This is the first in a series of booklets about the teaching of language, literacy and English to children and young people aged 3 to 19.The aim of the series is to inspire and inform debate about school strategy.The booklets draw on seminal studies and development work carried out over many years.The series is a co-publication between the United Kingdom Literacy Association and Owen Education, an independent school-improvement agency.This booklet acts as a kind of executive summary for the other nine booklets in the series.These are on talk, reading (two booklets), writing (two booklets), grammar and knowledge about language, drama, media and English 16 to 19.This booklet offers précis - pursued at greater length in the other booklets - of critiques of the new National Curriculum for English, introduced in 2014 and 2015, and its associated assessment arrangements. It brings together the summaries of main points in each of the areas, with which the other booklets begin; and the proposals for better-balanced, more rational alternatives to the new National Curriculum for English in each of the areas, with which most of the other booklets end.