ABSTRACT
The previous chapter discussed some of the many problems faced by LEAs seeking to put forward well coordinated, socially and educationally viable and cost-effective plans for reorganisation of their schools in the light of falling rolls. A major further dimension to the issues has, however, been added by the creation under the Education Reform Act 1988 of a new category of maintained schoolsknown as grant-maintained schools-independent of LEA control and funded directly by central government grants. Grant-maintained status is dealt with in a separate chapter for the sake of clarity, but must nonetheless be recognised as inextricably connected with reorganisation plans as a whole, as any proposal by the governors of an existing LEA-maintained school to opt out will, if successful, inevitably have significant consequences for the organisation and structure of the LEA schools that remain. This presents yet another classic example of the realisation of the individual interests of some (the proponents of grant-maintained status) potentially jeopardising the collective interests of the remainder of the community. The impact of one or more schools opting-out is likely, furthermore, to be particularly acute if it occurs at the very time when the LEA is in the process of a wider process of structural reorganisation. Experience of applications for grant-maintained status hitherto has been that the probability of this coincidence of events is high: the majority of opting-out proposals have hitherto come from schools which have been under some form of structural threat —for instance, closure, amalgamation or loss of sixth form provision-under an LEA’s wider plans for reorganisation. The impossibility of disentangling optingout proposals from reorganisation as a whole is clearly illustrated by the City of Bath reorganisation dispute which reached the Court of Appeal in R. v. Secretary of State for Education and Science, ex parte Avon County Council,1 and will be discussed later in this chapter. It is, however, necessary first to explore the rationale for the introduction by the government of this new category of school, heralded by the Secretary of State as ‘the jewel in the crown of parent power’,2 and to consider a number of the most significant differentiating features of grantmaintained schools and of the process of acquisition of grant-maintained status.3
