Understanding national curriculum enactment: Choice and constraint in the Welsh school system

The PhD project places the new primary school curriculum in Wales at its centre and aims to understand how the increased scope for choice within the curriculum will be exercised by school managements and teachers. Following years of centralisation and the narrowing of school curricula within the UK, this proposed project will explore the implementation and enactment of Wales' new national curriculum in comparative ways. With extant evidence suggesting that schools in deprived areas are less likely to offer a more expansive curriculum when compared to more prosperous areas, the proposed project explores how curriculum choice extending from the new curriculum in Wales is exercised. Within COVID-19 restrictions the research uses qualitative interviews with teachers and head-teachers, as well as documentary analysis of the new curriculum. No research is undertaken with vulnerable groups, but the research will follow BERA's ethics guidelines. Cardiff University protocols on researcher safety will be followed.