Educationalist; Born July 27, 1920; Died August 4, 2009.

SIR James Munn, OBE, who has died aged 89, was an educationalist whose Munn Committee report in 1977 laid the foundations of the curriculum for the third and fourth years of the Scottish secondary education system.

Highly influential, the report emphasised that assessment should be geared to educational objectives in the curriculum, rather than the curriculum being controlled by the assessment system. The Dunning Committee had examined assessment procedures in a separate report. Also published in 1977, the Dunning and Munn Reports were often jointly referenced.

In short, Sir James recommended a restructuring of the curriculum in S3 and S4 to meet the needs of pupils of all abilities; the introduction of teaching and learning methods which reflected pupils' needs and circumstances; and the development of new courses which crossed traditional subject boundaries.

With nearly 30 years' experience of teaching when the report was published, Sir James was the perfect choice as chairman. He had also been a member of the Consultative Committee on the Curriculum since 1968 (and would serve as its chairman from 1980-87). The Munn Report's style of thought owed a lot to the kind of educational philosophy popular in the 1960s, and attracted inevitable criticism as a result.

James Munn was born on July 27, 1920, to Douglas Munn and his wife Margaret Dunn. After attending Stirling High School, James won a place at Glasgow University, where he graduated with honours in 1941. With the Jewel of the Empire still in need of bright young colonial administrators, Munn immediately entered the Indian Civil Service.

He left for India the following year and stayed until 1947, when India achieved independence. Based in Bihar, a state in the east of the country, Sir James's experience there left its mark. As a teaching colleague said of him in the 1970s: "Picture someone in the civil service out in India and you might have an image of what he was like."

Two years after returning to Scotland, Sir James finally settled upon a teaching career. He taught at various schools in Glasgow from 1949-57 before becoming principal teacher of modern languages at Falkirk High School, a post he held until 1962. Sir James was then promoted to become depute rector at Falkirk, which he left in 1966 to become rector of Rutherglen Academy.

In 1970, Sir James moved to Cathkin High School in Cambuslang as rector, where he reached the apex of his career as an educationalist. He stayed in post for 13 years, chairing the Committee to Review the Structure of the Curriculum at S3 nd S4 concurrently from 1975-77.

After retiring from Cathkin in 1983, Munn, who was knighted two years later, frequented the usual circuit of the great and the good. He was a University Commissioner from 1988-95, chairman of the old Manpower Services Committee for Scotland (renamed the Training Commission in 1987) from 1984-88, and president of the Institute of Training and Development from 1989-92.

Even in retirement Sir James watched Scottish educational changes with interest. He urged elimination of gender prejudice from the school curriculum in the 1990s and in the late 1980s, when ministers were under attack for apparently "Anglicising" Scottish education, he observed: "It seems to me that we should be concerned with the quality of educational ideas rather than their source."

Sir James Munn died on August 4 at Mearnskirk House. A daughter, Elizabeth, predeceased her father. Muriel Jean Millar Moles, whom Munn married in 1946, survives him. DAVID TORRANCE