Post-compulsory Education: Curricular forms, modernisation and social difference

The paper explores the emerging and contradictory curricular forms present in post-compulsory education and training in England. It locates these within the policy and socio-economic context, the changing patterns of state relations as well as within the emerging settlement over post-compulsory education and training. It explores the significance of an implicit alliance between curriculum modernisers and educationalist organised around post-Fordism and managerialism. The significance of these processes is explored in relation to notions of social difference as well as the limits and possibilities for the development of radical educational practices.