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Education in England: a brief history Introduction
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Education in England: a brief history
Chapter 5 1979-1997 Thatcherism: the marketisation of education © copyright Derek Gillard 2007
1979-1988 Preparing to take control
By 1982 the Thatcher government was highly unpopular. Soaring inflation and a massive increase in unemployment made it seem unlikely that she would win a second term. She needed a miracle. Fortunately for her, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and Thatcher was able to play the part of heroic war leader in the Falklands War between March and June 1982. The result was a landslide in the 1983 general election. With a vastly increased Commons majority (up from 44 to 144), she felt emboldened to take her reforms further. She won a third term in office at the general election in 1987. Her majority (101), though slightly lower, was nevertheless substantial, and she was able to proceed to the next major step in her education programme - the 1988 Education 'Reform' Act.
Public services Thatcher's neo-liberal policies affected not only industry and commerce but also public services. 'Conservative legislation sought to drive neo-liberal principles into the heart of public policy. An emphasis on cost reduction, privatisation and deregulation was accompanied by vigorous measures against the institutional bases of Conservatism's opponents, and the promotion of new forms of public management. The outcome of these processes was a form of governance in which market principles were advanced at the same time as central authority was strengthened.' (Jones 2003)Thus the overall aim of Margaret Thatcher's education policies in the 1980s was to convert the nation's schools system from a public service into a market. The origins of this policy can be seen in Evolution by choice, Stuart Sexton's contribution to the Black Paper of 1977. He set out to 'sketch a new system for secondary education' based on 'absolute freedom of choice by application'. Local authorities would no longer allocate children to schools. Where a school was oversubscribed it would select its students on the basis of 'ability and aptitude'. If it was undersubscribed it would face the possibility of closure. The educational market would not be entirely unregulated. There would be an 'effective and independent inspectorate', a government-defined 'minimum curriculum' and specified 'minimum standards'. (Sexton 1977) Sexton's theme was taken up by an 'ever-growing number of right-wing think-tanks with small but interlocking memberships' which 'bombarded' ministers with policy ideas 'ideologically driven by commitment to the market and to privatisation'. (Benn and Chitty 1996) For five years (1981-1986) responsibility for putting these policies into practice fell on Sir Keith Joseph, a long-time advocate of free market ideas. In the 1970s he had set up the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, a think-tank which wanted schools to be autonomous and self-governing with a minimum of state interference. Ironically, as Secretary of State for Education he found himself 'commanding an apparatus that was now increasingly involved in specifying the everyday practice of schools. ... Joseph, like the ministers who succeeded him, organised in the name of "effective education" a vast new complex of regulations and regulators that would measure and direct the processes and outcomes of schooling.' (Jones 2003)
Enemies The Tory government saw itself as facing two enemies to its programme of reforming education - the 'education establishment' and the local authorities (LEAs). The education establishment To confront the education establishment - the teachers and their unions, the training institutions and national and local inspectors and advisors - the government set about rubbishing the work of teachers and seeking to control the school curriculum, continuing the 'Great Debate' which Callaghan had started. In 1979 it published LEA Arrangements for the School Curriculum which required local authorities to publish their curriculum policies. This was followed by Circular 6/81 (1981) and a whole raft of publications including A Framework for the School Curriculum (HMI 1980), A View of the Curriculum (HMI 1980), The School Curriculum (DES 1981) and The Curriculum 5-16 (HMI 1985), a remarkably progressive document which talked of 'areas of learning and experience'. Circular 8/83 (1983) required LEAs to report on their progress in developing curriculum policy. Central government also sought greater control over the training of teachers. In 1983 the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) was established to set standards for initial teacher training courses. And in a move designed to reduce the influence of teachers in curriculum development, the Schools' Council, in which teachers had played a significant role, was abolished in 1984. Its work was shared between