ABSTRACT
Commenting on the origins of the 1988 Education Reform Act, a deputy secretary at the Department of Education and Science (DES) noted the convergence of a number of concerns in the thinking of the government. These were concerns about standards of achievement; a growing conviction that economic well-being ‘was being adversely affected by the performance of an education service that was neither as good as it could be or as good as it needed to be’; and finally, a need ‘to reduce and control public expenditure in proportion to GDP in the aftermath of the inflationary hike caused by the oil crisis of the mid-1970s and to be more sure about getting value for money’. (Stuart, 1990)
