ABSTRACT
It is now widely assumed that this country’s economic future depends on a ‘revolution’ in skills and knowledge, to be driven forward by a suitably modernised education system closely monitored by the state. As this book has demonstrated, early moves in these directions were outlined by Callaghan at Ruskin, which is why his speech has kept its status as a memorable event. At the time, in October 1976, it was intended to steal Conservative clothes by aligning the Labour government with growing public concern about an education system which was apparently both failing to meet the needs of employment and self-protectively resistant to change. Yet while promising political initiatives, the prime minister indicated only a modest increase in direct government intervention. Despite persistent urging of much bolder measures by the radical Right, it was not until the Conservatives’ 1987 election manifesto that the reform of schooling was given priority within a wholesale reconstruction of welfare provision on market principles. The Education Act of 1988 which followed a third successive Conservative election victory was acclaimed by two of the ministers responsible for implementing its innovations as the ‘biggest single measure of social reform’ of the Thatcher years, and the ‘first real attempt since the Butler Act to revisit the basis of education policy’ (Kenneth Baker and Kenneth Clarke, quoted in Ribbins and Sherratt 1997: 109, 149).
