ABSTRACT
This book, and the research project from which it stems, is based upon a study of five schools in each of which the staff were consciously trying to develop policies which would affect the practice of them all-that is, in whole school curriculum development. Their efforts to think about what and how they taught as if it were the professional concern of them all and not simply, as is still the case in many schools, of individual class teachers predates our research. In this respect, these schools were in the van of a trend which has been quickened and made obligatory by the introduction of the National Curriculum. In Orchard, Fenton and Carey, in each of which the heads had been in post for at least ten years, the staff had been steadily reviewing the curriculum for almost as long as the heads had been in post. At Ingham and Upper Norton, relatively new heads had initiated, soon after their arrival, school-based and staffled curriculum development. In all these schools the National Curriculum therefore, to some extent, cut across existing practice.
