Reversal and Paradox: Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment in England 1970–2024

Bernstein’s landmark essay ‘On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge’ can not only be read as an analysis of codes and systems, but as a historical interpretation of curriculum and pedagogy in twentieth century England. The UK’s neoliberal turn after 1979 marked among other things a rupture from the system analysed by Bernstein. Charting the course of knowledge politics since 1979, the chapter argues that the radical intensification of neoliberal policy from 2010 onwards should lead us to consider what kinds of reconceptualisation are necessary in order to understand the new forms of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation that have been established in a school system where control of educational knowledge has reached a new point of stringency, and where the effects of political authoritarianism are felt at many points.