ABSTRACT
The UK 1988 Education Act was a curious hybrid. On the one hand, it was profoundly centralizing in the way in which the National Curriculum and its associated testing, and the powers of the new OFSTED inspectorate, placed previously unimagined powers in the hands of the Secretary of State for Education. This means that, despite the consequent Dearing reforms, a government of any complexion controls much of the shape of a school's curriculum, not only in the way in which it can exert unprecedented hegemony over its epistemological underpinnings, but equally importantly in the manner in which the testing, and subsequent inspection, provide very clear and powerful ‘steers’ to schools in terms of what they should teach and how they should teach it. The other side of the 1988 legislation did precisely the opposite: it located responsibility for financial management and probity at the institutional level, as well as increasing the degree to which parents could exert choice over which schools they could send their children to. It should be noted, however, that both these measures took power away from the middle management structures of the LEAs. 1 It could be argued that these measures reflected contradictions within the Conservative party itself – the conflict between a noblesse oblige conservatism allied to an authoritarian moral viewpoint, and the radical liberal perspective of a free market approach. It could also be argued, however, that both of these fit within a Post-Fordist scenario – one in which policy is decided at the centre, and then responsibility for implementation is delegated to the periphery.
