Curriculum writers have gone from the language of a ‘problem’ to that of a ‘crisis’, seen through the changing role of knowledge and skills, and different ideas about the aims of education from getting a job and achieving qualifications to a broader moral purpose. The arguments draw on ideas about a range of curricular ideologies and the recontextualisation of knowledge. In a Future 1 curriculum knowledge is inert—a set of facts to be learnt. A Future 2 curriculum is one which focuses on generic skills and competencies, drawing in notions of a moral education and a pupil-led ‘aims-based curriculum’. At the heart of the Future 3 curriculum is socially realist ‘powerful knowledge’, created by communities of experts working within the ‘disciplinary’ rules of their expertise. Powerful knowledge has been expressed through a number of subjects such as maths and physics and forms the basis of GeoCapabilities.