The term "school-based curriculum development" (SBCD) had great currency in 1970s and 1980s educational
literature. However, in many countries the term dropped out of use during the late 1980s/early 1990s. The
current New Zealand Curriculum/Marautanga Project has sparked renewed interest in SBCD. This paper draws
from a background paper prepared for the Ministry of Education to inform the Curriculum Project. In the 1970s
and 1980s, SBCD was seen as a solution to many of the problems of school education. These included
perceptions that centralised curricula were too slow to keep pace with changing social and educational
environments. SBCD was also strongly tied to a view that teachers should be developers, rather than simply
transmitters, of curriculum. Today, central concerns for SBCD include developing school curricula to reflect
local needs, bringing students and other people into the school curriculum development process. This paper
argues that a new meaning for SBCD must be developed to reflect the current context, and future directions for
New Zealand schools, and this will require renewed discussion about many aspects of New Zealand curriculum
and schooling practice.