ABSTRACT
The election of a Labour government in May 1997 transformed the education landscape-or at least its language. Elected on an agenda of ‘education, education, education’, it embarked, from the moment of taking office, on a whirl of initiatives and reforms. A White Paper, Excellence in Schools (DfEE, 1997a), was published after just sixty-seven days and this was rapidly followed by two more consultation documents with a bearing on further education, The People’s L ottery(Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 1997) and The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998a). Two major bills were enacted, School Standards and Framework and Teaching and Higher Education, as well as an enabling bill to phase out assisted places in independent schools. A number of major reports were already published or envisaged-Dearing (1997) on higher education, Kennedy (1997) on widening participation, Fryer (1997) on lifelong learning, Tomlinson (1996) on inclusive learning, and Moser (1999) on adult literacy and numeracy. The previous government’s spending plans were adhered to, with minor adjustments, for the first two years, but a Comprehensive Spending Review was undertaken to see what extra funding could be made available for education, among other things, and the results were published in July 1998 (DfEE, 1998e).
