Despite the belief that schools tend to be resistant to change, it is possible to find secondary schools in the UK which are investing in the design of an innovative curriculum for their Year 7 (11-year-old students). This article focuses on four of these schools and discusses some of the challenges they face in planning and implementing their…

This article focuses on four case study schools that have adopted innovative competence-based curriculum (CBC) projects in Year 7 for a variety of educational and social reasons. The article discusses the issues and challenges posed by the CBC for teachers in the daily life of the classroom. Philosophical ideas about the purpose of education vary…

This introductory article accompanies three further articles forming a case study research project undertaken to describe the experience of four urban secondary schools implementing a competence-based curriculum for students in their first year of secondary education. The nature of such competence-based curricula is discussed in the context of…

This article presents a sub-set of findings from a research project describing the experience of four case study schools which have implemented a competence-based curriculum (CBC) for students in their first year of secondary education. Secondary schools are highly departmentalised environments with organisational structures based primarily around…