Primary teachers and the national curriculum

Abstract

A questionnaire survey of 901 primary teachers was undertaken by the Leverhulme Primary Project team. The sample was a national one which closely matched the national distribution of primary schools according to size and region. Teachers were asked to state how competent they felt to teach the national curriculum introduced by the 1988 Education Act with their existing subject knowledge. Whether results were analysed by the size of school, age of teacher, sex or age group taught, the rank order was similar. Teachers saw themselves as most competent in English with maths in second place. In last three places, with lowest perceived competence, were science, music and maths. The other subjects, art, geography, history, RE and PE were grouped in the middle. A similar response was found when teachers were asked to describe their competence on individual attainment targets in English, mathematics, music, science and design and technology. Greatest confidence in existing subject knowledge was expressed in the English and mathematics items. Infant teachers felt more competence in music than junior teachers, but the position was reversed for science and technology. Differences between men and women teachers emerged along traditional stereotypical lines, with women teachers expressing higher self‐ratings in humanities and music and men a higher self‐rating in science and technology. Though women gave themselves a slightly higher self‐rating in mathematics overall, men rated themselves more highly on individual statements of mathematics attainment. Teachers more recently qualified rated themselves more highly competent in science than longer serving teachers, but not in subjects like geography, history and RE. In general teachers were not opposed to the national curriculum, but there were numerous references to the short timescale, their fears about shortage of resources, the personal strain that many felt, especially heads, and anxiety about assessment at the ages of seven and eleven. Most schools were already making extensive use of in‐service days, staff meetings and the revision of policy documents in their preparation, but there is relatively little inter‐school collaboration or use of local authority advisers. Teachers put forward courses on assessment and testing as their greatest in‐service need, and also gave a high priority to two of the subjects they had previously expressed least competence in, science and technology, but assigned a low priority to another of their weakest subjects, music.

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