The secondary school English curriculum was determined by groups outside schools during the period 1944 - 1974. External domination of teaching content and methodology was ensured by a system of Public and Matriculation Examinations which empowered agents of the universities to prescribe courses and to assess students' performance in those courses. The University of Melbourne exercised these functions through its Professorial Board and the Schools Board before relinquishing its powers to the Victorian Universities and Schools Examination Board in 1965. Statute and tradition allowed these bodies to establish themselves as a centre apart from schools, and to legitimise their authority through the institutionalised processes of prescription, examination and review of performance. The effect of these processes was to subordinate schools, teachers and pupils. External examinations dictated that the English classroom was a place where pupils met to prepare for these encounters with examinations rather than to explore the nature and richness of experience through literature and their own use of language for real ends.