the School Examinations Council (SEC), whose members were nominated by the secretary of state, and the School Curriculum Development Council (SCDC), which was instructed not to 'concern itself with policy'. In 1985 Keith Joseph proposed linking teacher appraisal and performance-related pay. The result was a year of industrial action by teachers. The local authorities For Thatcher, the local authorities - many of them run by Labour - were an irritant, blocking central government's ability to affect what was going on in the schools. Her government therefore set about weakening the role of the LEAs by dismantling the triangular framework of responsibility - central government, local authorities and the schools - which had been set up in 1944, and by offering parents a greater role in the running of schools. The LEAs were already in a difficult position. Local government had been reorganised in 1974, when the number of LEAs was reduced from 146 to 104. Many of the reorganised authorities had embraced corporate management policies which led to some widely publicised resignations of CEOs who felt they no longer had control over the service. Furthermore, after the 1974 reorganisation there was 'a tendency for local politics to consolidate along national party lines'. (Shipman 1984) Now, in the 1980s, public spending was being cut and the differences between the spending of different LEAs widened. As contraction replaced expansion, power tended to ebb back to central government. Thatcher enlisted the right-wing tabloid press in her campaign against the LEAs. Papers like The Sun and the Daily Mail ran endless stories about the absurdities perpetrated - often in the name of equal opportunities - by 'the loony left'. Ealing, for example, was supposed to have banned any mention of the nursery rhyme 'Baa baa black sheep' in its schools. It wasn't true, of course (I know - I was there!), but such endlessly repeated stories damaged the reputation of local authorities in the eyes of the public. A raft of new legislation removed the powers of the LEAs while increasing their duties: The 1980 Education Act began this process by giving more power to parents. There were to be more parents on governing bodies, parents were to have the right to choose schools and the right to appeal if they didn't get the schools they had chosen. Exam results were to be published. The Assisted Places Scheme would provide public money to pay for 30,000 children to go to private schools (a clear insult to state schools and LEAs). (The 1980 Act also removed the obligation on local authorities to provide free school milk and school meals, with the exception of free meals for children of families receiving Supplementary Benefit or Family Income Supplement.) The 1981 Education Act, following the publication of the Warnock Report, gave parents new rights in relation to special needs. LEAs were to identify the needs of children with learning difficulties; they were to have assessment procedures for ascertaining these needs; and were to produce 'statements' specifying how these needs would be met. Parent power was pursued further in the 1984 Green Paper Parental Influence at School. When the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) was launched in 1982, aimed at stimulating the technical and vocational education of 14-18 year olds, the LEAs were not allowed to participate. Instead, it was administered by the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). Control of education policy was further shifted from the LEAs to central government by the 1984 Education (Grants and Awards) Act, which introduced Education Support Grants (ESGs), given to LEAs for government-specified purposes, and again in 1987, when Specific Grants for INSET (In-Service Training) were introduced. The 1986 (1) Education Act required LEAs to give governors information on the financing of schools. The 1986 (2) Education Act implemented the proposals set out in the 1985 White Paper Better Schools. (The DES booklet Better schools - a summary summarised the proposals). It was a profoundly important act. It further diminished the importance of the LEAs - the focus would now be on the DES and the schools; and it legitimised educational law. Lawyers became involved in education for the first time. It was very detailed but ambiguous - it gave parents pegs to hang their disenchantments on. Its main provisions were: Local government
In a fit of political spite, the Greater London Council (GLC) and the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) were abolished on 31 March 1986 and their responsibilities were delegated to the London boroughs. (A form of overall local government for London was reintroduced by New Labour in May 2000, when the first elections to the Greater London Assembly (GLA) were held. Ken Livingstone, who had been Thatcher's bête noire as leader of the GLC, became the first elected Mayor of London). The 1988 Education 'Reform' Act (of which more below) completed Thatcher's rout of the LEAs.
