Curriculum reform in the nineteen sixties was in part a response to economic and technological change. In examining the antecedents to secondary curriculum reform in Victoria, I have discussed educational as well as economic factors. Secondary curriculum reform was closely associated with the Director of Secondary Education, Ron Reed, the Curriculum Advisory Board he established, and the introduction of a policy of school based curriculum development. By 1973 the reform movement had reached its peak. Some schools in developing the new curriculum, and the experiences of one such school, Ferntree Gully High School, are examined in detail. It is my hypothesis that without the power within the school to revise the curriculum in the light of experience, continued development could not have taken place. The impact of the reform policy, although primarily concerned with curriculum content and organization, was on the practices and organization of the school as a whole. In order to understand this it is necessary to see the relationship between curriculum content and classroom interaction and between curriculum organization and school organization. These relationships, implicit in the work of the CAB, are only now beginning to emerge in curriculum theory.