ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the similarities between the City Technology Colleges and the sponsored grant-maintained schools as the only two examples of government attempts to encourage the supply-side of die quasi-market. It views the policy process through the concepts of 'policy text' and policy discourse'. Privatisation was one of the major policy priorities of successive Conservative governments since 1979, and its extension to education has been strongly supported by the New Right. The chapter attempts to illustrate the complex nature of educational policy and the efficacy of a particular framework for understanding policy by examining the results of the legislation. It presents a way of reading the process of policy developed through insights of micropolitics and the 'garbage can' model of organisational choice. The chapter also examines the utility of the theoretical model of 'garbage can' policy-making that is assessed in relation to the fate of the sponsored grant-maintained initiative.
