Review, review… review: Primary education in a state of change

The article attempts to ‘draw’ a picture of the present-day situation in English primary education by referring to two reports published in 2009 and more recent events. The two reports are the non-government, independent initiative the Cambridge Primary Review: Children, their world, their education and the government sponsored Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum. Describing images and referring to texts from the two reviews, the article views English primary education as contemporary schooling, after Gołębniak, and following what Klus-Stańska refers to as a social developmental discourse. There are however questions as to whether English primary schooling is in fact achieving these profiles, especially in the area of entitlement to a wide range of well ‘taught’ subjects. A situation which is worsened by the favouring of certain subjects over others, a reliance upon better test scores as a mark of improvements in primary education overall, and a failure to provide adequate training for teachers in all subjects.