Back to the future. The development of educational policy in England
| Date | 01 August 1999 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578239910275463 |
| Pages | 200-229 |
| Published date | 01 August 1999 |
| Author | Les Bell |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Journal of
Educational
Administration
37,3
200
Journal of Educational
Administration, Vol. 37 No. 3, 1999,
pp. 200-228. #MCB University
Press, 0957-8234
Received August 1998
Revised January 1999
Accepted January 1999
Back to the future
The development of educational policy in
England
Les Bell
School of Education and Community Studies, Liverpool John Moores
University, UK
Keywords Effectiveness, Leadership, Management, Organization, Organizational policy
Abstract This article argues that educational policy in England has passed through four main
stages in the last three decades. The first three phases, Social democratic, Resource constrained
and Market, all contain elements which now inform the Excellence phase which is being pursued
by New Labour. This phase combines a determination to improve the quality of pupil learning
with a much more interventionist set of strategies than has been witnessed in recent years. This
set of policies has inherent weaknesses. Some of these are derived from the partial incorporation
into current policy of the concept of the educational marketplace; others are associated with the
concept based for New Labour educational policy, the school effectiveness movement; and yet
others derive from an inadequate understanding of the nature of leadership and management in
schools which leads to an over-emphasis on the role of the school principal. The article concludes
by suggesting alternative forms of leadership which might be more appropriate for schools in a
rapidly changing society.
This paper traces the growth of educational policy in England and explores
four policy phases through which school administration and management has
passed in the last three decades. It will argue that not only has current
education policy under New Labour evolved from the policies of the previous
Conservative New Right governments of Thatcher and Major, but that the New
Right policies themselves were part of a natural evolution from what had gone
before. Thus, to see the Education Reform Act (DES, 1988a) and the legislation
which followed it as a watershed, a revolutionary break with the past, is to
misinterpret those policies and to misunderstand what went before. It will also
be seen that the current New Labour educational policies have their roots in
policies formulated by earlier administrations. Nevertheless these New Labour
policies are based on serious misconceptions about the value of the research
evidence on schools about the nature of schools as organisations and about the
nature of leadership in autonomous schools.
To some extent, schools in England have always had a relatively high
degree of autonomy although they have not always enjoyed site-based
management. Early forms of autonomy related strictly to the curriculum,
The author is grateful to Mike Aiello for his help in formulating the details of the fourth policy
phase; to Mike Bottery for his stimulating paper on the distinctions between the education
policies of New Right and New Labour; to Penny Brown for her assiduous proof reading and
insightful comments and to Evonne Edwards who made the author reflect upon the ways in
which educational policy in the 1960s has helped to shape that in the late 1990s. The
weaknesses and inadequacies in the argument remain the author's.
Educational
policy in
England
201
including, at secondary level, making choices about which pupils to enter for
external assessment, the forms of that assessment and decisions made on the
basis of assessment outcomes and at primary level, control over the totality of
the school curriculum. In later years autonomy moved into areas of in-service
funding and school finance, even before the Education Reform Act (DES,
1998a). After 1988, of course, almost every state school in England moved
rapidly towards some form of site-based management either through the
devolution of its budget, termed local management of schools (LMS), or by
opting out of local education authority (LEA) control entirely and receiving the
entire school budget (considerably enhanced) directly from central government,
termed grant maintained (GM) status. At the same time, control over the
curriculum moved to the then Department for Education and Science (DES),
now the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). How, then, did
these changes come about? The answer to this question can be found by
examining the emergence of education policy in England since 1960.
The social democratic phase 1960-1973
The first phase (Table I) had its origins in the 1944 Education Act. It was
characterised by relatively high spending; the expansion of educational
provision to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing pupil population; the
development of social intervention strategies to tackle pupil under-achievement
and a re-structuring of the system to abolish pupil selection at 11 years of age
and replace grammar schools with larger, non-selective comprehensive schools.
Throughout this period the system faced a teacher shortage of such
proportions that having an adult in front of the class was the main, often the
only, management priority in many schools. Little, if any, systematic
Table I.
The social democratic
phase 1960-1973
Emphasis Strong emphasis on growth and expansion
School management Embryonic. Teachers exercised considerable autonomy over the
curriculum. Main concern is to have teachers in front of classes
Priorities Little clear priority setting
Resources No resource management
Power and influence Little conflict between interest groups
Teachers Aspirations and expectations rising even faster than growth rate.
Motive force Expansion is the unchallenged motive force. Change brought about
largely by state intervention at system level through
comprehensivisation and funding new initiatives. Collectivism reigns
Values Little discussion of values which shape action other than the need to
break into the ``circle of deprivation''. Implicitly, education is seen as
a major mechanism for social engineering and social improvement
Equity Equality of opportunity through equality of access and positive
discrimination
The system The system is coherent and develops as a whole. Autonomy over
the curriculum rests within schools but system autonomy is located
at LEA level. Many state initiatives such as Educational Priority
Areas are funded
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