Aspects of early years and primary school practice in schools in the UK have been seen internationally as models characterised by creative practice that could be adopted in a variety of international contexts. For example through recognition of the British infant school model of the 1960s and its capacity to encourage intrinsic motivation leading to creativity (Hennessey, 2010), also for the explicit encouragement for creativity in comparison with other nations in Europe (Cachia et al., 2010). The central part of this paper is its exploration of the extent to which agency and creativity is still central to national curricula in England, in comparison with other nations. The teaching of writing is used to provide further focus to the detail of this exploration. The paper will also include a comparison of teaching of writing specified in Scotland’s national curriculum Curriculum for Excellence with proposals for the teaching of writing in England’s new primary national curriculum. The conception of creativity in the paper will highlight particularly children’s decision making and autonomy. Autonomy will also be explored in the theoretical context of policy theory and its attention to control from the level of the state to the level of the classroom.