Despite calls for a coherent national approach to curriculum, Australian States and Territories generally have been reluctant to shed any control over matters of education. The curriculum dynamic has been further complicated by a culture of schooling that emerged from the 1960s in which school curriculum has increasingly been regarded as an area of local school responsibility. This book reviews the role played in the shaping of school curriculum by successive Commonwealth governments which, especially since 1965, have come to regard education as important to the national interest. The challenge facing curriculum reformers is to reconcile demands for professional curriculum autonomy, which is essential to the implementation and maintenance of any reform process, with the emerging demand that all Australian students should be entitled to adequate access to valid and comprehensive educational knowledge that is consistent with the national interest. The approach was to ground the discussion as far as possible in the actual practice of national curriculum development in the Australian context. The tradition it drew on is that of curriculum research and evaluation rather than of curriculum theory. That is not to suggest that the approach adopted is atheoretical, but rather that its theoretical base is located in what Glaser and Strauss (1967) refer to as grounded theory, the theory emerges from the practice. Contains extensive references and 3 figures. (BT)