According to Crystal (2003:110), English is ‘the medium of a great deal of the world’s knowledge [and] many nations have…made English an official language or chosen it as their chief foreign language in schools’. Indeed, English is taught as a foreign language in schools in over 100 countries (ibid.:5). Standard English, as a variety of English is generally the variety favoured within school curricula, due to a need to promote ‘mutual intelligibility’ (ibid.:175). Strevens (1983:88) defined Standard English as ‘a particular dialect of English, being the only non-localised dialect, of global currency without significant variation, universally accepted as the appropriate education target in teaching English’. However, different countries have their own ideas about what constitutes standard English, particularly in the ‘inner circle’ of English-speaking countries (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) (Crystal, 2003:60), thus there are varieties of standard English: standard British English, standard American English, standard Australian English, standard New Zealand English, and so on.

In this essay, I shall look at the role Standard English plays in the curricula of England & Wales, Australia, and Kenya, and what constitutes Standard English in these curricula.

In England and Wales, the National Curriculum places a heavy emphasis on the use of Standard English across the curriculum. (Here, of course, the term Standard English refers to what may be called standard British English – though often simply as Standard English due to it being the ‘original’ standard.)  In a section entitled Use of Language across the curriculum, the QCA states that: ‘pupils should be taught in all subjects to express themselves correctly and appropriately…Since standard English, spoken and written, is the predominant language in which knowledge and skills are taught and learned, pupils should be taught to recognise and use standard English’ (NC Online Version). Furthermore, a section entitled About English in the NC, it is suggested that by becoming ‘competent users of spoken and written standard English [enables] pupils to participate fully in the wider world beyond school, in public life, and in decision making’ (ibid).

From the very outset, at Key Stage 1, Standard English is promoted in the National Curriculum over all over varieties. For example, for Key Stage 1 Oracy, the curriculum document states: ‘pupils should be taught to: understand the importance of Standard English, with appropriate sensitivity to their patterns of speech, and recognise some of the features that distinguish Standard English’ (ibid). There are 39 references to standard English in the curriculum document for English as a subject across the four key stages, making clear that non-standard usage is to be avoided – and, indeed, in examinations, penalised (Mercer, 2007:137). Attainment levels reflect the emphasis on Standard English, with the highest levels being awarded to the pupils with the highest competence in Standard English. For example, ‘Exceptional performance’ is awarded to pupils who ‘show assured and fluent use of standard English in a range of situations and for a variety of purposes’ (ibid).

According to Carter (1999:164), the National Curriculum documents are presented ‘as if there should be no contamination connections with other varieties of [English]’, but, he argues, ‘many teachers [believe that] the achievement of competence in standard English…is best brought out on the basis of pupils’ understanding of and respect for their existing language competences’. This brings into question whether the penalising of non-standard usage puts some pupils – for example ethnic minorities or pupils from a poorer background, who may not have access to a Standard English model outside of school – at a disadvantage. However, the Ofsted Primary Subject Reports 2000/01: English includes a report from a school in a disadvantaged inner-city area that suggests the opposite: ‘Pupils benefit from the good range of oral experiences that the school provides to reinforce the use of Standard English’. Furthermore, the Report indicates that Bangladeshi pupils who fail to meet Key Stage 1 attainment targets usually meet or exceed Key Stage 2 attainment targets due to continued exposure to Standard English in the curriculum.

There has been some debate over whether there should be such heavy emphasis on spoken Standard English. The importance of written Standard English is not disputed; Carter (1999:163) is emphatic: ‘for not to learn to write standard English is to be seriously disadvantaged and disempowered’. However, Stubbs (1986:95-6) argues that it is ‘very much more doubtful whether children should be explicitly taught spoken standard English’. And Carter (1999:165) finds the emphasis on spoken Standard English in the National Curriculum ironic ‘when so little appears to be known about what exactly it is and when it is defined only as “not speaking non-standard English”’. It could, however, be argued that to allow non-standard speech in the formal learning environment would be to provide discontinuity and promote confusion. Furthermore, for some pupils the learning environment is the only access to the Standard English model and thus essential for their attaining learning targets.

As a final point about standard English in the National Curriculum, it is important to remember one crucial reason why standard English is so central to the curriculum: the need for standards by which pupils can be assessed, ‘otherwise the students would be subject to the whim of individual markers and it would be impossible to compare and order the performance of candidates’ (Monaghan, 2007:161).

The situation in Australia is somewhat different due to the indigenous populations for whom English is a second language. Furthermore, Australia has a different definition of Standard English, using the variety known either as standard Australian English, or as mainstream Australian English.

The curriculum for English in Australia followed the models provided by the United Kingdom up until the late 1980s when an Australian perspective was introduced to English teaching (Leitner, 2004:234). There was ‘pressure for the subject to recognise, absorb, formalise and reproduce national variations of the Standard English language’ (Clark, 2007:177), which led to the Statement of English for Australian schools asserting that ‘Australian English is the national variety of English in Australia, distinguished from other national varieties’ (ibid.:179). The goal of the curriculum is ‘a sound grasp of the linguistic structures and features of standard Australian English’ (Leitner, 2004:236).

Though standard or mainstream Australian English is the focus of the curriculum, there is recognition of non-standard usage, too. The Curriculum Framework for English states that ‘teaching English involves recognizing, accepting, valuing and building on students’ existing language competence, including the use of non-standard forms of English’, and through this, ‘students learn to control and understand the conventions of standard Australian English that are valued and rewarded by society’.

The recognition of the value of non-standard varieties in the curriculum is significant due to the considerable number of indigenous children in mainstream education in Australia. It is considered that indigenous children will often speak English as a second language, and that the variety that they speak will be an Aboriginal English as opposed to standard or mainstream Australian English (Leitner, 2004:247-9). The Australian Directions in Indigenous Education 2005-2008 document emphasises the importance of the recognition of other varieties of English, claiming that ‘for schools to put standard Australian English in an oppositional relationship to the home language…by making it the only recognized vehicle of oral communication in schools, will be to [disadvantage] Indigenous students’.

Standard British English is the variety favoured in the curriculum in Kenya, due to the country’s former colonial links to the British Isles. Instruction across all subjects (except for lessons in Kiswahili, the national language) is in English from Standard Four, the fourth year of education. At the end of every ‘cycle’ in the education system, there is an examination, and the standard by which the candidates are assessed is standard British English, with a few ‘lexical borrowings’ (Kembo-Sure, 2003:201).

The rationale of teaching English in Kenya is that ‘the school leaver will require good English in a large variety of professional, commercial and day-to-day transactions in Kenya and international environments’ (ibid.;210). The aim of the curriculum is that students become competent in standard British English with ‘the RP vowels and consonants listed under speaking skills as what students must master’ (ibid).

Whilst standard British English is clearly the focus of the syllabus, there have been moves towards a curriculum reform towards the use of a national form of English (Kenyan English) based on Brumfit’s (1982:105) observations: ‘The model of teaching which tells the foreigner to adopt our system is both untruthful…and unhelpful because it implies that he cannot communicate without adopting our positions unnegotiably’.

It is clear that Standard English, in its different varieties, plays an important role in the curriculums of the three countries discussed. It seems that Standard English is considered to be a prestige variety, the variety that all students should leave school being able to produce. Curriculum makers are aware that there is ‘a need for communication across the wider world’ (Bourne, 2007:192) and that standard English allows for this, being that it is more fixed and regulated than non-standard or regional varieties, as well as being established as the respected variety of international business communications.