Selection Despite all their claims to be radical and modernising, Thatcher's right-wing Tories - and the 'New Right' that supported them - couldn't bring themselves to ditch some of the elitist policies of the past. The most obvious of these was selection for secondary education. Thus the 1979 Education Act - Thatcher's first - repealed Labour's 1976 Act and gave back to LEAs the right to select pupils for secondary education at 11. It was backed up by the 1980 Education Act which, for the first time, formally enshrined the eleven plus selection process in law. The move backfired, however. The Tories underestimated the popularity of comprehensive schools, and attempts to reintroduce or extend selection in Berkshire, Wiltshire, Redbridge and Solihull all failed as a result of strong local opposition. But the Tories weren't going to give up. 'Such defeats served to encourage Conservative Ministers to opt for rather more subtle policy initiatives aimed at establishing a wider variety of secondary schools and providing for greater parental choice.' (Chitty and Dunford 1999) They began work on a series of radical changes characterised by 'the absence of any popular demand for them from any section of the education community nationally or locally, nor even from the populist media. One by one all had to be imposed by means of a parliamentary majority against continuing opposition from all other political parties and from much of the educational establishment.' (Chitty and Dunford 1999)
Education of ethnic minority children In March 1979 the government set up the Committee of Enquiry into the education of children from ethnic minority groups, with priority being given to children of West Indian origin. The Committee published its interim report, West Indian children in our schools, in 1981 (the Rampton Report). The final - and much bigger - report, Education for all, followed in 1985 (the Swann Report). Swann's principle conclusions and recommendations were:
'We believe that unless major efforts are made to reconcile the concerns and aspirations of both the majority and minority communities along more genuinely pluralistic lines, there is a real risk of the fragmentation of our society along ethnic lines which would seriously threaten the stability and cohesion of society as a whole.' (Chapter 1, paragraph 5) 
Other developments in the period 1979-1988 The Cockcroft Report (1982) Mathematics Counts was a major report on the teaching of maths. The National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) was set up in 1986 to promote National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). The Kingman Report (1988) looked at the teaching of English. The Higginson Report (1988) reviewed A Levels. In 1988 the White Paper Top-Up Loans for Students was published. Tory attitudes to education - and to education professionals - during this period were well summed up by secretary of state Kenneth Baker, who told the Tory Party Conference in October 1986: 'It is crucial for parents to understand where power in the education system lies. Our Education Bill radically changes the composition of school governing bodies. It gives these bodies new powers and responsibilities. We will end the dominance of the local authority and its political appointees. There will be more parent governors elected by all the parents. Control over sex education will be removed from the teachers and local authorities and given to the new-style governing bodies which will have more parents on them and be answerable to an annual parents' meeting.' 
The 1988 Education 'Reform' Act
The Act was presented as giving power to the schools. In fact, it took power away from the LEAs and the schools and gave them all to the secretary of state - it gave him hundreds of new powers. Even more importantly, it took a public service and turned it into a market - something the Tories had been working towards for a decade. Chitty and Dunford (1999) argue that the 'meretricious agenda' of the 1988 Act was in many ways 'a tribute to the remarkable resilience of the comprehensive ideal'. Having failed to get selection reinstated in 1979, the Tories now used 'devices like opting out, open admission, city technology colleges and the introduction of "local markets" ... as attempts to introduce selection by the back door.' (Chitty and Dunford 1999) The Act's major provisions concerned:
The National Curriculum The National Curriculum was written by a government 'quango' (quasi-autonomous non-government organisation). Teachers had virtually no say in its design or construction. It was almost entirely content-based. Dennis Lawton, of the University of London Institute of Education, described it as 'the reincarnation of the 1904 Secondary Regulations'. It was huge and therefore unmanageable, especially at the primary level, leading to a significant drop in reading standards. It divided the curriculum up into discrete subjects, making integrated 'topic' and 'project' work difficult if not impossible. But perhaps the most damaging outcome of it was that it prevented teachers and schools from being curriculum innovators and demoted them to 'curriculum deliverers'. It was also constantly revised. Right-wing think-tanks and pressure groups were unhappy with aspects of the first version and campaigned for 'the simplification and "Anglicisation" of the national testing system, so as to emphasise basic skills and the English cultural heritage'. (Jones 2003) The New Right gained control of the curriculum and assessment councils, where they provoked strong opposition from teachers, especially from teachers of English, leading to a widespread boycott of Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in 1993-4. As a result, the government was forced to redesign the national curriculum, reducing the amount of detail and removing 'the stronger signs of the traditionalist and ethnocentric enthusiasms of the New Right. ... The 1995 national curriculum thus marked the end of the New Right's curricular influence, at the same time as it helped embed the curriculum, and its associated testing system, at the consensual centre of English schooling.' (Jones 2003)
Arrangements for testing and league tables These were based on the 1988 Black Report produced by the National Curriculum Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT). Each pupil was to be assessed on ten 'Levels' across hundreds of 'Attainment Targets' in the ten National Curriculum subjects. It never had a chance of working and was soon drastically reduced. The system was designed, along with LMS, to promote the education market place. League tables of school results would be published and parents given (theoretically at least) free choice as to where to send their children. One of the effects of this was that schools became unwilling to take on pupils with learning difficulties, since they tended to depress a school's test results.
