ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988, the school curriculum was largely determined at local level, but, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, public debate about education, schools and the curriculum grew. This debate culminated in the introduction of a statutory National Curriculum by the Department for Education and Science in 1988, which heralded an era of increasingly centralised control of education. During the last half of the twentieth century, the National Curriculum and other non-statutory guidance (and the support structures and assessment associated with these) have become part of the mechanism by which government education policy becomes enacted within schools.
