This reflection does not pretend to be a scientific survey of curriculum trends but is, as the title suggests, a personal reminiscence of governorship across different phases of education, with snippets about the curriculum that my memory recalls.

The author is a long-time advocate inside the Labour Party for ending selective education and the 11-plus. She outlines how Labour Party frontbenchers routinely ignore or deflect calls from Party members to stand up for comprehensive education in both word and deed. As UKIP, whose policy is to extend selective education more widely, rises in the…

It is 25 years since the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was abolished and management of education in central London transferred to 13 London boroughs. The author reflects on the experience of being an ex-ILEA head teacher, and of managing one of the new local education authorities in the immediate post-ILEA period. He begins by commenting…

Educational leadership practice is embedded and shaped in its own context. However, contemporary policy makers are keen to use research findings from multiple educational systems to produce overall, generic models of best leadership practice. Therefore, research needs to encompass analyses of the political, societal, cultural, and institutional…

There is ample evidence that the structural characteristics of American secondary education are not well suited to vocational education. The solution may require a redesign of the structure of secondary schools, especially their governance. (SK)

The authors examine the legal issues and administrative implications, under British law, of the Tameside case, in which local school authorities resisted the Secretary of State for Education's order to implement the comprehensive schools plan. (SJL)

Examines the career attitudes and experiences of women deputy headpersons in an English local educational authority (LEA). Through interviews with 38 women administrators, the study explores their conception of career and finds no match with that of "career ambitious" teachers, but rather a diversity of career tracks and perceptions. (AF)

This newsletter consists of two parts, the first dealing with issues common to many European countries, and the second with reports from twelve individual countries. Ten of the fourteen articles are written in English and the remainder in French. The first section consists of reports on two conferences of European educational administrators. Among…