ABSTRACT
In 1998 the British ‘New Labour’ government launched the first twenty-five Education Action Zones (EAZs), a new policy initiative aimed at raising standards of achievement in schools in socially disadvantaged areas. A second group of forty-eight zones was approved in 1999. There are now seventy-three zones. Each usually comprises two secondary schools and their associated primary schools, totalling between a dozen and twenty schools altogether. Recently the government has announced the launch of a further fourteen small EAZs, each containing one secondary school and its local primary schools. Up to fifty small EAZs are planned. By 2001 it is anticipated that 10 per cent of all schools will be in EAZs.1 At present, all the zones are in England: there are none in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
