40 YEARS ON - THE ISSUE OF BREADTH IN THE POST-16 CURRICULUM

Sir Ron Dearing's Review of Qualifications for 16-19 Years Olds is the most recent in a series of reports on the post-16 curriculum that has appeared during the last four decades. While rightly sanguine about h is own distinctive contribution to the post-war debate on 16-19 educat ional provision, Dearing arguably falls victim to the same Kind of con servative impulse as a number of his predecessors in failing to confro nt the fact that in their current form, A levels provide an insurmount able barrier to the quest for breadth in the post-compulsory curriculu m as a whole. As the following scrutiny of the post-16 curricular deba te of the late 1950s suggests, despite recognising the need to re-stru cture the existing framework of 16-19 examinations, Dearing appears as much in thrall to the notion of the A-level system as a benchmark of academic excellence as some of his earlier counterparts. Consequently, the problem of breadth in the 16-19 curriculum still remains largely unresolved.