ABSTRACT
The impact of legislation upon education is usually perceived to operate on the macrolevel of state intervention in matters such as compulsory school attendance or the legal age for juvenile employment. This is perhaps particularly so in the United Kingdom, where the teacher had traditionally been seen as in possession of the ‘freedom of the classroom’, and where the interplay of legislation and politics and the other interests affecting the school curriculum in the twentieth century have been slow to become uncovered (Lawton, 1984; see also Lawton, 1992; Aselmeier et al., 1985; Kron, 1989).
