| Abstract: | Abstract Since the publication of the Crowther Report in 1959 there have been seven major proposals for reducing the degree of specialisation in England and Wales and postponing its onset. This article examines the history and nature of these proposals and the reasons for their failure. Its main contentions are that the historical opposition to any central or local control of the school curriculum has made it very difficult to determine what actually was happening in the schools or what external forces controlled the pattern of studies: and that in the absence of any authority controlling the pattern of the curriculum, it was almost impossible that any proposals for change would be implemented. |
