The challenges young people will need to overcome in the future transcend their employability qualities. They need to understand what knowledge and skills are valuable in the world, how these are used by those with different forms of power, and why this curricula content is important for them to acquire and own. A curriculum for genuine equality and equity must be anti-imperialist, support the institutions of democracy and community, and encourage teachers and schools to find diverse pathways of interest and engagement for all pupils.

Fundamental to any curriculum is how outcomes are conceived. These typically reflect some of form of assessment of learning, designed to measure competence, regulate future competition for work or academic progression and provide accountability (Broadfoot, 2012). After a long, and for many frustrating, wait, teachers in Wales now know that pupils at the end of their compulsory school education will have the opportunity to sit new ‘Made for Wales’ GCSEs. The lack of clarity about how learners would be assessed and what qualifications they could expect to leave school with has been a source of tension as the Curriculum for Wales (CfW) has been developed and this year rolled out.

Qualification Wales (QW) is the Welsh Government-sponsored body responsible for the recognition of awarding bodies and approval of these qualifications. They have published approval criteria (AC) that examination boards, such as the Welsh Joint Education Committee, will need to use to design specifications for the 28 new GCSEs.  Each AC document sets out what examination boards will need to present in their rationale, including subject content, experiences that learners should have and assessment requirements.

I was involved in the consultation process for one of the GCSEs, Social Studies, and this led me to conduct an evaluation of equality and equity issues within its design. In conducting this evaluation, I developed a series of questions focusing on how much diversity could be reflected through the content, the extent to which principles of equality and equity could be promoted, and how accessible the course would be to all learners, regardless of their background and/or ethnicity. The questions drew from important theoretical positions concerning inclusiveness and how to foster anti-racism (itself a mission of the Welsh Government).

In general, I found that the new GCSE in Social Studies could contribute to greater equality and equity if professional knowledge and confidence matched its aspirations. However, what of the other 27 GCSEs, how would these measure up? As I began analysing each of them, I became more sceptical about the value of my evaluatory framework. Although it is vital for different ethnicities and cultures to be represented, explored and valued across the curriculum, this alone does not empower learners with an understanding of how subject-related knowledge continues to be used nationally and globally to marginalise and exploit different groups.

‘Although it is vital for different ethnicities and cultures to be represented, explored and valued across the curriculum, this alone does not empower learners with an understanding of how subject-related knowledge continues to be used nationally and globally to marginalise and exploit different groups.’

Concerns were sharpened as I reflected on the rationale that had been given for the new curriculum and the strong influence of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with its neoliberal conceptualisation of education (d’Agnese, 2017). Within this perspective, the individual is a resource whose wellbeing is linked to the role they play within global systems of capital generation: if you become a successful worker, contribute to GDP, you’re bound to be happy; high economic performing countries are on the whole better places to live than lower ones. Achieving this for everyone means an education designed for economic productivity.

It is this that led me to develop an additional set of questions to apply to the 28 new Made for Wales GCSEs. These continue to reflect concerns for a curriculum of decoloniality but recognise that neoliberal capitalist systems represent, for many global and national communities, another form of colonisation – as Habermas argued (1987) – of the lifeworld. The questions include:

• In what ways do qualifications encourage a sense of knowledge and skills ownership by all learners?
• How will the qualification enable learners to understand and respond to the power-related aspects of the curriculum (knowledge, skills and experiences)?
• To what extent will the courses help learners understand the world in new ways that transcend their social circumstances while also allowing them to value their community?

Qualifications that authentically address equality, diversity and inclusion issues must grapple with the wider power dynamics of the knowledge and skills they aim to provide learners access to. None of these terms exists in a theoretically neutral or stable state, and questioning how these are translated within national qualification must be an ongoing task of educators.

References

Broadfoot, P. (2012). Assessment, schools and society (Vol. 35). Routledge.

d’Agnese, V. (2017). Reclaiming education in the age of PISA: Challenging OECD’s educational order. Routledge.

Habermas, J. (1985). The theory of communicative action. Volume 2: Lifeword and system: A critique of functionalist reason. Beacon Press.