ABSTRACT
Introduction For teachers in schools and colleges there is a sense in which new demands are
always being placed on them, and to a degree these require changes in the
curriculum in terms of what is taught and how it is assessed. Indeed, the history of
education in the past thirty years gives witness to how the curriculum has been used
to promote one agenda or another; for example, to promote equality of opportunity,
to respond to rising youth unemployment and growing disaffection, to combat
crime, and to enable Britain to compete in the global knowledge-based economy
Schools and colleges have been faced with endless initiatives, with one arriving so
soon after the other that they begin to be counter-productive. This works to leave the
impression that educational policy-making is piecemeal and nothing more than a
response to the latest panic. It might also leave teachers feeling swamped and
exhausted by the constant pressure for change. What is certain is that the autonomy
which teachers once thought they had has been lost because of the ways in which
central government has taken more control, not just in shaping the curriculum but
also through the coercive mechanisms of assessment and external quality control.
