ABSTRACT
The increasing transformation of education from public service locally administered to one which is increasingly privatised (though centrally financed and controlled) is described with examples from the relatively new Academies and Free Schools. This transformation would seem equally true of the Unite States as that is indicated by Diana Ravitch in The Death and Life of the Great American High School System. Hence, the paper explains what is meant by education as a public service; how such a public service, locally accountable, has been allowed to decline through increased political control; points to the change of language which opens up the service to private gain; and indicates the extent to which the such privatisation is now occurring. All is partly explained through the changing language of education which renders education in schools and higher education vulnerable to political control.