Religious education and collective worship Every LEA was required to review its Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education. Christianity was to be the dominant religion, although other faiths in the community were to be acknowledged. Every day must start with an act of collective worship (as in 1944) - but now it must be 'predominantly Christian'. Head teachers were very opposed to this, firstly because in many schools it was simply not physically possible to get all the pupils together in one place and secondly because it seemed bizarre to hold Christian acts of worship in schools where 99 per cent of the population was Muslim, for example. There were also arguments about what 'predominantly Christian' meant - did each act of worship (or 'assembly' as it is usually called in schools) have to be 'predominantly Christian' or would it be enough if more than half the assemblies in a term or year were 'predominantly Christian'? The question was never answered.
Local Management of Schools (LMS) Previously, schools had had control over only that part of their budget relating to books and materials. The staff were employed and the buildings maintained by the LEA. Under LMS, the schools were to be given far greater control, managing almost the whole budget. LMS dramatically changed the role of the head teacher from educationalist to institutional manager. S/he now had to learn about recruitment and selection procedures, employment law, buildings maintenance etc. The scheme introduced the market place to schools. School budgets were to be based largely on pupil numbers, so in order to thrive schools had to attract as many pupils as possible. This led to some bizarre cases of schools offering gifts to parents who enrolled their children. In fact, LMS turned out to be a con. Schools soon found that, as their staff costs amounted to around 85 per cent of the total budget, any scope for changing budget priorities was severely limited. Its real purpose (apart from taking financial control away from the LEAs) was to push the blame for problems onto the schools when budgets were cut - as they were from the second year of LMS onwards. Indeed, school budgets were cut in six of the eight years following 1988.
School governing bodies More parent governors were added to school governing bodies. For the first time, governors now had legal responsibilities in relation to the implementation of the National Curriculum and the control of the budget. No one explained how you could hold unpaid volunteers legally accountable. Inevitably, fewer people were prepared to take on the role.
Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education)
Ofsted was established four years later by the 1992 Education (Schools) Act. Chris Woodhead (pictured) was appointed HM Chief Inspector of Schools and head of Osfted in September 1994. Ofsted inspections quickly caused more stress and resentment among teachers than almost everything else in the 1988 Act put together, especially when government ministers began using Ofsted reports as a basis for 'naming and shaming' so-called 'failing' schools. Voluntary aided faith schools were subject to two complementary inspections: a 'Section 9' inspection (which became Section 11 in 1996) covering the National Curriculum and other matters such as equal opportunities and health and safety, and a 'Section 13' inspection (Section 23 in 1996) covering the religious education under the control of the governors and foundation bodies.
Grant Maintained Status This was another clear attack on the LEAs. Under the scheme, schools could opt out of LEA control and be funded directly by another central government quango. It was iniquitous because, to bribe schools into opting out, they were offered substantial additional funding - at the expense of the remaining local authority schools. Grant maintained (GM) schools were allowed to select up to ten per cent of their pupils on the basis of ability or aptitude. Some secondary schools applied to become GM in the first year or two, but when the extra cash dried up, so did the applications. Ironically - but unsurprisingly - most of the schools that did opt out were in Conservative-controlled LEAs where spending on education tended to be lower. A survey published in February 1992 showed that schools wishing to go GM were concentrated in just 12 of the 117 education authorities in England and Wales. GM status was eventually abolished by New Labour.
