ABSTRACT
The methods of sixth form teaching are concerned as the James Report suggests for the DipHE, to seek ways of combining breadth and depth. A modern history or physics course which combines a broad outline of the field as a whole with very detailed study of a special topic, demanding accuracy, judgment and the rigorous evaluation of evidence, is giving the pupil, within the area of a single subject, experience of both ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’. although there is a very clear trend in Europe and America to treat sixth form, or upper-secondary, education as a separate phase in the whole educational process, there is much less agreement about the age range it should cover. The form which can most safely be ruled out is, strangely enough, the classic model on which traditional thinking about the sixth form is based: the selective top of a selective eleven-to-eighteen grammar school.
