* What does the National Curriculum mean to pupils and teachers at Key Stage One?

* How have teachers and children coped with the ongoing changes?

* How has subject teaching altered in infant classrooms?

In A National Curriculum for the Early Years, Angela Anning and her team of contributors set out to examine these issues. Infant teachers and their pupils were the guinea pigs for the introduction of the National Curriculum over a five year period. Despite many reservations about a subject-based curriculum for young children, teachers struggled to interpret the National Curriculum Orders into a workable, if not manageable, curriculum in their classrooms.

The contributors to this book, each experts in a subject discipline, have kept in close touch with practising and intending infant teachers as the National Curriculum was operationalized in primary schools. They have used their teacher networks, as well as research evidence, to tap into the strategies used by infant teachers to cope with the planning, delivery and assessment of the National Curriculum subjects and the effects of government policy changes on young children's learning.

Together the contributors provide a timely analysis of subject discipline based education for young children and look ahead to the prospects for those subjects at Key Stage One in the second half of the 1990s.

This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in the education of young children.