ABSTRACT
In 1978 the introduction of physical education as a BA with Educational Studies was intend to expand the undergraduate numbers in the school of education at UCNW Bangor. Much has changed since then. The school now has a division of health and human performance which runs an undergraduate programme that continues to expand from the base of a single honours degree called Sport, Health and Physical Education (SHAPE). The programme, which will allow students to graduate with single or joint honours degrees in sport science, health promotion or physical education combined with a range of arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, is probably best seen as an example of how a liberal science education can be offered with minimal resources. The emergence of the current structures and processes and the philosophy which has guided that development has been a 15-year-long example of proactive and reactive planning, of using action research approaches to curriculum development and of the application of simple survival techniques in the academic politics of the 1980s.
