Towards a structural typology for Baccalaureate-style curricula

The basis on which a reform of educational qualifications at the upper secondary level of schooling should be undertaken has been a subject of intense debate over many years throughout the world, including England and Wales, where it could be claimed that debate is currently at its most intense. Such debate has been fuelled by criticisms that the existing Advanced Level arrangements form ‘a highly selective, narrow and elective curriculum’ (Young and Leney, 1997:43), and numerous proposals have been made for reform. Many of the proposals have themselves been criticized, however, as being ‘incremental’ rather than ‘fundamental’, and have been easily resisted by the more conservative opponents of changes to the status quo. Among the recommendations for reform in this context have been the Higginson Report (DES, 1988) which proposed a five subject grouped award, A British ‘Baccalauréat’ (Finegold et al, 1990) which put forward a unified framework bringing together general and vocational education with core, specialist and work/community modules, and the report of the National Commission on Education (1993) which suggested a grouped award comprising a range of subjects including a compulsory core and a nominated major area of study. More recently, the Green Paper published in February 2002 proposed the introduction of a Matriculation Diploma in England to mark the end of the 14-19 phase of education (DfES, 2002), while in 2001 the National Assembly for Wales initiated work on the development and piloting of what is known as a Welsh Baccalaureate Qualification for the post-16 sector (WBQ, 2002), discussed in detail in Chapter 5.