Cross Curricular

The Education Reform Act 1988 places a statutory responsibility upon schools to provide a broad and balanced curriculum which:

• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of students at school and of society;
• prepares students for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.

The National Curriculum alone does not provide the necessary breadth, but it forms a foundation to be augmented by

• religious education
• subjects beyond those contained in the National Curriculum
• an accepted range of cross-curricular elements
• extra curricular activities.

"The full potential of the National Curriculum will only be realised if, in curriculum planning, schools seek to identify the considerable overlaps which inevitably exist both in content and in skills. There is an opportunity for schools to carry out content and skills audits. Inter-departmental planning can lead to more coherent development of skills and the reduction of wasted time and overloading caused by duplication of effort." (NCC 1990)

NCC Circular 6 (1989) defined cross-curricular elements in terms of dimensions, skills and themes.

The dimensions include equality of opportunity and entitlement to the whole curriculum.

Skills include communication, literacy, study, problem-solving, personal and social skills and information technology.

The cross-curricular themes identified by the National Curriculum Council in 1990 were: Economic and Industrial Understanding, Careers Education and Guidance, Health Education, Education for Citizenship and Environmental Education.

Some themes will obviously feature in more than one area of the curriculum. The NCC stress, however, that "the important consideration is to make sure that each topic appears at least somewhere in the curriculum and that overlaps, where they occur, are deliberate and complementary." (1990)