ABSTRACT
One way of looking at the functions, powers and roles of local education authorities is to analyse them over time; to compare as it were their relative importance in different eras of local education authority development. Set out in Table 7.1 is an attempt at assessment on a rising (one - less important to five - more important) scale. The assessment of the relative importance of some general functions and duties and in some specific fields covers three periods - a relatively undisturbed and unchanging first period that lasted from 1944 to 1980; a second period from the passage of the 1988 Act to the election of a Labour Government in 1997; and a third from 1997 to the present day. I have omitted a period of 1980 to 1988 as one of transition, almost a phoney war, as an increasingly confident Conservative Government began to change the rules of engagement with successive pieces of sometimes apparently contradictory legislation which culminated with the 1988 Education Reform Act and a distinctly different climate within which LEAs should operate along more clearly defined market principles.
