ABSTRACT
Like Humpty Dumpty, the British Department of Education and Science (DES) has a way with words. One example for the connoisseur was the title of a Government White Paper Education: A Framework for Expansion (DES 1973), which led to a sphincteral contraction in educational provision in Britain. A decade later this was followed by another masterpiece: Teaching Quality, also a White Paper (DES 1983), which is doing for quality what Framework for Expansion did for quantity. Humpty Dumpty would have approved not only the title, which maintained the tradition of Education: A Framework for Expansion in meaning what they wanted it to mean, but also in a central theme echoing Humpty Dumpty’s clinching assertion about the nature of the real question: ‘which is to be master?’
