ABSTRACT
Teachers form an integral part of every sixth form and teachers’ objectives may be different from either theirs or ours. If there is one lesson which educational reformers ought to have learnt by it is that no educational reform is worth the paper it is written on unless the teachers are either ready or can be persuaded to accept and implement it. In all European countries, there is a certain degree of difference between the rosy-hued myth of what the best teachers agree ought to be happening in school lessons and the actual experience of the average pupil. The Government Social Survey asked both teachers and pupils in sixth forms to state their ‘objectives’ for sixth form education. The ritual has its origins far back in the history of the sixth form with the defence by Thring of education ‘in one noble subject’, the classics, against the threat posed by science, modern languages and social studies.
