ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by drawing attention to the irony of a curriculum for the twenty-first century having distinct connections with what was in place a century ago. Certainly the progress of English in the curriculum is not easily or straightforwardly described as a smooth transition from one view of the subject to another. Two things are remarkable in the account of governmental publications however. The first is that they do reflect aspects of thinking about English that were current and which established theory supported. The second is that, in curricular terms, nothing was ever offered beyond 'guidance'. Echoes are there in the notion that the 'Englishness' of a National Curriculum is somehow importantly defined by a limited and given literary canon, and in the attention to language which emphasizes correctness over appropriateness and insists on the teaching and learning of rules.
