It has been argued that "the 'class' pedagogies pioneered at Glasgow University had a direct influence on those adopted in the elementary schools of the 19th century"(6). The general connection between 'class' pedagogies and a curriculum based on contemporary sequence and prescription should be clear but to move towards the more contemporary duality of pedagogy and curriculum involves the transition from class to classroom system.

In analysing the historical transition from class to classroom system the shift in the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th Century 'was as important to the administration of schooling as the concurrent shift from domestic to factory production was to the management of industry'. Indeed, as Smelser has shown the two were intimately related. In the 'domestic-putter out' system the family unit remained home and education, albeit rather more in the guise of training and apprenticeship, could take place at home. With the triumph of the factory system the associated break-up of the family opened up these roles to subsequent penetration by State schooling and to their replacement by the sort of classroom system where large groups could be adequately supervised and controlled. Hence "the change from class to classroom reflected a more general upheaval in schooling - the ultimate victory of group-based pedagogies over the more individualised forms of teaching and learning".(7)

At this stage in the development of schooling the intersection of pedagogy and curriculum begins to resemble 'modern' patterns. As Bernstein has argued pedagogy, curriculum and evaluation considered together constitute a modern epistemology. In the 1850s the third prong was pioneered with the founding of the first university examination boards. The centennial report of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate reports:

The establishment of these examinations was the universities response to petitions that they should help in the development of 'schools for the middle classes'.(8)

Also at this time the features of curriculum mentioned earlier, the power to differentiate, was being institutionalised. The birth of secondary examinations and the institutionalisation of curriculum differentiation were then almost exactly contemporaneous. For instance the Taunton Report in 1868 classified secondary schooling into three grades depending on the time spent at school. Taunton asserted:

"The difference in time assigned makes some difference in the very nature of education itself; if a boy cannot remain at school beyond the age of 14 it is useless to begin teaching him such subjects as require a longer time for their proper study; if he can continue till 18 or 19, it may be expedient to postpone some studies that would otherwise be commenced earlier."

Taunton noted that "these instructions correspond roughly but by no means exactly to the gradations of society". (This statement could, as we shall see, be equally well applied to the Norwood Report nearly a century later). In 1868 schooling till 18 or 19 was for the sons of men with considerable incomes independent of their own exertions, or professional men, and men in business whose profits put them on the same level. These received a mainly classical curriculum. The second grade up to 16 was for sons of the "mercantile classes". Their curriculum was less classical in orientation and had a certain practical orientation. The third grade till 14 was for the sons of "the smaller tenant farmer, the small tradesmen (and) the superior artisans". Their curriculum was based on the three Rs but carried out to a very good level. This then covers secondary schooling. Meanwhile most of the working class remained in elementary schools where they were taught rudimentary skills in the 3 Rs. By this time the curriculum had achieved a major role as a mechanism for social differentiation. This power to designate and differentiate established a conclusive place for curriculum in the epistemology of schooling.

At the turn of the century the epistemology, with which we are familiar, was emerging. Thus:

By the 20th Century, the batch production rhetoric of the 'classroom system' (for example lessons, subjects, timetables, grading, standardisation, streaming) had become so pervasive that it successfully achieved a normative status - creating the standards against which all subsequent educational innovations came to be judged.(9)