City Technology Colleges (CTCs) Baker presented these new schools as a 'half-way house' between the state and independent sectors. He told the TES: 'What we have at present is seven per cent or so in the independent sector, probably going to rise to ten per cent; and on the other side, a huge continent: 93 per cent in the state-maintained sector. ... What I think is striking in the British education system is that there is nothing in between ... Now the City Technology Colleges I've already announced are a sort of half-way house. I would like to see many more half-way houses, a greater choice, a greater variety. I think many parents would as well. (Times Educational Supplement 3 April 1987)In fact, the CTCs were just another attempt to reintroduce selection and to destroy the power of the LEAs by involving private enterprise in education. A hundred of the colleges were to be set up across the country, each one funded - 'sponsored' - by a business, with spending per pupil far higher than in the neighbouring local authority schools. In the event, only a handful were ever established because few businesses were prepared to take part and, as usual, the taxpayer was left to pick up the bill. The last CTC to be authorised, in April 1991, was Kingswood in Bristol. The chair of Cable and Wireless and former Tory Party chair Lord Young stumped up the required £2m. The government handed over the other £8m. Avon county council's deputy director of education, Edward Watson, bitterly contrasted that £8m for capital spending on the 900 children at Kingswood CTC with the £4.5m he had for capital spending on the county's other 150,000 children. With the extra money, he said, all secondary schools could be fully repaired, all improvements they wanted could be done, all could have a new science laboratory, and there would be enough left over to give all primary schools an extra nursery class for a year. (The Guardian 3 October 2006)
1989-1997 John Major: more of the same
Public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP had reached a high point of 6.5 per cent in 1975-6 under Callaghan's government. By 1983-4 it had fallen to 5.3 per cent and it remained below that level under both Thatcher and Major. By 1993-4 capital spending on schools was less than half what it had been in the mid-1970s. (figures from Glennerster 1998, quoted in Jones 2003) To make matters worse, schools faced huge problems caused by increasing social polarisation. When Thatcher had come to power in 1979 about ten per cent of children lived in households whose income was less than half the national average. By 1993, the figure was 33 per cent. (figures from Oppenheim and Lister 1997, quoted in Jones 2003) In 1997 Ofsted noted that state schools with large numbers of children from poor homes were by far the worst performers at GCSE.
'Selection' becomes 'specialisation' Major was just as determined as Thatcher had been to reintroduce selection, but opposition to it following the 1979 Act, the poor take-up of GM status and the lack of enthusiasm for CTCs had, by the time John Patten became education secretary in 1992, convinced the Tories that they needed a change of strategy. Their answer was to convert 'selection' into 'specialism'. In an article in the New Statesman and Society (17 July 1992) Patten argued that: 'Selection is not, and should not be, a great issue of the 1990s as it was in the 1960s. The S-word for all Socialists to come to terms with is, rather, 'specialisation'. The fact is that children excel at different things; it is foolish to ignore it, and some schools may wish specifically to cater for these differences. ...The 1992 White Paper Choice and Diversity: A New Framework for Schools condemned the comprehensive system for 'presupposing that children are all basically the same and that all local communities have essentially the same educational needs. ... the provision of education should be geared more to local circumstances and individual needs: hence a commitment to diversity in education'. (DfE 1992) It went on, confusingly, to announce plans to add to the existing 15 city technology colleges a network of LEA-maintained 'technology schools', and some 'technology colleges' which would involve partnership with business sponsors. The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act was another attempt to damage the comprehensive system and weaken LEA control of education. It removed further education and sixth form colleges from LEA control, established the Further Education Funding Councils (FEFCs), unified the funding of higher education under the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs), introduced competition for funding between institutions, and abolished the Council for National Academic Awards. Colleges were thus removed from the control of local authorities and subjected to 'quango-funding and control through a privatised market'. (Benn and Chitty 1996) This made it harder to plan comprehensive systems - which was the intention: 'there were to be no local systems, only individual education "businesses" competing with one another for "customers" within the centrally controlled legislative framework'. (Benn and Chitty 1996) The independent National Commission on Education, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and chaired by Lord Walton of Detchant, was worried. Its final report, Learning to Succeed: a radical look at education today and a strategy for the