THE CHOICE OF ADVANCED LEVEL COURSES IN T HE UPPER SECONDARY-SCHOOL

Individualization of the curriculum by choice of advanced level course s in two or three subjects is a central feature of the reform of acade mic upper secondary schools. Opponents of the reform have argued that it jeopardizes the broad core curriculum indispensable for higher educ ation, that it furthermore endangers the continuity of learning proces ses, and favours avoidance of effort by the choice of easy subjects. T he authors empirically test the validity of these criticisms on the ba sis of two sets of data:statistics of course choices collected by mini stries of education and a survey among students of academic upper seco ndary schools. The study shows that there is little empirical evidence for the validity of these critical arguments.