The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced a standardised National Curriculum in England and Wales.
The curriculum specified what subjects should be taught and what standard children were expected to reach by different ages.
[4] However, a report produced by Estyn in 2001 suggested that the success of this endeavour had been quite limited and varied significantly between subjects, schools and regions.
Within each phase or key stage, certain subjects were set out in statute as part of the national curriculum.
Within the foundation phase, the curriculum was set out in seven areas of learning: The following subjects were statutory in each of the later key stages:[13] In 2014, the Welsh Government commissioned Graham Donaldson a professor at the University of Glasgow who had worked on reforms to Education in Scotland to conduct a report into reforming the curriculum in Wales.
[15] The Welsh Education Minister promised a few months later that the report would be implemented in full within eight years.