ABSTRACT
In addition to the revolution in some of our classrooms, the education of many of our children at that time was clearly not geared to industry and commerce in providing the recruits they wanted. Industrialists said that education was irrelevant to modern needs in not teaching sufficient practical skills. In 1981 the Department of Education and Science issued a circular (6/81) to local education authorities telling them they had to have a curriculum policy, the first time that all the authorities were actually told that they had a role in planning what was taught in their schools. While educationists initially detested the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), it in its turn characterised the Education Department as having little or no influence on schools while the MSC had both power and money. Keith Joseph appeared to be visibly torn between the constraints of monetarism and the need to invest in education.
