The Subject-English Curriculum War: A Struggle for Symbolic Control

There have been significant changes to the national curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last three decades. Subject-English has been at the forefront of the three most recent changes which have occurred in quick succession and have had different priorities. We theorise that what is happening in subject-English is symptomatic of broader educational shifts and these shifts will also be reflected in the curricula of other learning areas as they are developed. In this article we employ Bernstein’s concept of ‘recontextualisation’ to trace how key ideas from various societal discourses became the recontextualising principles used to formulate and realise subject-English curriculum policy. We begin with an analysis of two key government documents that have given direction to the writers of the most recent English curricula. This is followed by an examination of the following curricula: English Years 0–6, the draft for English Years 7–13, the recently released curriculum for English Years 0–10, and The New Zealand Curriculum I Te Mātaiaho, demonstrating how the discourses identified in the government documents have made their way into these curricula.