HOW PRIMARY-SCHOOL TEACHERS VIEW THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM IN ONE LEA

The attitudes of a representative sample of primary school head teachers and infant class teachers of five to six year-old children in an LEA in South Wales were explored by means of a 14 item Likert type scale administered just before the statutory implementation of the National Curriculum at Year One. Whilst there was a wide spread of attitude scale scores amongst the teachers their distribution was (non-significantly) skewed in the positive direction. Analysis of the teachers' responses to the individual items of the scale suggested that the majority of teachers were cautiously welcoming of the National Curriculum, whilst showing concern about the possibly negative effects of the introduction of formal assessment of attainment targets toward the end of this key stage. There was a trend, mainly non-significant statistically, for the head teachers to express more positive views than their class teacher colleagues. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.