ABSTRACT
The increasing prominence of neo-Marxist scholarship in the sociology of education has helped redirect attention to the relationship between the educational, political and economic systems at national level. Because of Marxist preoccupation with problems of historical change and process, it has also led to a renewed emphasis on historical perspectives to this relationship. Dale’s paper, from which this extract has been taken, analyzes aspects of the recent history of education and relates these to political forces. It is an example of what Ahier and Flude (1983) term ‘a more policy-oriented and politically aware sociology of education’. In it, Dale examines changes in the control of schooling and the accountability of teachers, and the role played in these changes by the William Tyndale affair (pp. 45-50). He argues that the affair facilitated, but did not cause, changes in the structure of the educational system towards greater central control. In particular, it dealt a final blow to the basis of the management of the English educational system enshrined in the 1944 Education Act (pp. 35-7); it helped justify the replacement of teachers’ professional judgement by bureaucratic accountability; and it contributed to the erosion of the teaching profession’s influence on educational policy.
