The National Curriculum is part of the most far-reaching change in education in England and Wales for the past two decades, affecting all state schooling tor 5 to 10 year olds. The government has taken direct control of education and is prescribing both the content and assessment of the school curriculum. At the same time, schooling at the regional, local and institutional level is being fundamentally reorganized. These are radical changes, and only in retrospect will their full significance become clear.
Only then will we be able to evaluate the implemented changes in schooling and their outcomes. Meanwhile, we can critically examine the planned developments. The goal of this section is to provide a critique of the aims, ideologies and conflicts underlying the mathematics component of the National Curriculum.