ABSTRACT
As an institutional category, the sixth form, as it entered the 1970s, was in a problematic state as important features of its categorical status changed due to social and economic forces which were beyond the control of central policy-makers. If the curriculum were to change in response to the well known reservations expressed about it, it would almost certainly be in the direction of a form which would tend to blur the distinction between the 'academic' and the 'non-academic' students. In so far as the grammar school was concerned, its injunction can be said to have been heeded, at the level of institution if not curriculum, through the growth in the 1960s of comprehensive secondary education. What Crowther set out to justify in its consideration of the sixth form curriculum was a very expensive style of teaching. Interest was aroused in the International Baccalaureate as a possible alternative form of curriculum.
