ABSTRACT
There was a time in the recent history of primary education when individual practitioners could lock themselves away in the confines of their own classrooms to carry out their roles as primary teachers. Similarly, they had a relatively free rein over the content of the curriculum, provided they complied with rather general schemes of work which the school management compiled. Thankfully the system became rather tighter during the 1980s and a whole school approach, both towards general organisation and policy, and the curriculum, became the norm. Postholders tended to be responsible for particular areas of the curriculum, and people were expected to work in phase or year group teams in the planning and delivery of the curriculum. The systems for planning varied from those which had a faculty approach and highly organised plans which took continuity and differentiation into account, to those which were less rigorous and sometimes resulted in children repeating topics year after year in their primary career.
