ABSTRACT
There are many apparent similarities between the Tomorrow’s Schools (Lange, 1988) reforms in New Zealand and the Education Reform Act (ERA, 1988) in England and Wales. These apparent similarities are not confined to the superficial. They are often seen as responses to the breakdown of the Keynesian Welfare State (KWS), in particular, they are seen as having been generated by a common set of educational ideas, usually known as New Right. What makes these apparent similarities so intriguing, and at another level so important, is that they seem to point to the possibility of a particular set of ideas about education, held in common across two societies which, though they draw to a greater or lesser degree on a common heritage, nevertheless display major differences economically and politically, as well as in the organization of their education systems. This comparison is made all the more piquant by the fact that the English reforms were introduced by a Conservative government and the New Zealand reforms by a Labour government. Of course, looking beyond New Zealand and England, many commentators have argued that New Right ideas now dominate the education system of all advanced English speaking countries.
