ABSTRACT
The 1988 Education Reform Act heralded a fundamental change in the way in which pupils and resources are allocated to schools in England and Wales. Prior to this a local education authority (LEA) was mainly concerned with ensuring that each of its schools received enough pupils to offer a full range of curriculum activities and to attempt to balance the social and academic mix of pupils in comprehensive schools. Under such circumstances the overall distribution of pupils was perceived to be more important than matching particular children to given schools. The Education Reform Act reversed these priorities, supplanting a centrally managed school admissions system with the mechanism of parental choice. Through more open enrolment combined with delegated school budgets, primarily determined according to the number of pupils on roll, the Government has attempted to fashion what has been called a ‘quasi-market’ (see Le Grand and Bartlett 1993; Leva i 1994). According to the rhetoric, parents will take account of published information such as ‘league tables’ of examination results and truancy rates when choosing a school, thereby creating a dynamic under which resources will be channelled into ‘good quality’ schools and away from their ‘poor quality’ rivals. Furthermore, schools are expected to respond to this consumer pressure by raising their ‘standards’ and hence improving their competitive edge.
