ABSTRACT
Anthony Crossland, as Secretary of State for Education, remarked that the nearest the cabinet had ever come to talking about education, during his tenure of office, was to discuss the Oxford ring-road (Kogan 1971). The high profile of governmentsponsored educational change in the late 1980s is rather new to us. Since 1944 only the issues surrounding ‘going comprehensive’ have attracted so much public attention and hence succeeded in engaging the concern of politicians. The battlefield of change is, inevitably, in the areas where entrenched viewpoints and reformatory zeal coincide. It is not surprising then, that commentators should be able to point to elements they regard as missing from the package of change-ideas lost in the heat of battle; reforms that became casualities; conflicts that both sides avoided in the interests of good tactics. Judged in the light of comparison with Japan, certain obvious deficiencies spring to mind.
