ABSTRACT
The transformation experienced by the British economy between 1964 and 1990 was enormous. It was so complete as to defy brief analysis. It posed challenges for the education system which were every bit as great as those which became evident during the first industrial revolution. But the extent to which formal education was inoculated against change by its own characteristics and cultural inheritance, as was argued in Chapter 1, meant that the educational response to the changes taking place in the economy was, at best, partial and was posited in large part on perceptions of the economic significance of schooling which were necessarily flawed. The outcome was, first, that the educational system became increasingly dysfunctional economically while, at the same time, preserving its capacity to impose and sustain social class differences. Thus, the secondary effect of these changes was that schools and colleges became, if anything, stronger arbiters of who precisely would be the beneficiaries of economic transformation while playing only a marginal role in the generation of that transformation itself. Also, as this dysfunctionality became steadily more apparent, it became easier for critics, particularly from the New Right, to emphasise the need for regeneration and reconstruction of the education system, for a closer linkage of what went on in schools with the changing demands of the workplace.
