ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how educational intentions are conveyed by exploring the curriculum in operation and in context, and how the intentions are presented in syllabi and schemes of work and in the form of subject matter. Time is a major influence on the shape of operational curricula in all schools, whether it is an 'open' primary school with an integrated day or a tightly time-tabled comprehensive school, catering for both examination and non-examination pupils. The achievement of a school’s curricular aims is facilitated not only by the allocation of time to subjects and by the careful structuring of subject-matter but also by the curricular milieux created in which the curriculum is transacted. Schemes of work and syllabi together with curricular aims and objectives form part of a means-ends model of curriculum development. Syllabi tell the teacher what content to cover; objectives indicate what purpose his coverage of content is to achieve.
