Gender, Curriculum and Assessment Issues to 16 +

This paper examines the relationship between curriculum and assessment in respect of gender, focusing largely on ages 14‐16+. Discussion concerns specifically those gender issues arising from the current trend towards vocationalism and from the intention, via the 1988 Education Reform Act, to introduce in England and Wales a national curriculum and a national system of assessment and testing. Proposals for the new National Curriculum are examined and it is argued that the overall curriculum is becoming increasingly assessment‐ and vocationally‐led, the prescribed emphases being technological. The school curriculum itself is therefore increasingly founded upon technology in respect of both content and modes of student assessment. Further, the intention to introduce a technologically‐based and technological curriculum may give rise to some difficulties in respect of another current intention, variously interpreted though it is, to produce more gender‐equal educational provision.