ABSTRACT
The 1992 Education (Schools) Act inaugurated new national arrangements for inspection, overseen by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). Ofsted has grown out of the ‘New Right’ ideology that gave rise to the educational reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s. The ‘New Right’ were not a homogeneous group, but most agreed with complaints of ‘falling educational standards’ (making comparison with economic competitors, especially West Germany); poor discipline within schools (both as a result of child-centred teaching methods, and of insufficient parental involvement in schools); ‘producer capture’ of education (Demaine, 1988, p. 252)—that is educationist dominance of school policies and programmes as compared to ‘consumerist’ i.e. parents and their children; and the influence of left-wing political values that promoted cooperation and equality and education for ‘life’ and for itself, and which demeaned competition, selection and instrumentalism. The ‘New Right’ was composed of two contrasting tendencies, ‘cultural rightism’ and ‘classical liberal thought’ (Jones, 1989). The latter was inspired by a spirit of consumerism, individual entrepreneurism, and competition-the values of the market-where the good drives out the bad; where what is good is decided by those immediately affected (the consumers) rather than by producers; where there are few controls so the ‘good’ is allowed to surface; and where people are motivated to do their best because they know it will be rewarded. The ‘cultural rightists’, on the other hand, emphasized ‘the importance of a strong state to control the evils that an unregulated society is prey to’ (ibid., p. 32).
