When the Journal of Biological Education was first published in 1967, biology was still
very much the Cinderella of the three school sciences in many countries. Most selective
secondary school biology courses readily betrayed their origins as an unconvincing
coalition of botany and zoology. In England, entries for A-level zoology (8091) and
botany (4740) in 1962 jointly exceeded those for biology (8172). At sixth form level, biology
curricula were dominated by the needs of intending medical students, with an emphasis
on the dissection of animal ‘types’, together with plant morphology and taxonomy,
rudimentary physiology, biochemistry and histology. In the non-selective secondary modern
schools, biological education was often limited to socially- or economically- directed
courses such as Human Biology, Health Education, Physiology, Hygiene, Agriculture and
Horticulture. Courses of this kind were also the antecedents of the general biology programmes
that developed in high schools in the USA. However, such schools have a different
history and social function from their European counterparts and a curriculum
structure that has led to biology being studied before chemistry or physics rather than
alongside them.

• 50 Years of JBE: The Evolution of Biology as a School Subject

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