ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to link consideration of the outcomes approach to defining curriculum content to an assessment of the potential of modularization as the basis for the structure of the post-compulsory curriculum. The criteria that I bring to the analysis arise from the argument first developed by Finegold and Soskice (1988) that the education and training system in this country is related to the economy through what they described as a low skill equilibrium? It is the educational implications of their analysis that are of concern to me in this chapter and these were taken further by Finegold et al (1990) in developing the concept of an early selection-low participation system1. Both these analyses start from the assumption that it is only high skill economies that will stand a chance of being competitive, and therefore of being the basis for stable democracies, in the next decades. The question that I seek to address therefore is the extent to which modularization when linked to an outcomes approach can be the basis of a strategy for moving to a high participation/ high achievement system. Such a strategy would have two goals. Firstly, it would need to point to ways of overcoming the divisions, the fragmentation, the rigidities and the low expectations of the current system. Secondly, it would need to provide a framework for developing new combinations of knowledge and skill, and the incentives for learners to reach high attainment levels as well as for teachers to develop the new pedagogies that would characterize a high achievement system.
