British Conservatives happily acknowledge the debt that they owe to E.D. Hirsch. To understand the nature of their curricular project, and how it is located within the wider goals of education and social policy, we need to attend carefully to the character of this transatlantic borrowing. Its emphases and omissions reveal much about the…

Once again, the National Curriculum orders for English are being rewritten. The writers of the new curriculum have looked to the education systems of "high-performing jurisdictions" for inspiration. The result is a curriculum draft that offers a limited view of the subject and one which apparently fails to prioritise the needs of the…