A decolonised curriculum: principles and values

Credit: Sam Balye via Unsplash.

28 January 2025

By Sandra Leaton-Gray and David Scott, with Rita Chawla-Duggan, University of Bath

In many higher education institutions, best practice principles for curriculum design frequently reflect a model that perpetuates colonial assumptions about knowledge, learning, and assessment. These principles, ranging from “cutting-edge content” to “optimised engagement”, prioritise well-recognised measurable benchmarks and notions of corporate efficiency while failing to interrogate the power structures embedded in curricula. A decolonised curriculum, on the other hand, challenges these assumptions and offers a transformative approach to education. In this blog post we analyse what that means and how it might best be achieved, drawing on learning from other, interconnected parts of the education system.

In decolonising the curriculum, a fundamental distinction must be made between formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment provides evidence of learners’ progress, supporting immediate decision-making about subsequent learning. In contrast, summative assessment evaluates achievement at a specific endpoint. When these functions are conflated, as they often are, the curriculum becomes distorted, focusing disproportionately on outcomes rather than processes. This distortion is visible in many international assessment systems, such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), where standardised metrics overshadow the rich, diverse experiences of learning.

This matters because curriculum is essentially a site of power. It determines what constitutes legitimate knowledge and whose narratives are prioritised. Marlon Moncrieffe’s work highlights the persistence of such colonial legacies in educational practices that marginalise indigenous and non-dominant epistemologies. His analysis of Black histories in British schools demonstrates how curricula often trivialise or exclude alternative perspectives, thereby perpetuating what Raymond Williams called a ‘selective tradition’. This tradition privileges dominant cultural narratives while silencing others, entrenching epistemic hierarchies within educational institutions.

Decolonising the curriculum therefore requires more than incorporating marginalised perspectives. It demands a radical rethinking of the epistemic frameworks that underpin education systems. For this reason, Moncrieffe advocates for a critical pedagogy that interrogates the assumptions embedded in curriculum content and form. This involves reimagining curriculum design to ensure it reflects a broad spectrum of human experiences, knowledge systems, and capacities.

Yet principles of a decolonised curriculum must go beyond the additive inclusion of diverse voices. They should foreground foundational values such as integration, flexibility, and critical engagement. For instance, a curriculum should be networked and integrated, recognising the interconnectedness of knowledge domains (see Scott 2021; 2024; 2025a; 2025b). Learning and teaching approaches must be derived from, yet distinct from, curriculum objectives, ensuring a balance between structure and adaptability.

For this reason, a decolonised curriculum always prioritises formative processes over summative ones, minimising the distorting effects of assessment-driven practices. It values learning that cannot easily be measured, such as ethical reasoning, creativity, and embodied knowledge (Leaton Gray & Scott, 2023). In order to work properly, it needs to be a statutory requirement in the foundational phases, across all providers, ensuring systemic consistency while accommodating local and contextual nuances. This means that if we want to move beyond existing constraints, we must envision a curriculum as a lifelong relationship with knowledge that is dynamic, inclusive, and empowering. By embracing these values, we can create education systems that truly serve all learners, dismantling colonial legacies and fostering epistemic justice.