Many questions were raised by the imposition of the National Curriculum; many of them specifically related to mathematics. In particular, the future of curriculum development is called into question and, under that heading, the future of projects. The question may be put bluntly as follows: ‘If there had been a national curriculum or syllabus in the 1950s and 1960s, would it have been possible to set up curriculum development projects, either “officially”, under the Schools Council, or independently, like the Nuffield Project, or the Mathematics in Education and Industry Project (MEI), or the School Mathematics Project (SMP)?’