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On this page: Issues for Church schools | The law
The National Curriculum's core subjects gave become increasingly prescriptive, for example, with the advent of the National Literacy Strategy and the National Numeracy Strategy. Church schools in common with many others have found that the time taken to implement these two strategies can challenge the amount of time and energy that remains for the remaining subjects in the basic curriculum.
The main issue for Church schools is to ensure that the Christian, and more generally the spiritual dimensions of these subjects are kept to the fore. It would be inappropriate to distort the subject in question but there are Christian perspectives that can and should arise in each of the core subjects, e.g. the mystery of growth and life in science and the amazing qualities of the human body and the universe in which we live; the mystery of infinity, shape and order in mathematics; and in English, the beauty and power of words and imagery.
'awe/fascination: in our teaching of the sciences, geography we will want children to see the natural world and the universe around us, not simply as an impersonal machine, but as an environment that ought to inspire feelings of awe and wonder in us. I am not actually suggesting that it is appropriate actively to counteract the materialist/mechanist view by explicitly parading various forms of the cosmological and teleological arguments (I'm not convinced that science lessons are the place for these regardless of whether we consider them good arguments or not!), but it is certainly appropriate to focus on the age-old human propensity to be dwarfed, surprised, etc. Theologically, such an approach fits in well with Otto's concept of God as the 'mysterium tremendum fascinaus'- that numinous presence which overwhelms, yet also fascinates and draws us. The Christian teacher will enable pupils at least to touch this mystery.'
Peter Shepherd in The Curriculum: Christian Perspectives (The National Society, 1997 pp 32-33)
Curriculum organization and the construction and selection of syllabi is a critical task for the Christian school. A Christian approach to the teaching of science, for example, would affirm that there is a created world which we can explore and understand rationally, and which we can develop technologically. However that scientific knowing would not be the supreme form of knowledge. Science taught from a Christian world-view may well approach the subject matter as a whole, to give students a holistic framework within which to understand the natural world and its part in God's story, rather that choosing a more fragmented and atomized approach.
The possibilities for the integration of knowledge presented by Information and Communications Technology and Design Technology are particularly useful and fundamental to educational advance at the current time and represent new and challenging fields for a curriculum design which reflects a Christian world-view.
Visit www.polkinghorne.org for publications from John Polkinghorne on the Science and Religion debate.
Church schools will wish to assure themselves that they have taken every opportunity, particularly within the Literacy Strategy, to develop the use of literature that will support some of the religious education objectives of the curriculum. Literature can also give rise to discussion and reflection that will contribute to the development of the values which the schools wishes to see incorporated in the curriculum as a whole.
The basic statements on the curriculum requirements are contained in sections 351 and 352 of the Education Act 1996. These two sections define a pupil's minimum entitlement as being a Basic Curriculum that includes:
In general, the law concerning the National Curriculum subjects is found in the Education Act 1996 Part V, Chapter II, section 353.
section 354 defines the subjects which fall within the National Curriculum. It identifies three core subjects (four in Wales), these are mathematics, English, science and in Wales, Welsh.
The other foundation subjects are:
In Wales a modern foreign language is not a foundation subject in the fourth key stage. Later sections of the Act provide for the Secretary of State to establish the detail of the National Curriculum through the means of a series of orders.
The law provides special arrangements in Welsh schools for the teaching of Welsh. The arrangements exists in a particular school depend on whether it is designated a Welsh language school or not.
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