ABSTRACT
Partnerships are easy on a growth curve; indeed they are probably necessary. During the 1960s and 1970s the need for a parliamentary element in the education partnership was not so stark. The old partnership of the 1944 Act was still in some sort of shape, if becoming increasingly ramshackle. The key to the local authority partnership in education was the Association of Education Committees, effectively run for nearly fifty years by two men, Sir Percival Sharp and Sir William Alexander. The creation of the Local Authority Consultative Committee by Tony Crosland in 1974 did something to bring the education lobby in local government back into partnership. The concept in the Education Act 1944 of a central service locally administered was a markedly successful one as long as there was a rising birth rate and, therefore, rising budgets to go with it.