future, published in 1993, condemned the Major government's obsession with creating 'a greater variety of secondary schools' and warned that 'as we see it, there is a serious danger of a hierarchy of good, adequate and "sink" schools emerging within the maintained system'. (National Commission on Education 1993, quoted in Chitty 2004) The aims of giving all children access to 'high-quality' schooling and of creating greater choice and diversity were simply not compatible: 'As we see it, the main task for the future will not be to concentrate on producing highly educated elites, but to achieve higher learning outcomes for all, and particularly for those in the middle and lower bands of attainment ... At present, there is a conflict between, on the one hand, moves towards a greater diversity and choice of schools and, on the other hand, an ideal of equal access for all children to "high-quality" education ... Laudable principles for schools may often work against each other: serving a local community and catering for all abilities as in the comprehensive ideal; or encouraging choice of secondary school. For example, a community school where the neighbourhood is not socially mixed may not have a broad enough social or ability range to operate in a truly comprehensive manner. Choice, when exercised, is often used to escape from the local school, thereby working against the community school ideal. Similarly, those parents who are exercising their choice are tending to use it in favour of schools with other pupils of a similar and "appropriate" background.' (National Commission on Education, 1993)Others warned that giving parents the choice of a diverse range of schools would ultimately result in selection of pupils by the schools themselves. Even Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, then chair of SEAC, admitted as much. 'If you give parents real choice in the system, it is inevitable (and probably desirable) that the schools themselves will demand to choose the kind of pupils that come.' (The Times 3 February 1992, quoted in Chitty 2004) But Patten wasn't listening. In 1994 he announced that the government would encourage the setting up of new grammar schools and would allow GM schools to select more of their intake. These decisions were even more extraordinary, given that a survey had just revealed that Scotland, which was entirely comprehensive, was achieving significantly better academic results than England, which was not. The proportion of pupils achieving the equivalent of five GCSE A-C passes in Scotland was 52 per cent; in England it was only 38.4 per cent. (Benn and Chitty 1996) The commitment to specialisation was reiterated under the next education secretary, Gillian Shepherd, in the White Paper Self-Government for Schools (1996). The Tories went into the 1997 general election promising that GM schools would be allowed to select up to 50 per cent of their intake by ability; technology and language colleges up to 30 per cent; and all other LEA schools up to 20 per cent. And John Major declared that he would like to see 'a grammar school in every town'.
Vocational education Benn and Chitty (1996) argue that a variety of national bodies and think-tanks from the left to the centre-right produced 'positive and radical proposals' during the late 1980s and 1990s. All acknowledged that Britain had fallen behind internationally and was failing compete with the rest of the world industrially. The government's response was to bypass mainstream education and establish a series of training initiatives organised through the Department of Employment's Manpower Services Commission (MSC). 'From 1977 to 1989 change was breathtaking in this area and so was expenditure: £89 billion spent on introducing 25 training schemes, of which 22 were subsequently cancelled, some after only a year or two in existence.' (Benn and Chitty 1996) A more hopeful sign was the announcement in 1989 that schools would in future be allowed to offer vocational courses like those from the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC). The government also made an effort to rationalise 'Britain's renowned jungle of vocational qualifications' (Benn and Chitty 1996) in an attempt to create a single new system of vocational qualifications: GNVQ for educational qualifications and NVQ for qualifications gained through work. 'For a brief moment it looked as if at last a British government was going to catapult the country into a position where it could compete with other industrialised countries which had already made all these changes through comprehensive education reform and an integration of vocational and academic education.' (Benn and Chitty 1996)This hope was dashed, however, when the government ignored the advice of the 1996 Dearing Report on vocational qualifications and announced it would be keeping the segregated academic education of the 16-19 group, with separate A Level exams. Academic and vocational courses would not be integrated and institutions would not be reorganised into a coherent system - 'though government initiatives hoped to make it look as though this was happening, particularly those conducted by the curriculum review team led by Sir Ron Dearing'. (Benn and Chitty 1996) It was another missed opportunity - and a particularly disappointing one, given that the number of students staying on after 16 had begun to rise after the introduction in 1986 of the common GCSE exam.
