ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to consider the main contemporary issues by identifying a series of dichotomous positions and the compromises currently being formulated between them. These are: Child-centred or society-centred curriculum; Vocational or non-vocational curriculum; Subject-centred or integrated curriculum. In the 1988 Education Act the process was taken even further with the legal establishment of a National Curriculum. However the debate over normative and criterion-referenced assessment must be listed as one that is at the heart of much contemporary curriculum discussion. As a background to identifying the current issues, perceptions, and ideologies it is necessary to consider how the change has come about. In the primary schools the pivotal point probably occurred in the 1950s when the emphases on child-centred education deriving from the earlier twentieth-century work of Dewey and his contemporaries.
