OFSTED has endeavoured increasingly to find out what children think about their schooling and the current inspection questionnaire is the most detailed yet. However, while it seeks to explore how pupils perceive the teaching they receive it takes the curriculum experience for granted. Like the rest of the education establishment, OFSTED assumes that the curriculum is an appropriate mix of subjects and approaches to study. Moving outside the curriculum into areas like work-related learning is only an option for the less able and the work-shy.

Of course, finding out what children really think is difficult - even for parents. Research Machines’ recent ‘School Gate’ surveys into children's interests and aspirations have shown that while parents think that their teenage children worry about friendships, fitting in and being fashionable, the truth is that they think much more about doing well at school than their parents imagine and are far less bothered about being trendy.

If so little is known about the perceptions of teenagers in terms of their personal lives, even less is known about what they make of the curriculum. The traditional assumption is that most children enjoy their lessons and the reasons why they are, or are not, successful relate to their innate abilities. Boys are seen as possibly being a particular problem but, in general, the curriculum is seen as a measure of pupils learning rather than a barrier to it.

However, when Research Machines touched on school subjects it came up with some interesting findings. All of the pupils who responded wanted to see new subjects on the curriculum. As might be expected, many of these were to do with sports and leisure activities but the company was surprised to discover that 45% expressed an interest in learning about money management and over 40% wanted to learn how to drive. Around the same percentage wanted advice on relationships and how to resist peer pressure. Elsewhere, a sizeable minority was interested in cooking, working in the media, and how to become better shoppers. This was a limited survey with small numbers of children covering a range of ages but it raised the question not only of how satisfied children are with the curriculum but also how well it matches their needs.

Now, another more detailed study has suggested that the problems may run deeper. A larger piece of research carried out by Northumbria University and the North-East Assembly has found that, although children are generally happy at school and work hard for most of the time they are anything but satisfied as educational consumers.

This sense of a crisis in year 9 education has been measured before but never so explicitly. It is often assumed that boys have the most problems in year 9 but the figures indicate that the disenchantment is shared equally. So, while girls switch off in their lessons boys create discipline problems. In overall terms, only 42% of pupils in year 9 think that their teaching is good for most of the time. This finding cross-references neatly with the School Gate survey. The research also confirms that children in year 9 and year 11 worry about examinations and testing, and about homework.

These are shocking findings for an attitudinal survey and imply a far greater dissatisfaction with school lessons than has previously been recognised or admitted. However, they will not surprise many teachers. Year 9 is known as the point at which many children simply switch off from lessons. The concerns about discipline in year 9 and about the performances of boys are possibly the symptoms of an underlying malaise which is rooted in the curriculum.

Addressing the problem is harder than it seems. After Ron Dearing argued that the statutory curriculum should end at 14 so that subjects reached a threshold from which lifelong learning could commence, it has proved difficult to define what that means in practice. The outcome has been a succession of cosmetic changes, literacy and numeracy frameworks and new schemes of work but none of these have addressed the real issues. If history is to stop in year 9 for some pupils, simply reaching the end of the Second World War will not do. In geography, the cut-off points are similarly arbitrary while in the core subjects there is almost no attempt at all to suggest that key stage 3 has some function as a matriculation stage.

And given that this leaves the key stage 3 curriculum stodgy, overloaded with fact and information, transmitted rather than discussed and tested rather than assessed is it any surprise that the clients object to it?