ABSTRACT
In the last five years, “educational issues have acquired an almost unprecedented prominence on the British political agenda” (Broadfoot 1991). Although the 1988 Act is unquestionably the most important, not a parliamentary session has passed since it was enacted without a new law being added to the statute book. The local education authorities (LEAs) have lost control of their polytechnics, further education and a sizeable number of schools and they have been forced to contract out many of their services. A new type of school, the City Technology College, has been created and more recently the concept of bringing failing schools under new management further varies the pattern of school provision. The polytechnics have been rechristened and brought together with the older universities under the aegis of a new funding council (HEFC), replacing the separate funding councils established by the 1988 Act. Funding councils have also been created to deal with the further education sector and grant maintained schools. A National Curriculum Council and a Schools Examination and Assessment Authority were created to develop in detail a national curriculum and new methods of assessing it, and have since been abolished in favour of a single Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA). The National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ), created in 1986 to provide a single framework for all vocational qualifications, whether obtained at work or in an FE college, has been given the task of creating a new set of General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) to parallel GCSE and GCE A level examinations. No alternative qualifications can now be offered without the sanction of either SCAA or NCVQ. The independent examination boards have been made subject to a mandatory code of practice and both SCAA and NCVQ, operate in a quality assurance role. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI), once an important part of the Department for Education, has been hived off as an independent agency (OFSTED) to preside over the
process of school inspection. This is now to be carried out more extensively and regularly than at any time since the nineteenth century. New methods of funding education at every level have been set in place and they have in common some, though not total, adherence to quasi market principles.
