The Cambridge Primary Review

Towards a new primary curriculum: Cambridge Primary Review Part 1, Past and Present, Part 2, The Future - An editorial response to the Cambridge Primary Review. 

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

Introduction

The Cambridge Primary Review, director Robin Alexander, is the most important development in primary education since the Plowden Report. The review's 31 interim reports are based upon a comprehensive and catholic review of scholarship and research in the field, covering fully both abstract/academic and applied/professional knowledge. The review's 650-page final report, assessing the current condition of English primary education and ending with recommendations for future policy and practice, will be published in October 2009. We will fully review the final report in the next edition of Primary History. The is visionary, inspirational and a working model for the teaching profession to ‘scaffold' curriculum development.

The Cambridge Primary Review's Interim Report proposes a primary curriculum that is ‘re-conceived as a matrix of 12 specified aims together with eight domains of knowledge, skill, disposition and enquiry.' The domains argue the centrality of language, oracy and literacy that are both crosscurricular and have a separate domain identity. Interestingly, while treating ICT as a tool for learning that is by definition cross-curricular, they place it within the language domain on the grounds that it needs to be treated with the same degree of critical engagement as reading, writing and talk.