During her interview on the Today Programme, just before 8am this morning, I heard the Secretary of State talking about the need to review how to remove duplication in the teaching of the National Curriculum. That very sentiment was in part the Reason Kenneth Baker introduced a National Curriculum in the 1988 Education Reform Act.

 In the 1980s, discussion was about the repetition of the same topic, with little additional learning taking place when it was taught in both the primary and secondary sectors, so that an eight-year-old was drawing the same Viking boat as a thirteen-year-old – we didn’t have ‘year with numbers’ back then. There was both duplication and a lack of progression.

This morning, the Secretary of State cited the lack of coordination over languages between what is taught in primary schools and the secondary schools they feed into as an issue.

Now, during the past forty years since the idea of a National Curriculum became common currency in education, progress has been made in codifying what is taught, and England’s PISA scores have increased. Both no doubt great achievements.

However, many of my maths friends tell me there has been a price to pay in their subject. I think the idea of a new diagnostic test in Year 8 for English and mathematics highlights the dilemma facing secondary schools. How do you staff a school to both develop pupils’ knowledge and experience when they are on track, but also work to try to build on the knowledge and skills of those that have fallen behind where they are expected to be at that age?

Will the test be used to see the difference a school achieves in Progress 8 between the end of Year 8 and GSCE? More importantly, what will be the consequences of under-achievement? If there are no consequences, then why would schools do more than pay lip service to these new tests?

 In the original National Curriculum, there were 10 levels, and every child had another level to aspire to reach. That was about motivation, not checking for failure. After all, as Phil Willis sometime Lib Dem spokesperson on education used to say, ‘you don’t make pigs fatter by just weighting them.’

But, back to the issue of continuity across all subjects. This requires mandated programmes of work about what is taught and when to be fully achievable across all schools. Such rigidity risks undermining teacher flexibility and professionalism as it has been recognised in the past.

However, in a more mobile society, some continuity of delivery across the country must be a price schools have to pay to support change. Hopefully, technology is the friend of teachers in that respect. The digitising of the curriculum is a useful suggestion, and one Oxford Brookes University’s School of Education first undertook in the early 1990s, when increased computer power made it possible.

Elsewhere, in the announcement, I applaud the extension of the National Curriculum to all schools, but am horrified that support for the IB has been withdrawn from the small number of schools teaching that curriculum. Here is another example of national direction versus local flexibility.

In Oxfordshire, with many parents from across Europe working in the science and technology industries, this rigidity of approach might be counterproductive if the Europa School cannot continue teaching a language-based curriculum.  Westminster may not always know best.