ABSTRACT
The parent- teacher (PTA) movement was growing, and organizations like the Advisory Centre for Education (ACE) and Confederation for the Advancement of State Education (CASE) gaining strength. Parent power was in the news, with CASE and the Conservative Party comically competing in their Parents' Charters. The 1980 Act, besides providing for universal parent representation on governing bodies, purported to give parents more choice, and certainly provided, in the regulations made under the Act, for parents to have a great deal more information. The 1981 Act gave parents of children with special needs a new involvement in decisions about their education and special appeal rights. The unchallenged freedom of the professionals to experiment had overstepped the mark in the eyes of politicians and many parents. Parents who were non-English speaking, illiterate, poor and timid, as many of them must have been, could not directly assist with their children's reading.
