economic performance and the quality and context of education and

training, and that therefore the country’s poor performance

economically since the second world war (compared with some other

countries) is due to irrelevant and poor quality education. During the

thirty years from the end of the Second World War not enough pupils

stayed on beyond the compulsory school leaving age. There were too

many unskilled and semi-skilled people for a much more sophisticated

economy. Standards of literacy and numeracy were too low for a modern

economy. There was not enough practical and technical know-how being

taught.

As a result, it was argued that there must be much closer links

between school and industry, with pupils spending time in industry,

with industrialists participating in the governance of schools, and

with subjects and activities on the curriculum which relate much more

closely to the world of work.

Furthermore, there should be a different attitudes to learning.

So quickly is the economy that people constantly have to update their

knowledge and skills. There is a need for a «learning society» and for

the acquisition of «generic» or «transferable» skills in

communication, numeracy, problem-solving, computer technology, etc.

b) Social Context

There are anxieties not just about the future economy but also

about the future of society. Preparing young people for adult life was

what the Ruskin speech was about, and there is much more to adult life

than economic success - for example, living the life of a good

citizen, of a father or mother, of involvement in social and political

activity. Therefore, schools are required to prepare young people for

a multicultural society, to encourage tolerance between different

ethnic groups, to promote social responsibility, to encourage respect

for the law and democratic institutions, to develop sensibilities

towards the disadvantaged and to ensure girls enjoy equal

opportunities with boys. And schools have. Indeed, responded with

programs of social education, citizenship, and parenthood. Moreover,

they have often done this in practical ways such as organizing

projects.

c) Standards

The need for educational change arises partly from a concern

about academic standards. The sense that Britain is declining has been

reinforced by statements from employers. According to them, Britain’s

workforce is under-educated, under-trained and under-qualified! These

criticisms of standards are pitched at different levels. First, there

are worries about low standards of literacy and numeracy. Second,

international comparisons give weight to misgivings about the

performance of British schoolchildren in mathematics and science. And,

therefore, the subsequent changes have tried to define standards much

more precisely, and o have regular assessment of children’s

performance against these standards.

II. Changing Political Control

a) After 1944

The key educational legislation, until recently, was the 1944

Education Act. That Act supported a partnership between central government

(Local Education Authorities or LEAs), teachers and the churches - with

central government playing a minimal role in the curriculum.

The 1944 Education Act required the Secretary of State to promote the

education of the people of England and Wales and the progressive

development of institutions devoted to that purpose and to secure the

effective execution by local authorities, under his control and direction,

of the national policy for providing a varied and comprehensive educational

service in every area.

In the decades following the Act, «promotion» was perceived in very

general terms - ensuring that there were resources adequate for all

children to receive an education according to «age, ability and aptitude»,

providing the broad legal framework and regulations within which education

should be provided (for example, the length of the school year or the

division of education into primary and secondary phases), and initiating

major reports on such important matters as language and mathematics

teaching.

Within this framework, the LEA organized the schools. The LEA raised

money through local taxation to provide education from primary right

through to further and indeed higher education, and made sure that the

schools and colleges were working efficiently. They employed and paid the

teachers. And ultimately they had responsibility for the quality of

teaching within those schools.

The Churches were key partners because historically they (particularly

the Church of England) had provided a large proportion of elementary

education and owned many of the schools.

The 1944 Act had to establish a new partnership between state, LEAs

and the church schools.

b)After 1980

However, the changing economic, social and cultural conditions

outlined in the previous section caused the government to reexamine the

nature and the composition of that partnership. The questions being asked

during the 1980’s included the following:

Has central government the power to make the system respond to the

changing context? Are the local authorities too local for administrating a

national system and too distant for supporting local, especially parental,

involvement in school? Have the parents been genuine partners in the system

that affects the future welfare of their children? And what place, if any,

in the partnership has been allocated to the employers, who believe they

have a contribution to make to the preparation of young people for the

future?

1) New governing bodies

Various Acts of Parliament since 1980 have made schools more

accountable.

Teachers, employers and parents have been given places on the governing

bodies. Governors have to publish information about the school that enables

parents to make informed choices when deciding to which school they should

send their child. Each LEA has to have a curriculum policy that must be

considered and implemented by each governing body. Schools also must have a

policy on sex education and must ensure that political indoctrination does

not take place. This accountability of schools and LEAs has to be

demonstrated through an annual report to be presented to a public meeting

of parents. The government gave parents the right to enrol their children -

given appropriate age and aptitude - at any state school of their choice,

within the limits of capacity. Parents already sent their children to the

local school of their choice. The decision to publish schools' examination

results, however, gave parents a stark, but not necessarily well-informed,

basis on which to choose the most appropriate school for their child.

