According to the National Curriculum Framework (2005), what should be…

Concept. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005 organises school knowledge into curricular areas, and it begins from the premise that a young child does not experience the world in disciplinary compartments. Its stated design principle is therefore that areas of knowledge which draw directly on the child's immediate surroundings should be taught in an integrated form during the primary stage, and be separated into distinct disciplines only later, as the capacity for abstraction develops.

Application. Applied to the curricular areas the framework names: at the primary stage the study of the natural world and the study of the human and social world both take their content from the same source — the child's own environment, home, school and neighbourhood. NCF 2005 (§3.3.1) therefore states that science and social science should be integrated as ‘environmental studies’ at the primary level, with health as an important component. The split into separate science and social-science courses begins only at the upper primary stage, once the child can handle each discipline's own methods.

Cross-check. The other curricular areas NCF 2005 names for the primary stage are each retained in their own right, not folded into environmental studies:

• Languages — a curricular area built on multilinguality and the three-language formula.

• Mathematics — a curricular area whose stated aim is the ‘mathematisation’ of the child's thought process.

• Art education — a curricular area aimed at aesthetic development and creative expression.

• Health and physical education — a curricular area covering physical growth, wellbeing, games and health.

Result. Because only the natural-world discipline and the social-world discipline draw on the same immediate environment at this stage, it is science and social science that NCF 2005 integrates as environmental studies at the primary level.