This study highlights the relationship between curriculum policy intention and enactment. It considered the gap between the design of the National Standards Curriculum (NSC) in Jamaica and its enactment in a sample of twenty schools. The aim is to inform a real-world understanding of the expectations of curriculum policymakers and principals, and teachers as curriculum enactors.

The study utilises a qualitative methodology with thematic analysis. Data were collected using secondary and primary sources. Secondary sources included published and unpublished reports, desk reviews and my professional knowledge of Jamaica’s public education system. Primary sources were lesson observations and policymaker and practitioner interviews.

The participants were seven key Ministry of Education and Youth Policymakers, twenty school principals and twenty classroom teachers who implemented the NSC. The theoretical framework includes Blumer’s symbolic interactionism, globalisation and education reform, learner-centred pedagogy, social and sociocultural constructivism, Freire’s critical pedagogy, curriculum enactment and Elbaz’s theory of teachers’ practical knowledge.

The research provides a means for the participants to contribute a contextual understanding of the possible pitfalls of implementing a globally inspired curriculum policy in a small developing state with post-colonial antecedents and significant resource constraints.

Generally, policymakers were unsophisticated in their policy expectations for the NSC. The principals view themselves as extensions of the MOEY, diminishing their role in enacting the NSC. Both policymakers and principals failed to recognise teachers’ practical knowledge and support for the NSC. Their failure creates further dissonance between the NSC as a policy and its enactment in the classroom. However, teachers bear some responsibility for the inertia in enacting the NSC. This failure is partially due to a skill and knowledge deficit, which policymakers and principals should work together to address.

Finally, this study adds to the available literature on education policy-practice gaps, illustrates this phenomenon of global curriculum reform movements in a small Caribbean state and reinforces the intrinsic value of engaging in real-world research to understand and solve complex problems.