In recent years educational preoccupations have largely focused on 'teaching and learning,' often drawing on deficit models of teaching and encouraging myths about 'poor teachers' and 'bad teaching.' Debate about the curriculum has been discouraged--but this has not stopped it being 'reformed,' often in profoundly reactionary ways. This article analyses developments in the English school curriculum and argues that Labour's proposed National Education Service offers an opportunity to consider what a genuinely socially just curriculum might look like.