ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the change in the economic situation of the United Kingdom and examines the resulting shift in priorities in the financing of education. Manpower planning recurs as a theme of the politics of the mid 1970s. There is no contradiction in the behaviour of the teacher unions in the sixties between their role as trade unions seeking higher pay for their members and their role as professional associations seeking better standards of education in the schools and colleges. In the 1970s, however, there is such a contradiction because every time money is taken out of a limited pool, for increased salaries, it makes it less possible to increase standards through investment in the physical provision of educational goods and services of other kinds. The introduction of cash limits in 1975 and its progressive extension in 1976 and 1977 is one of the clearest marks of the changing character of educational politics in the seventies.