Middle school closures Middle schools had a relatively short life and began to disappear in the 1990s. There were two main reasons for this - financial considerations and the National Curriculum. The financial considerations related to falling rolls (fewer pupils), which made schools more expensive to run. The obvious solution was to close some, but school closures always cause politicians problems - parents naturally like their children to attend nearby schools and don't want them to have to travel long distances. However, closing a middle school did not generally result in children having to travel any further - they simply went to the local first/lower school (which became a primary school) and then on to the local secondary school (whose age range was extended from 13-18 to 11-18). The result was that both these schools (the new primary and secondary schools) became bigger, resulting in cost savings. The National Curriculum (established under the 1988 Education 'Reform' Act) created 'Key Stages'. Key Stage (KS) 1 covered ages 5-7, KS2 ages 7-11 and KS3 ages 11-14. There was immediately a problem for schools in three-tier systems which crossed these Key Stage boundaries. First/lower schools (who taught the first year or two of KS2) had to liaise with middle schools (who taught the last year or two of KS2) over which areas of each subject they would teach. Similarly, middle schools (who taught the first two years of KS3) had to liaise with upper schools (who taught the last year of KS3) over what areas of each subject in KS3 they would teach. Bearing in mind that an upper school might have three or four feeder middle schools each teaching different areas in different subjects at KS3, and that a middle school might have six or even more feeder first schools all teaching different areas in different subjects at KS2, it quickly became clear that this was a logistical nightmare. (I had some experience of it myself!) How much simpler to have the transfer between schools at a break between Key Stages - which effectively meant at age 11. When the debate about Oxford's middle schools got under way in the early 1990s, one of the arguments used by those who wanted to keep the middle schools was that national research showed a drop in attainment in the year or two after children moved into the secondary schools. The drop in attainment did not appear to happen when the children stayed on in middle schools for an extra couple of years. It was also argued that children aged 11-12 fared better socially in smaller middle schools than in large comprehensives. Neither argument cut much ice. The decision was made on the two points outlined above (cost and curriculum) and despite a strong campaign by middle school parents and teachers, Oxford's middle schools eventually closed in 2003. Middle schools still exist in a handful of LEAs but their days appear to be numbered. Useful links Middle School Research
The National Middle Schools Forum
Primary education For months, opinion polls predicted that Labour, led by Neil Kinnock, would win the 1992 election. But at the last minute Kinnock made a huge error of judgement in staging a distastefully triumphalist rally and, to most people's amazement - and many people's profound disappointment - John Major won, though with a much reduced Commons majority of 21. Kenneth Clarke was appointed the new education secretary. He wanted to see a return to streaming and more formal teaching methods in primary schools, so he commissioned Robin Alexander, Jim Rose and Chris Woodhead to produce what became popularly known as the 'Three Wise Men Report'. Curriculum organisation and classroom practice in primary schools: a discussion paper (1992) Produced in just one month, the paper argued that:
The 1993 Education Act This was the largest piece of legislation in the history of education. It included changes to the funding of GM schools, provisions for 'failing' schools and new rules for pupil exclusions. It abolished the National Curriculum Council (NCC) and the School Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC) and replaced replaced them with the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). And it provided a legal definition of special educational needs.
The 1996 Education Act This was another huge piece of legislation which mainly consolidated all previous education acts since 1944.
Other developments in the period 1989-1997 The Elton Report Discipline in Schools (1989) was a response to concerns about lack of discipline in schools. The 1990 Education (Student Loans) Act introduced 'top-up' loans for HE students and so began the diminution of student grants. The Rumbold Report Starting with quality (1990) investigated the quality of the educational experience offered to 3 and 4 year olds. The 1991 School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act established a teachers' pay review body but gave the Secretary of State the final say. The 1991 White Paper on higher education recommended expansion of student numbers. The 'Parents' Charter' published in 1991 gave parents the right to information about schools and their performance (it was updated in 1994). In 1992 Labour education spokesman Jack Straw called for grammar schools to be scrapped 'There is an overwhelming case for ending selection,' he said. The 1993 Dearing Report The National Curriculum and Its Assessment was the first major review of the National Curriculum. It recommended reducing its content. The 1994 Education Act established the Teacher Training Authority (TTA) and regulated student unions. In 1994 the Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs came into force. In 1994 Tony Blair sent his children to the London Oratory, rather than to his local comprehensive. Choice, he argued, would not be sacrificed to political correctness. In 1995 the DES was renamed the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). The 1996 Education (Student Loans) Act extended the provision of student loans. The 1996 Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Act introduced a voucher scheme for nursery education (which was unsuccessful and was later withdrawn by Labour) and allowed governors of GM schools to borrow money. The 1996 School Inspections Act consolidated previous legislation on school inspections. The 1997 Education Act was wide-ranging but much watered down because of the forthcoming general election which the Tories were expected to lose. It abolished the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) and the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) and replaced them with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).