Increasingly parents sought access to the most successful nearby school in

terms of examination results. Far

from being able to exercise their choice, large numbers of parents were now

frustrated in their choice. Overall, in 1996 20 per cent of parents failed

to obtain their first choice of school. In London the level was 40 per

cent, undermining the whole policy of 'parental choice' and encouraging

only the crudest view of educational standards. Schools found themselves

competing rather than cooperating and some schools, for example in deprived

urban areas, faced a downward spiral of declining enrolment followed by

reduced budgets. Thus the market offered winners and losers: an improved

system for the brighter or more fortunate pupils, but a worse one for the

'bottom' 40 per cent. Schools in deprived parts of cities acquired

reputations as 'sink' schools. As one education journalist wrote in 1997,

'There is a clear hierarchy of schools:

private, grammar, comprehensives with plenty of nice middle-class children,

comprehensives with fewer nice middle-class children and so on.'

2) Central control

The government has looked for ways of exercising greater influence

over what is taught in schools. New legislation gave the government powers

to exercise detailed control over the organization and content of

education. The 1988 Education Act legislated a National Curriculum and a

system of National Assessment. In addition, significant changes were

enacted to make possible the central financing and thus control of schools

through creating a new kind of school outside LEA control (first, the

provision of City Technology Colleges 9CTC), and, second, the creation of

Grant Maintained Schools (GMS)). The government also significantly reduced

the power of local authorities by transferring the management of schools

from the LEA to the schools themselves (known as the local management of

schools or LMS).

At the same time, within this more centralized system, parents have

been offered greater choice through the establishment of different kinds of

schools (GMS and CTC), through the delegation of management to the

governing bodies of the schools (LMS) and through the granting of parental

rights to send their children to the school of their choice.

The various Parliamentary Acts (but especially the 1988 Act) gave

legal force to a massive change in the terms of the education partnership.

First, the Secretary of State now has powers over the details of the

curriculum and assessment. Second, a mechanism has been created whereby

there can be more participation by parents (and to a much smaller degree by

employers), in decisions that affect the quality of education. Third, the

LEAs have been required to transfer many decisions over finance, staffing,

and admissions to the schools and colleges themselves. Fourth, the LEA

responsibility for the curriculum has been transferred to the Secretary of

State.

3) Employer involvement

The voice of the consumers will be heard more, and the consumer

includes the employer. Several initiatives encouraged employer

participation. First, and possibly the most important in the long run, has

been the encouragement of business representatives on governing bodies of

schools. Second, there has been a range of initiatives which have given

employers a greater say in the purposes which schools are expected to serve

and in the means of attaining them.

4) The role of assessment

The government decided to develop a reformed system of examinations

which would specify the standards against which the performance of

individual schools and of pupils might be measured.

The 1988 Education Act legislated for assessment of pupils at the

ages of 7, 11, 14 and 16, using attainment targets which all children

should normally be expected to reach at these different ages in different

subjects - especially in the «foundation subjects» of English, mathematics

and science. The assessments relied partly on moderated teacher-assessment,

but more importantly on national, externally administrated tests.

As a result of these national assessments, exactly where each child

was in relation to all other children in terms of attainment in each

subject. And it would be possible to say how each school was succeeding in

these measured attainments in relationship to every other school. These

assessments, have subsequently, provided the basis of national comparisons

and league tables of schools.

In the reform of National Curriculum in the early 1990’s, it was

decided that, because of public examinations at 16 , the national

assessment should finish at 14.

5) Inspection

For over one hundred years, there had been an independent inspection

service. The inspectors were called Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) to

indicate that ultimately they were accountable to the Queen, not to the

government from whom they ardently preserved their independence. Until

about ten years ago, HMI numbered about 500. They inspected schools and

they advised the government.

Senior HMIs were based at the Department of Education and Science

(now the department for Education and Employment) but the big majority were

scattered over the whole country so that they could advise locally but also

be a source of information to central government. Indeed, they were known

as «the ears and the eyes of the Minister».

Much of this has now changed as government has sought greater central

control. HMI has been cut back to about one third of its previous size. The

Chief Inspector is now a political appointment, not someone who has arisen

from the ranks of an independent inspectorate. A new office has been

created, the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), to which HMI now

belong and which is much more at the service of government policy.

Under OFSTED a very large army of «Ofsted inspectors» has been

created - often teachers - who, after a brief training, are equipped to

inspect schools. The initial plan was to inspect all 25,000 schools every

four years and to publish a report which would be accessible to everyone.

Every teacher is seen and graded. OFSTED is able to identify «failing

schools» and «failing teachers».

It has been very difficult to get rid of very poor teachers. It is

now hoped that, with more regular inspection and with clearer criteria for

success and failure, it will be easier to sack teachers who are

consistently under performing.

The recent changes are increasingly redescribed in managerial and

business terms, as the educational system is managed as part of the drive

to be more economically competitive.

However, one must be aware of the doubts and dismay of many in this

«philosophy». First, there is little consideration of the aims of education

- the values which make the relationship between teacher and learner an

educational encounter, not one of «delivering a service». Second, the new

language of «education» is drawn from an entirely different activity, that

of business and management. The language of control, delivery, inputs and

outputs, performance indicators and audits, defining products, testing

against product specification, etc. Is not obviously appropriate to the

development of thinking, inquiring, imagination, creativity, and so on.

Third, the key role of the teacher is made peripheral to the overall

design; the teacher becomes a «technician» of someone else’s curriculum.

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