ABSTRACT
A major challenge for the comprehensive education system is to overcome the deep and damaging divisions which the people have built into education and training for 14-19-year-old young people, and to have some vision about the sort of education these young adults will need in the twenty-first century. Successful comprehensive education must address the issue of a comprehensive 14-19 curriculum if it aims to produce what Stenhouse in 1967 called a 'community of educated people'. By 1993 the National Curriculum was in sufficient disarray for Sir Ron Dearing to be invited to 'slim down' the subjects and simplify testing. In matters of the curriculum and assessment reform, they thought that partnerships should be created and that central and local government, parents, employers, governors, students and local communities should all influence the education and training of 14-19-year-olds. In the short term, despite the undoubted groundswell of support for a unified 14-19 curriculum there is to be no radical change.
