ABSTRACT
Local education authorities paved the way for the changes in the composition of governing bodies. Some would say that the way some local authorities behaved made the changes necessary. Other national innovations were also prefigured by local experiments, in a way that is typical of the development of legislation in this country. While Sheffield, most notably, was experimenting with its governing bodies, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire were piloting schemes of local financial management. But it was national government that put us where we are today. Alongside the reconstitution of governing bodies and local management of schools-both radical enough in their time-came the National Curriculum. None of these three major reforms was ideologically driven along party lines: the National Curriculum was, as Barber (1996) argues, one outcome of the economic crisis of 1973:
The weakness of the British economy was exposed; public expenditure was put under pressure. For education, this had two direct consequences. Firstly, it led politicians to scrutinize more carefully the extent to which the money they were investing in education was being wisely spent. Secondly, they sought explanations for, and solutions to, the nation’s economic problems. Both, as night follows day, led them to question the purposes of education and the extent to which society was being well served by its schools. From that moment on it was inevitable that the curriculum would become, once again, a political issue, (pp. 18-19)
So it was that, after a few cautious steps towards increasing school accountability, and changing the composition of governing bodies, that, in 1987, Prime Minister Thatcher committed the government to putting educational reform at the forefront of its policies in its third term: ‘I believe that government must take primary responsibility for setting standards for the education of our children. That’s why we are establishing a National Curriculum for basic subjects’. While there were significant differences between the Prime Minister’s rhetoric and the thinking of the Secretary of State in how this should be interpreted-Thatcher wanting a focus on basics; Kenneth Baker, then Secretary of State, wanting breadth and balance-an element of dictation of what schools should teach would now be enforced, for the first time for nearly one hundred years.
