ABSTRACT
In late 1959 the Central Advisory Committee for Education (England) (chaired by Sir Geoffrey Crowther) reported on the education of 15-18-year-olds. It highlighted the extra-ordinary wastage of talent-largely of working-class origin-caused when children opted to leave school at the age of 15. In March 1960, the House of Commons debated the Crowther Report. The Minister of Education, Sir David Eccles, used the opportunity of the debate to announce a change in government policy towards the curriculum. Up to this time the Ministry had almost exclusively been concerned with the resourcing of education: with teacher supply and remuneration, with school building plans, and with the organization of different types of school. But in future, Eccles announced, he would also take an interest in what was being taught in the schools: he would ‘try to make the Ministry’s voice heard rather more often and positively and no doubt more controversially’. He would open up ‘the secret garden of the curriculum’.
