a teacher, what you need to think about in terms of how you plan that curriculum is really useful, but that's where we're at. It's been here for 10 years. This national curriculum really useful, but that's where we're at. It's been here for 10 years, this national curriculum, and there has been calls in the last year, since 2023 into 2024, that it's time for a change. Whether that will happen with a change of government or a new government as we go, moving England to a general election later in the year, who knows? But that's where we're at at the moment and I still argue that I think we need to think about what is the knowledge structure, what are the aims of the subject, and holding on to those and demonstrating those through practice and research.

Alison Hardy: 20:14

That then means that when and if another curriculum comes in or is debated or there's a review, then we have a stronger assurance of the subject. I think that lack of assurance that had been articulated to policy directors, policy makers, meant that we actually went through this we were blowing in the wind and has led to some lack of clarity, I think, in the current national curriculum. But there is some clarity there and I think there's plenty there to building on. So I'm a great advocate of not throwing the baby out with the bath water. If my chair doesn't fit, I don't necessarily get rid of it. I might just make a new cushion.

Alison Hardy: 20:57

I think in design and technology it's about evolving the national curriculum rather than dramatically changing it, because we have to understand that the aims, the epistemology, the purpose of the subject remains consistent. We just might need to rearrange the furniture occasionally and put a new cushion in place, but to understand what the new knowledge is that's developing over time. So I'm kind of starting to hint there at some things that I might talk about in a future episode around the nature of the subject, where new knowledge comes from, how knowledge is structured in design and technology and how we can think about that to plan curriculum. But for now, today was just a stock take on what the plan curriculum. But for now, today was just a stock take on what the national curriculum is in England today where it came from, how we need to hold our own and thinking about the implications that's got and what might change in the future.

Alison Hardy: 21:41

And over the next few episodes you're going to listen to different viewpoints about how people responded to this national curriculum, what they've done with it, what they think needs to be changed, what could be changed and what needs to be changed. Anyway, as ever, thanks for listening. Hope you've enjoyed this week. It's been a bit ramble. Kip joined for me for a little bit and then he cleared off. Obviously he didn't want to hear about the national curriculum anymore. But, um, hope you found that interesting. Drop me an email and there'll be a follow-up episode on thursday as well with some more insight and some more background and some links to some research in those show notes.

Alison Hardy: 22:09

That's available for subscribers. I'm Dr Alison Hardy and you've been listening to the Talking D&T podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, then do subscribe, on whatever platform you use, and do consider leaving a review, as it does help others find the podcast. I do the podcast because I want to support the D&T community in developing their practice, so please do share the podcast with your D&T community. If you want to respond to something I've talked about or have an idea for a future episode, then either leave me a voice memo via speakpipe or drop me an email. You can find details about me, the podcast and how to connect with me on my website, dralisonhardycom. Also, if you want to support the podcast financially, you can become a patron. Links to SpeakPipe, patreon and my website are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.