Downfall During their eighteen years in office, the Tories had weakened the power of the local authorities, diminished the influence of the teacher unions and forced the Labour Party to rethink its education policies. But these successes (from their point of view) had encouraged them to ever greater extremism, notably in their promotion of selection and their right-wing vision of 'traditional' education. As Jones (2003) notes: 'This triumphalist moment did not last. In many areas - funding, assessment, selection - Conservative policies had provoked strong oppositional movements, for which the principles of equal-opportunity-orientated reform were plainly an issue. Conflict with such movements proved damaging for Conservatism, which by the mid-1990s faced protests over low levels of education spending in the English shires, large-scale opposition in Scotland to "Thatcherism" in education, and a boycott by teachers in England and Wales of national assessment procedures. Thus, a peculiar double movement was in process: even while the basic building blocks of its system were assimilated into a two-party consensus, in other respects Conservatism's educational policies were contributing to the electoral debacle of 1997.'In the end, Major's government destroyed itself. Mired in endless allegations of sleaze and widely regarded as fiscally incompetent - a sin for any Tory government, it was swept away in Tony Blair's landslide victory of May 1997. The whole country breathed a sigh of relief. But not for long.
References Benn C and Chitty C (1996) Thirty Years On - is comprehensive education alive and well or struggling to survive? London: David Fulton Publishers Chitty C (2004) Education Policy in Britain Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Chitty C and Dunford J (eds) (1999) State Schools: New Labour and the Conservative Legacy London: Woburn Press DfE (1992) Choice and Diversity: A New Framework for Schools London: HMSO Glennerster H (1998) Education: reaping the harvest? In Glennerster H and Hills J (eds) The State of Welfare: the economics of social spending Oxford: Oxford University Press Jones K (2003) Education in Britain: 1944 to the present Cambridge: Polity Press National Commission on Education (1993) Learning to Succeed, Report of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation London: Heinemann Oppenheim C and Lister R (1997) The growth of poverty and inequality in Walker A and Walker C (eds) (1997) Britain divided: the growth of social exclusion in the 1980s and 1990s London: Child Poverty Action Group Patten J (1992) 'Who's afraid of the 'S' word?' New Statesman and Society 17 July, 20-1 Sexton S (1977) Evolution by choice, in Cox CB and Boyson R Black Paper 1977 London: Temple Smith Shipman M (1984) Education as a Public Service London: Harper and Row Swann Report (1985) Education for All Cmnd 9453 London: HMSO 
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Neo-liberalism became the dominant force in British politics with the election in 1979 of the Conservative administration led by Margaret Thatcher (pictured). Her government's policies 'accelerated the closing down of unprofitable industries and promoted a profound social and economic restructuring'. (Jones 2003)
This was the most important Education Act since 1944. It is sometimes referred to as 'The Baker Act' after secretary of state Kenneth Baker (pictured).
The 1988 Act set out plans for another quango, Ofsted, which would employ private contractors to inspect schools. Its reports on individual schools would be published. Every privatised inspection team would have a 'lay inspector' - someone who did not work in education. The joke in schools was that to be a lay inspector you had to know nothing about education.
Margaret Thatcher had become increasingly unpopular, not least because of her determination to introduce a form of poll tax, which led, in March 1990, to the worst riots London had seen for a century. She lost the confidence of her colleagues and in the following November she was replaced as Tory leader and prime minister by John Major (pictured). He inherited from her an education system which had suffered a massive decline in investment and a vast increase in inequality.