ABSTRACT
Certain themes in English educational policy, such as welfarism and accountability, are fashionable for a while – the one originating in Crosland's views in the mid-1960s, and the other epitomized by Callaghan's Ruskin College speech in 1975; they then die down after having been debated, theorised about, and half-heartedly acted upon. In France the concept of indicative total planning of the economy, including social aims, is embodied in a series of national plans which, in largely four-year periods, in the past have characterised national development. Maurice Niveau, one time the top educational civil servant, has written somewhat acidly about this politicisation of higher education in the name of democratisation. It would be wrong to draw hasty lessons from a very selective number of topics relating to secondary and higher education. The 1981 Education Act, in England and Wales, based as it was upon Taylor Report, has attempted to involve the local community, including pupils, more in running of its schools.
