ABSTRACT
When New Labour came to power in the UK in 1997, many in education believed that the worst excesses of a dirigiste, divisive and punitive system would be replaced with policies that revived the notion of partnership between professionals and central government, which had been the hallmark of previous Labour administrations. Yet, despite the undoubted commitment to education that the current government has made and its explicit concern with supporting the more disadvantaged sections of society, there has been little change in the underpinning policy strategies which are being adopted to achieve these goals. The mantra of themes that have characterised English/Welsh educational policy over the last twenty-five years – marketisation and choice, the centralisation of power, new forms of institutional management, inspection, accountability, standards and effectiveness – are, if anything, more central to government education policy than before, as the introduction to this book makes clear. They remain the defining policy themes of our present time. Indeed, as Maclure (1998) has argued, their pursuit by a government which much more readily attracts the commitment and loyalty of educational professionals is potentially even more dangerous, since the sense of common cause may dull the opposition to what are in some cases misguided policies, as I shall argue later in this chapter.
