Concerns over make-up of curriculum drafters group

Sector leaders have criticised the “limited breadth and diversity” of experts recruited to help write the new national curriculum. 

The Department for Education has chosen 46 “curriculum drafters” following a public tender. The government said they were chosen “based on the best fit for the role, taking into account expertise in subject knowledge and in school leadership”.

But the list’s release has prompted questions about diversity and the way the experts are unevenly split across 13 subject areas.

For example, there are 10 experts helping to draft the PE curriculum, compared with just one for languages and two for English.

The two experts chosen to help with English are Matt Carnaby, the director of curriculum and assessment at Astrea Academy Trust, and Dr Timothy Mills, a RISE adviser and former executive director of primary education at the STEP Academy Trust.

Critics point out they are both white men either attached or previously attached to multi-academy trusts. Both were approached for comment.

Diversity concerns

Ian Cushing, a reader in critical applied linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the English Association (EA), described the selection as “disappointing but perhaps not surprising”.

“No subject should have its content designed by such a small number of individuals, and certainly no subject should have its content designed by exclusively white men.”

He said it was “insulting” to a teaching workforce made up primarily of women.

He added that English helps pupils to explore social issues including “race, class, gender, disability, linguistic diversity, colonialism”.

“We need a curriculum designed by people who have lived experience and expertise in those things…[and] allows people from diverse backgrounds to see, feel, and hear themselves represented in it.”

Dr Rebecca Fisher, the chief executive of the EA, said it “regrets that the DfE did not appoint a larger and more diverse group” to take in the discipline’s “deep expertise and experience”.

But Fisher said the association looked “forward to supporting Matt Carnaby…who brings extensive knowledge of curriculum design and of the subject, and phonics expert Dr Tim Mills”.

Professor Becky Francis’s Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) report said the national curriculum “is for all our children and young people, and they should feel both included in it and represented by it”.

Allana Gay, a co-founder of BAMEed, a black, Asian, and minority ethnic educators’ network, said actions since the CAR “indicate that once again truly inclusive practice is going to the fringe rather than being embedded into the curriculum”.

The Francis review made clear the drafting process “must involve teachers, as well as be informed by subject specialists’ knowledge of the discipline”.

Shehlha Zafir, a curriculum director for English at a multi-academy trust, and BAMEed co-lead for the West Midlands, said she was “genuinely disappointed at the lack of diversity and representation” in the list.

She is worried that the next iteration of the national curriculum would continue to have “unconscious biases built in because of the make-up of this group.

“This group reinforces the whiteness of the curriculum,” she said. “Diverse voices may be invited to join the discussion, but they do not have a seat at the table.”

‘Lack of practising teachers’

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, criticised the “limited breadth and diversity” of drafters, as well as “the absence of practising teachers”.

The government is due to start publishing draft programmes of study for consultation from this spring. The final versions will come in spring 2027, and the new curriculum will be taught in schools from September 2028.

Kebede said the government “must trust and empower the profession as curriculum-makers and ensure drafting teams reflect fully the experiences and expertise of teachers and the societies they serve”.

Stuart Tiffany, a history teacher, said the subject’s eight expert drafters had “immense knowledge, experience and talent”. 

But he questioned whether they had enough experience in key stages 1 and 2, and said he hoped they would “proactively seek out the specialist understanding required to effectively plan for the youngest learners”.

A DfE spokesperson said the contracts were with a range of suppliers, both organisations and sole traders – “hence why numbers of drafters per subject may vary”. 

“Work for each subject has been allocated based on a set number of days, rather than the number of people. Each supplier has been allocated a set number of days based on the scale of work required to respond to the review recommendations.”

Full list of curriculum drafters

• Art and Design – William Grant, Paula Briggs (AccessArt); Michele Gregson (NSEAD); Katyie Holdstock (University of Worcester)
• Citizenship – Elizabeth Moorse, Naomi Kennedy (Association for Citizenship Teaching)
• PE – Kate Thornton-Bousfield, Jo Harris, Catherine Fitzpatrick – Magee, Shaun Dowling, Lucy Supperstone, Victoria Randall, Laura Nicholson, Will Swaithes, Liz Durden-Myers, Jordan Wintle (Association for Physical Education)
• English – Matt Carnaby (Astrea Academy Trust); Timothy Mills
• Computing – Julia Adamson, Becci Peters, Benjamin Rhys Davies, Niel McLean (BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT)
• Languages – Bernardette Holmes
• Food and Nutrition – Frances Meek (British Nutrition Foundation)
• Music – Carolyn Baxendale, Simon Toyne
• Mathematics – David Thomas; Catherine Lynne McClure; Charlie Stripp (Mathematics in Education and Industry); Prof Jeremy Hogden; Dr Helen Drury
• Design and Technology – Alison Hardy, Matt McLain (Nottingham Consultants Ltd)
• Science – Lauren McLeod (Royal Society of Biology); Laura Daly (Royal Society of Chemistry); Marianne Cutler (The Association for Science Education; Charles Tracy (The Institute of Physics); Alex Parry (Raspberry Pi Foundation)
• Geography – Steve Brace (The Geographical Association)
• History – Christine Counsell, Catherine Priggs, Claire Holliss, Jim Carroll, Michael Fordham, Michael Maddison, Mike Hill, Rachel Foster (The Historical Association)