Within weeks of assuming office in 2024, the government fulfilled a manifesto pledge to commission a review of the national curriculum. The purpose was both aspirational and practical: ensuring our curriculum remains relevant today while acknowledging that our society is shaped largely by our education and attempting to address some of the societal ills we find ourselves plagued with.
Professor Becky Francis, who led the review, articulated its potential to truly “benefit society”. The government response, published this month, sets out a refreshed curriculum to be implemented from September 2028.
Two new requirements have potential to make the most difference. First, citizenship education will become mandatory in primary schools for the first time; teaching children about media literacy for example, to critically analyse online content and with enhanced focus at secondary through initiatives like debating opportunities. These can build future citizens with tools and practice to engage with opposing views without escalating to violence.
Second, a new “enrichment entitlements framework” will require all schools to provide structured opportunities across five areas: civic engagement, arts and culture, nature and outdoor experiences, sport and physical activities, and developing wider life skills.
In our current climate of division and disengagement, this framework offers genuine hope for helping children see how they fit into the broader fabric of society and find their place within it.
The Secretary of State for Education expressed her hope that for this review to “shape the future for our society” but it cannot be achieved by schools alone. Children spend most of their time outside school, and schools' work must be reinforced at home and in society.
Yet the review ignores the vital role parents must play in reinforcing these new requirements – requirements that could genuinely give children the ability to create spaces founded on respect and understanding, with tools to pinpoint misinformation and identify hatred and call it by its name.
The values taught at school must find their way into broader society with real community support and engagement. Having consulted with parents and carers as stakeholders in developing this review, they have now been positioned as information recipients rather than active partners and friends in working towards its laudable aims. Without this partnership strategy, have schools been set an impossible task?
Our Jewish schools demonstrate that this partnership really works. Talk to any professional working in Jewish schools and they'll tell you that parents are both challenging and a blessing – reinforcing what schools achieve while holding them accountable. Calling Jewish schools 'community schools' is perhaps the simplest way of putting it; and we know that this parent-school partnership reaps rewards.
Jewish schools consistently top league tables – due to the hard work and dedication of school staff and the unique offering that they have. Walk into any Jewish school and you can feel the Jewish values that underpin everything – this new enrichment framework has simply provided a language to express what has always been there.
Our schools will mainly need to audit and map what they're already doing rather than create provision from scratch. Jewish community engagement (chesed), celebrations throughout the Jewish year, Shabbat experiences, and countless other initiatives already provide rich opportunities across all five categories, producing both academic excellence and strong character.
Our society faces considerable challenges that this curriculum review genuinely seeks to address. These new requirements offer real hope for building a more cohesive generation. But schools cannot do this work alone.
Education must be recognised as a shared endeavour between schools, families, and wider communities. Jewish schools have long understood this partnership model, and it works. Until mainstream education embraces the same collective responsibility, we risk undermining even the most well-intentioned curriculum reforms – asking schools to solve problems that require all of us to be part of the solution.
Raisel Freedman is assistant director of PaJeS
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