When the SEFI cumculum development working group was established at the Aachen meeting of the SEFI Congress there was some concern expressed about the organisational problems of setting up this, the first working group of SEFI in the context of the very wide, almost hdeterminate nature of the subject area implied by the name. The members who subsequently joined the working group were, of course, well aware of the difficulties and, as one of their first tasks, devoted considerable time to the identification of ways of narrowing down the problems into manageable packages so that some attempt could be made at producing some useful results in this vast area.