On 7 February 2013 the Secretary of State for Education announced a public consultation on the draft National Curriculum which will run until 16 April 2013. The consultation also asks for views on proposals to disapply aspects of the current National Curriculum from September 2013, so as to give schools greater flexibility as they prepare to teach the new one, and on plans to replace the existing ICT curriculum with a new computing curriculum.

In addition, the Secretary of State stated the decision to retain all of the existing subjects in the National Curriculum at the same key stages as now, and confirmed the Government’s intention to add the teaching of languages at Key Stage 2. A final version of the new National Curriculum will be available in autumn 2013 for first teaching in schools from September 2014.

Below are some background papers on this as well as Prof. Mary James’ personal response to the consultation.