ABSTRACT
A continuing sense of crisis in the UK education system has prompted unprecedented levels of government intervention to raise standards of educational attainment. Scarcely a week goes by without the announcement of another measure to tackle the widely advertised problems in Britain’s schools. Reports of disagreement or disillusionment with previous measures appear in the media almost as regularly. Within a few weeks of his resignation after four years of controversy as HM Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead pronounced his own scathing verdict on government education policy in a column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper:
No government will achieve its goals if it lurches from one initiative to another, hoping that the electorate, mesmerised by its hyperactivity and the slickness of its presentational skills, will have forgotten the solution it was proffering a month or two back.
