ABSTRACT
In the Seychelles the content and organisation of the Seychelles National Youth Service, a planned curriculum innovation, was slowly but substantially changed due to pressures internal and external to the innovation. The Seychelles National Youth Service (NYS) was initiated in 1981 and forms the final two years of education for the majority of young people in the Seychelles. Changing a population’s attitudes and orientations culturally rooted in a long history of colonialism, is no mean feat – even for a small isolated nation like the Seychelles. While the aims for the NYS were, in the words of one of its authors, ‘ambitious’, they did represent a brave, radical, and quite far reaching attempt at reform. The case of the Seychelles indicates clearly the complexity faced by those at the ‘grass-roots’, responsible for the management of change.
