"Regulation" Versus "Flexibility"

In1988, under the influence of European integration, the U.K. began a scene of curriculum reform, and the state began to have the management of the curriculum. From then on, The U.K. began to have a unified national curriculum, and went into a new era of national curriculum. Since1988years, The U.K. has taken three curriculum reforms, they are1993curriculum reform,2000curriculum reform and2011curriculum reform.1993curriculum reform mainly aimed at the excessive toughness of1988national curriculum. Under the influence of "have fun", the national curriculum fully reflected the characteristics of "reducing the burden". However,"reducing the burden" resulted in the decline of educational quality, which directly triggered off2000curriculum reform. Since2000, national curriculum began to pay attention to the cultivation of students’abilities, which was included in programmes of student’s study. At the beginning of21st century, people paid more and more attention to the topic of "What should children learn during the primary phase?", which caused great change of the national curriculum in subject knowledges and ability requirements. It didn’t only put forward higher standards to students, but also raised the multi-level evaluation system, so that the students can obtain the comprehensive and individual development.In short, in these four reforms, the "regulation" and the "flexibility" of national curriculum had been in a contest to each other, and going to mutual coordination gradually. As a part of national curriculum in The U.K., Primary curriculum was being influenced deeply by this trend.Based on the development and change of primary curriculum in four national curriculum reforms in The U.K., this study deeply analysed each reform’s background, content, effect and feature, discussed the trend of primary national curriculum reform in The U.K. on the whole, and analysed what the influence factors of the trend were and how these factors affected primary national curriculum reforms in The U.K..