These educational implications allow us to criticize the National Curriculum in
Mathematics on epistemological grounds. For the mathematics curriculum is represented
As a unique hierarchy of fourteen ‘topics’ (attainment targets) at ten levels (Department
Of Education and Science, 1989). Furthermore, at each level, the, the topic is
Represented by a number of propositions or processes, and mastery of these disparate components.
Thus the National Curriculum misrepresents mathematics, contrary to the accepted
Curriculum principle. Lt embodies a hierarchy that is unjustified in terms of the nature
Of mathematics, as well as portraying mathematical knowledge as a set of discrete facts
And skills.