This book is about curriculum change in secondary schools and shows how the quality of education has been affected by increasing intervention of central government. Based on the story of one secondary school between 1957 and 2002, Norman Evans follows the changing contexts of: - before and after the introduction of the National Curriculum - the changing role of LEAs and governors - the characteristics since 1992 of school inspections responsible for policing the operation of the national tests - predictions of results and examination results - nationally set targets - compliance with detailed prescription of school curricula. This is a one-school story seen through the eyes of seven successive head teachers and long-serving assistant staff who worked at the school during the forty-year period. How did the changes affect what they sought to do as professionals? This story takes curriculum as the main engine of a school's development and so takes the quality of education as the result of the relationship between what happens in classrooms and what happens in the school as a whole. It is a two-way flow. Where has it taken us?