Introduction

The curriculum has always been the key to what happens in schools. It is the device through which the vast range of knowledge and values, skills and roles which the school offers to its pupils, is organised, taught and eventually evaluated. A national body supported by central and local government, the Council had, as one of its two main purposes, the development of curriculum in the schools of England and Wales. Like curriculum development, in-service training was originally conceived as a largely external strategy whereby teachers could be helped to develop not only their curricula but also their organisation, pastoral care, and many other aspects of schooling. The curriculum development movement, the resources movement and the school-based in-service training movement, came together in the resurgence of school-based curriculum development in the mid 1970s. The imperatives of such changes led almost inescapably to a new and revolutionary device: the national curriculum development project.