ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the broad agenda set at national level in national curricula or guidelines. In addition, by dealing with the whole age range of compulsory schooling, the national frameworks offered the potential for progress and continuity across the school years, the lack of which was a main focus of criticism in pre-national curriculum primary science. Meanwhile, in Wales, when the responsibility for education was devolved from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly Government in 1999, no time was lost in setting up reviews of the content and structure of the curriculum and of its associated assessment arrangements. Scotland's education system has been separate from other part of the UK since the 1870s, when the Scottish Office was created with a measure of independence from the English Department of Education. Schools maintained by the Education Authority in Northern Ireland include community schools, voluntary controlled and voluntary aided, which all have to follow the national curriculum.
