Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency

Examining in greater depth the challenge posed to the curriculum by the increasing international dimension to life and work.

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Lesley Longstone, Director for International Strategy, DfES
'Our responsibilities are to ensure that the curriculum enables people to fulfil their role as global citizens and that means having an understanding of global issues, it's about understanding different perspectives on those issues and it's having an understanding about how to influence and shape responses to those issues.'

John Anniss, Headteacher, Chyngton School
'I think that as the national curriculum continues to develop we should focus on successful communities. I think it's an element that partly comes into the global consideration but I do think that children learning to live in a community, first of all in their school and then in their community, is very important: their involvement, their participation, their awareness of the diversity within that community is an important aspect in living in a successful world.'

Lesley Longstone, Director for International Strategy, DfES
'With one in four jobs already related to overseas trade we have to be able to give employers the skills that they need to operate in an international context and that means an ability to deal with purchasers and suppliers overseas, to be able to work with colleagues overseas increasingly through ICT and collaboration, etc. So there is an economic aspect to globalisation as well as a social one.'

Cary Bazalgette, Head of Education, British Film Institute
'It's maybe a bit odd that the media aren't cited as a force for change. They've been a force for change in global culture for at least a hundred years. They've made an enormous difference to our culture, to our democracy, the ways in which we understand the world and share information, and develop our prejudices as well.'

John Anniss, Headteacher, Chyngton School
'The explosion in communications means we can see what's happened around the world in various settings. I think the danger is that we view it from afar and I do think the national curriculum needs to construct or promote opportunities for children to experience some of these situations. Should we be out in the field in bare feet in January, even if it is just ten minutes, just to find out what it is like to feel very, very cold when you're seeing this on TV? And I do think the communication explosion has meant we can dip in to lots of people's experiences, but unless we have some notion of what that experience is ourselves, it remains a flat screen that we've viewed upon.'

Sara Parkin OBE, Programme Director, Forum for the Future
'We are global citizens and it's never ever been more evident that the individual actions and choices we take have got a global impact: whether that is an impact in causing climate change, or whether that is in the growing inequality that is between countries which is mirrored between in the inequality that there is within the United Kingdom. So I think there is a high awareness amongst young people about global citizenship. There's a big membership of the sort of organisations that do concern themselves with global, environmental and other issues. That does need to be reflected in the curriculum because there is a discontinuity of what the pupil is seeing happening in the world around them and what they're hearing in the classroom.'

Disclaimer: This film is intended to stimulate debate. Views expressed are not necessarily those of QCA.